Find the take you liked in months of rehearsal and gig recordings

Hours of audio, one good minute

A two-hour rehearsal file might hold one idea worth keeping: a new bridge someone played once, or the version of the chorus where the harmony finally locked in. By the next week nobody remembers which night it was, and the file is called Rehearsal 14.m4a.

Gig recordings pile up the same way. A band that wants to compare how a song has changed over a tour, or pick the best live take for a release, faces a long listening session.

Teachers and students have a version of this too: lesson recordings where the useful part is the five minutes of feedback on one passage, somewhere in an hour of playing.

How musicians keep track now

The piece that is usually missing is search across all the files at once, using what you remember: something someone said, the song, or what the room sounded like.

It also helps to get into a light habit that makes search work better: say the song name or working title out loud before you count in. It costs two seconds and turns every rehearsal file into something you can search by song.

• Naming files right away. The best habit, when someone does it before packing up.
• A shared notes doc or setlist. Good for which songs were played, less good for where in the file.
• Markers in the recording app or DAW. Precise, but only inside that one session, and only if someone dropped them live.

What you can search for

Add your rehearsal and gig folders to MediaFind. It transcribes the talking between songs on your computer and analyzes the audio, so there is more to search than you might expect:

• What was said. Band talk is a great index. “let's try it slower,” “that was the one,” or a song's working title said out loud jumps straight to the right spot.
• Where the music is. Music search finds the stretches that are music rather than talking, so you can skip the chatter in a long file.
• The same track across files. Clips that share the same track can be grouped, which helps collect performances of one song. Results depend on the recordings, so expect to listen through a few candidates. See finding a song in a video.
• Sung lyrics. Clear vocals are often transcribed too, so a line of lyrics can find a take, though a loud mix will miss some.
• Video from the gig. Filmed shows are indexed by what is on screen, so “drummer under red lights” works too.

From found take to shareable clip

Speaker labels separate voices in the talk between songs, and naming a bandmate once carries that name into other recordings; unsure matches stay unnamed. Free tags can mark takes as keepers, and per-file summaries and chapters help you skim a long session.

When you find the moment, cut it out as its own clip or extract the audio with the built-in video tools. For a filmed show, Create, the free editor, can reframe a song for vertical, add a title and render an MP4 for social. For deeper audio work, take the file into your DAW as usual.

Covers, venues and bandmates

Recognizing that clips share a track is not permission to publish it. Posting a cover or a recording of someone else's song usually needs the right license, and some venues restrict filming. Bandmates and guest players should be fine with rehearsal recordings being shared before they go anywhere public.

Everything is indexed on your computer, which suits unreleased material. Nothing is uploaded to make it searchable, and after the one-time model download it works offline.

Frequently asked questions

Can MediaFind tell me the name of a song in a recording?

Don't rely on it for titles. Music search finds where music plays and groups clips that share the same track, which is enough to collect every take of one of your songs.

Which audio formats does it read?

MP3, M4A, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and OGG, plus video in MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV and WebM. Phone voice memos in M4A work as they are.

Can it find a lyric we sang?

Often, when the vocal is clear enough to be transcribed. In a loud room mix some lines will be missed, so band talk and music search are useful backups.

Is it free for a small band?

The free plan indexes up to 10 media files, which is enough to try it on a few rehearsals. Pro removes the file limit.