It has been bugging me that I have’t been able to work out how to do this for some time -  for about a year since I lined up outside the T Shop in Burke Street to buy my first iPhone a year ago in August 2008.

Ever tried to do it? It doesn’t seem to be as easy does it? No. Apple just wouldn’t have you being able to turn any old song that you like into your ringtone because that would be blasphemy. They say that you can use any song that has the Ringtone logo alongside in iTunes but I haven’t say ANY of those lately in my iTunes purchases.

So I finally sat down with some dedicated time to look into this problem and I can finally say that I can now take any piece of music I want and turn it easily and quickly into a ringtone for any iPhone. And I am going to show you how to do it in less than 30 mins if you have the time to finish reading this post.

Let’s get cracking.

First thing is, you will need to download some software. But best thing about that is, it is all free. So get onto it, download Audacity and then download MakeiPhoneRingtone. I run Mac so make sure you chose the right platform for your download, and once downloaded follow the instructions to open and install both programs from the zip files or dmg packages.

Now, Audacity requires a bit of extra help to be set up correctly so that you can import AAC, MP3 etc files, but don’t panic as Douglas Addams would say, just go here and download and follow the instructions (which are well written and easy to follow) to add the LAME MP3 Encoder (I know, unfortunate name), and the FFMpeg Import/Export library. Effectively these two plug in extras will give you the ability to take music from your iTunes library or Windows Media Player, import it into Audactiy where you can trim it really easily into the exact length and position of the song you want, and then export it out into the right format to be turned into a ringtone.

Still with me? Good. Relax. Breathe, you are almost there.

So you have both Audacity with the extra plugins installed, and MakeiPhoneRingtone (MiR from hereon) ready to roll. Great. MiR is a simple drag and drop application and it just opens as a window and says Drop AAC Files Here when you run it, and that is basically all you have to do, but first we need to grab that crucial piece of music and make it no longer than 40 seconds, and make sure it is an m4a or AAC file so that MiR can do it’s job.

Right, open Audacity. From the main menu chose File, Import and then in the normal way Browse to where you music file is and select it and click Open.

This will bring you to the main edit screen of Audacity and you should be looking at something like this:

With your mouse move around the blue wavelength thingys and play with this. If you have never done this before, don’t be scared to experiment, as long as you don’t hit Save you can’t damage the original file. As least I don’t think so *gulps*.

From here what you basically need to do is cut away sections of the song so that it is no longer than 40 seconds. Do this by highlighting with your mouse and hitting the delete button. I won’t go into Audacity lessons here because it is a whole other thing but trust me it is pretty simple and you should get the hang of it enough to be able to trim a song or recording back to 40 seconds in a few minutes of playing around. The play back buttons are very straight forward and obvious so play around.

Once you have your 40 second clip, in Audacity’s main menu select File, then Export and you will be presented with a Metadata box first which is up to you to fill out, I just clicked OK because I am lazy and impatient for my Ringtone, and then once you have clicked OK on this you will see the next most important screen. This is where you need to select from the Format menu dropdown in the lower half of the screen, M4A (AAC) Files (FFmpeg). Here is screen shot of how mine looked:

That is all looking pretty good right? Excellent. Then click Save and Browse to your iTunes library or wherever you intend to save this magical musical ringtone and hit save again.

You are almost there *squeals of delight*.

Next step is to open up MiR and get a copy of Finder (or Explorer/MyComputer for Windows) and browse your way to where you just saved that file.

This is the easy bit. Click and drag and drop that file onto MiR.

It will chug along and do it’s own thing and before you know it an iPhone ringtone has just been created.

By absolute sheer coincedence, or brilliance on behalf of the creators of MiR (much respect to you whoever you are) the newly created ringtone will be stored in your iTunes library automatically under the Library nav on the left hand side called *shock* Ringtones!

All you have to do now is connect your iPhone and hit the Sync button on the Ringtone tab:

Voila! You have just created your very own iPhone Ringtone and it didn’t cost you a cent.

If you are not quite sure how to make it your ringtone on the actually phone itself, it is quite simple.

Slide to Unlock, then on the home page click Settings, then select Sounds, then select Ringtone and you will see your brand new appropriately titled ringtone to choose.

Amazement.

Like this post? It wasn’t too hard? Got any suggestions on how I could make it better? Drop me a comment and I will be happy to response.

Please share the ringtone love!