I got a "newsletter" e-mail from my local Road Runner interent cable service a couple of days ago, announcing that they now offer a free-to-RR-subscribers digital radio service. I checked it out and there are a bunch of different "stations" offered under several different genres (pop, rock, jazz, country, classicla, etc.). Anyway, while I was checking it out, I was listening to a classic rock channel and a tune came on that I liked. I thought to myself, "Gee, I wish I had an MP3 of this here on my PC." Then, in one of those exceedingly rare moments of inspiration, I fired up Audacity, switched the input to "Stereo Mix" and hit the Record control. Voila! I captured the remainder of the song, edited the beginning and the end (since I didn't catch the first 30 seconds or so, I used Audacity's "Fade In" effect for the beginning of the clip), then exported it as an MP3. Worked like a charm! Actually, if you have a media player that supports the Ogg Vorbis format (many do; I use Yahoo Jukebox for .ogg files), use that, because the audio quality is better and the file size smaller.

So now, when I'm working at my PC and have the RR Radio running in the background, I launch Audacity and have it sitting at the ready in the task tray, in case a tune comes on that I want to grab a copy of. Sure makes it easier to learn the guitar parts in songs I don't already have on CD or in my PC!