In iTunes, by default, you can only create ringtones from music you purchased from the iTunes Store. I personally have never bought any music from the iTunes store – I have a lot of music on CD that I legally own and have ripped to my computer in the form of MP3 files. It’s easy enough to add such files to your iTunes library and subsequently your iPhone (use the File -> Add File/Folder to Library option in iTunes).
So let’s say you’ve got a song you like and you want to create a ringtone out of it. Since you can’t make a ringtone out of an entire song, you need to identify which portion of the song you want to use as the ringtone. I try to find a catchy riff that’s easy to loop and is going to be loud enough to hear like you’d expect from a normal ringtone.
So for example, I have a song here that I want to make a ringtone out of. I’ve identified that if I just use the first two bars, or roughly the first eight seconds of the song, it should be about right.
So right-click on the song and then click Get Info. Then click the Options tab. Set the Start Time and End Time values using the x:xx.xxx format and then click OK. At this point you’re just giving it your best guess.
Now back in the music library screen in iTunes, I like to select the checkbox for ONLY the song I’m creating the ringtone from, like so:
Then, at the bottom of the screen, select the repeat button – the third one from the left:
This allows you to play and loop the snippet so that you can hear it just as you would if it were playing as a ringtone from your phone.
Most likely you’re going to find that your timing is a little off and you’ll need to go back into the song properties and adjust the start and stop times. Ideally you want it to play so that when it loops back to the beginning, it maintains the beat and blends seamlessly from end to start. Here’s what I came up with for this song after I was satisfied with the timing:
Once you’ve done that, the next step is to right-click the song and then click Create AAC Version. This creates a compact audio file that captures only the portion of the song that you specified based on the start and stop time values.
Next, right-click the AAC version and then click Copy.
Now on your computer, create a folder where you will store ringtone files. Right-click in this folder and then click Paste. You should see your file name with a .m4a extension. Rename this, changing the extension to .m4r.
Now, back in iTunes you can delete the AAC version of the song you created. Right-click it and then click Delete. Click Remove and then click Keep File. This removes it from your iTunes library without deleting the file itself from your computer.
Also, don’t forget to go back into the options for the original song and uncheck the start and stop times. If you don’t do this, then any time you try to play this song in iTunes, or on your iPhone or iPod once you’ve synced with iTunes, then it will play only the portion of the song between the start and stop times.
Now, in iTunes, click the Ringtones library. Then on the File menu, click Add File to Library. Browse to the folder where you copied the ringtone file to and then click Open.
Clearly, you can see that I think KMFDM songs make great ringtones.
Finally, click your iPhone device, and then on the Ringtones tab, select Sync ringtones and then click Apply.
Having done this, you can now go into your contacts on your phone and assign a custom ringtone that you’ve created as the default ringtone, or even to individual contacts.
Posted Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 11:00 am by peterl
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