How I split a recording into multiple tracks

Every time I record a gig, I just press record and forget about it. I don’t stop and start for each song. That seems like it’d be prone to error as you don’t know what’s going to happen in a live setting. I do want them separated though, so I do it later at the computer with Ardour. For this post, I’m working with version 8.6.0.

One method you might consider first is:

• Physically cut the file.
• Delete the remaining portions.
• Export the track.
• Undo back to your starting point.
• Physically cut the next track.
• Export the track.
• Undo back to your starting point.
• Repeat until you’ve exported all tracks.

Here’s a video version:

I don’t like this method because it’s harder to make sure the finished tracks don’t overlap with each other. You’ll have to make sure you don’t undo the cut at the end of the previous track so the next track continues from that same point. That way when you listen back, the transitions between tracks are seamless. If you do happen to undo too far, there is a redo option but I don’t like the idea of relying on undo/redo as a core pillar of your workflow. There is also a lot of movement and it feels like it would get confusing the more tracks you have to do.

A better method is to first mark all the start and end locations of each track. We can do that with range markers. First hide the grid and enable Snap. Then:

• Create a new range.
• Place them at the start and end of the track.
• Create a new range.
• Easily snap the start of the new range to the end of the previous range and set the end of the track.
• Repeat until you’ve marked all tracks.
• Export all tracks in one go.

Here’s a video version:

In practice, the process takes a little longer as I have to listen to the playback to decide where to split the tracks. I always keep the space between songs as that’s part of what makes a live show unique and interesting over the studio recording.

These days, I’m usually exporting to FLAC and once I’m done with Ardour, I use metaflac to add metadata tags to the files.

I know you’ve got an even better way so let me know below.