How to Use Your Mac to Create Ringtones for Your Mobile Phone

Apple Inc. not only creates some of the best computers on the planet but they also bundle some of the best software on the planet with every single one of their Macs that they sell. An appropriate case in point is the iLife suite of apps which allow you to manage the different aspects of your digital life. iLife is made up of iTunes for managing music, iWeb for creating web pages and blogs, iPhoto for managing and manipulating photos, iMovie for video editing, iDVD for DVD creation, and finally Garageband for creating music and podcasts. It is this latter application, Garageband, that is vital to creating ringtones which can be used on your iPhone as well as some other mobile phones. Please note that the software for different mobile phones handles media in different ways so what may work for one phone may not work for another. However in most cases you can use the iLife applications on your Mac to create some great custom ringtones.

Find a Clip From Which to Create Your Ringtone

For the creation of your ringtone locate a song, sound effect or other sound that you would like to make into a ringtone. Be creative! It can be your favorite song or a recording of your own voice. How about having recordings of some of your favorite contacts speaking? This way when they call you can hear a particular contact's voice as a ringtone! This can also be done with your Mac if you have a USB microphone or a Mac with a built-in microphone. For now we will use a song.

Get Your Song Into GarageBand

The great thing about Garageband (and all of the iLife applications) is that drag-and-drop is king! To get your future ringtone into Garageband simply click the Garageband icon in the dock or select it from the Applications folder. When the Garageband screen opens, select "Open new project". Next you will see the main Garageband console with a default track listed in the track list. Let's start by getting rid of this default track. Select the name of the track to highlight, go up to the Track pull-down menu and select the delete option. Next open the Finder and navigate to the location of the mp3 that you want to pull into Garageband for editing. Now simply drag and drop the file into the Garageband window. The song will not be converted into Garageband format automatically and will appear as its own track. If your song is already in iTunes you can simply drag it from iTunes to Garageband.

Now it is time to edit the song down to the portion you would like to use for your ringtone. At this time you can not create a ringtone that is more than longer than forty seconds long. Fiftenn to thirty seconds seems to be the typical ringtone length. This is the constraint I will use for this example. Press the Play button at the bottom of the Garageband console and your song will begin to play. Listen carefully to the song and decide on which portion you will want to use for your ringtone. The chorus of the song is always a good choice. After you decide we will need to edit out the rest of the track so that we are left only with the portion that we want.

To do so we are going to use the Split function located under the Edit pull-down menu. Grabe the playhead and move it to the location in the song where you want your ringtone to begin. The playhead is that line that moves across the track as it plays. Once you have it in place, select Split from the Edit menu. You will physically see a break in the track. Now unselect the track by clicking any where else in the window. Now re-select the portion to the left of the playhead and select Delete. Now the beginning of your track will be where you want your ringtone to begin. Next move the playhead to where you want the ringtone to end. Follow the same steps. Select Split, deselect the track, re-select the portion to be deleted and then choose Delete Track from the Track pull-down menu.

Now we need to move your newly edited song to the beginning of the track. Click and hold on the track and then drag it all the way to the beginning of the track by moving it to the left. Once it is at the beginning let go to drop it. Press the Back button (to the left of the Play button) and then press play to hear your new ringtone. If it is not quite what you want you can select Undo from the Edit menu and go back to any point in the process and re-create your ringtone any way you like. If you want to edit it down to be even shorter you can do so at this time as well.

Add Some Fades

If the ringtone is exactly as you would want it at this point then you can proceed to the next section. However you can also add some fading to the beginning or the end of the track as opposed to having an abrupt start and ending. To add a fade-in to the beginning of your ringtone, select "Fade Out" from the "Track" menu. You will notice that a small window that looks much like a track will open at the bottom of the tracks window in Garageband. The blue line shows your current volume level. We will use this level to create a fade-in. Select a point on the blue Volume level line that is as close to the beginning of your ringtone as possible. You wil see a blue dot appear on the line. Next move slightly to the right and select another point. This second point will be the point at which the fade-in ends, thus your ringtone will be at full volume at that point. It is up to you how quickly or slowly you want the fade to occur. Once you have chosen this second point, click and drag the first point all the way down. The Volume level line should now begin by being down and sloping up to your second point, after which it will continue at full volume. To test this, hit the Back button (to move the playhead to the beginning of your ringtone) and press Play. You will hear your song play with the fade-in at the beginning. If you would like the fade to be shorter move the second point on the Volume line to the left. If you would like it to be longer, move the second point to the right. It is that simple.

If you would like a fade out at the end. Do the same thing. Select a point on the Volume line at which you want the fade-out to begin. The select a second point that is beyond the end of your track. In this case, since it is a fade-out, click and drag the second point all the way down. Press Back and then Play to hear your ringtone in its entirety with fades included.

Get It To Your Phone

This is perhaps the easiest part of the entire process. Now that you have worked hard to get your ringtone just right, you simply need to get it back into mp3 format for use on your iPhone or other mobile phone. Go up to the Share pull-down menu and select "Send Ringtone to iTunes". Some conversion will take place and then your new ringtone will show up in the Ringtones section of iTunes. connect your iPhone to your Mac and sync your Ringtone.

But what if you do not have an iPhone. Well instead, in Garageband, select "Send Song to iTunes" from the Share pull-down menu. Your song will be converted to mp3 and put in the iTunes Music list. Now you can get it to your phone by sending it to your mobile phone from your Mac via Bluetooth or in a text message. Please note that some carriers (such as Verizon) may block these types of ringtones.

Keep in mind that this same procedure can be used for purposes other than ringtones. So if you want to use just a portion of a song in a presentation or on an iMovie project, simply follow the same steps for importing and editing the song and when you are finished go to the Share pull-down menu and select "Snd Song to iTunes instead of Send Ringtone to iTunes. I hope this has been helpful to you and that you will be able to use Garageband to spice up your mobile phone experience. Good luck!