Search for words in a digitized recording

[eager to learn]

Audacity is such a remarkable program I may be asking way too much of it now.

I'm looking for one track (song) on one of my many legally owned analog cassette tapes I've digitized with Audacity. Unfortunately, I can't find the track title or artist name listed on any of the cassette tape jackets.

I've digitized each tape by exporting the recording on each side as its own file. So, each tape will have 2 digitized recordings - Side A and Side B.

Is there any way using Audacity that I could conduct a word search in those digitized recordings to find the track I'm looking for?

Ex. Title of track - Hold On. Can I search for the words "Hold On" either searching through all my digitized recordings or at least one digitized file at a time?

Thank you!

[kozikowski]

Audacity has no tools or effects that I know of to search for spoken words.

Most of the tools are "dumb" programs. They have no idea of content. This kills people trying to separate mixed performances into many solos. Audacity has no idea what a violin or a voice is and because of harmonics, overtones, and timbres, almost all instruments and voices have similar data signatures. No, you can't filter out the higher pitched instrument or voice. The data overlaps too much.

There are products that claim to do this. Dragon Naturally Speaking I think is one. Google is your friend.

Koz

[eager to learn]

Koz,

I thought I might be asking for too much.

Audacity does so much so well I took a shot just in case.

Thanks.

[Robert J. H.]

What do you want to do exactly?
If you want to identify the song, you can search for some words of the chorus or the very beginning in YouTube. There are often the lyrics included for a song, thus you may hit the right song after a while.

[eager to learn]

I know the title of the song and the artist. I'm trying to find exactly where that song is performed on the recoding without having to listen to the entire recording to find it.

Kind of a lyrics search akin to a word search in Libre Writer.

[Trebor]

You can listen to recordings in less than half the time if you use "sliding time scale" (in Effects) ...

Dubya before-after ''sliding timescale''.mp3

(479.25 KiB) Downloaded 94 times

However your brain may explode if you listen to long recordings at double speed

I think it would be possible to take samples of (say) 3 seconds duration every minute from an audio file and concatenate them, so you could condense an hour long album into three minutes. If the songs were each more than a minute long you'd be guaranteed to hear a sample of it in the condensed summary version.

[waxcylinder]

Is this song available on iTunes, Amazon, whatever as a download - it Shouldn't cost much for a single song ...

WC

[eager to learn]

Trebor,

LMHO!

That accelerated shrub recording is hilarious.

I'm kinda' new to Audacity.

Could you please give me a brief insight how to use "sliding time scale"?

Thanks.

WC,

Unfortunately, this song is older and has not been digitally recorded for sale anywhere which is why I'm trying to retrieve it.

[waxcylinder]

WC,

Unfortunately, this song is older and has not been digitally recorded for sale anywhere which is why I'm trying to retrieve it.

I've managed to source some of those types from YouTube - kindly people upload non-commercially available old recordings

WC

[waxcylinder]

I'm kinda' new to Audacity.

Could you please give me a brief insight how to use "sliding time scale"?

Does this page from the manual help: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sl ... shift.html

WC