Creating a Ringtone with Audacity

I am sure that you might have a song or two which you’d like to make into custom ringtones for certain people who frequently call you. The boss could have a ringtone like the Star Wars’ Imperial Death March (especially if he’s always giving you impossible deadlines) or your sister could have a ringtone of her favorite song. It could be anything. Sometimes these tunes are not available or you only want certain segments to be used. In any case, you could do it yourself using Audacity.

a ringtone made using Audacity

Audacity is actually capable of a whole lot more audio editing features but as I am not really using them yet, I am not very familiar with them. For now, let me share how I made my own ringtone.

1. I installed Audacity. Of course it has dependencies too so it’s good if you check them first. This is especially for those of you who have a lot of mp3 files.
2. I loaded the song of my choice. Audacity converted that.
3. With the selection tool, I dragged the mouse pointer to the starting time and ending time of the song I wanted to use. If you are not too sure about the time of the song, then you could actually drag the mouse on top of the bar with the time and have it play that segment. When you have decided the part to select, put the mouse pointer over the part with the spiky lines. Take note of the timing. Drag the pointer within the area from the start time to the end time. It will be greyed out by Audacity so you know.
4. I selected the trim tool. It’s the one with the wave in between the sideways T-like things. This will give you only the part you selected earlier.
5. I used the time shift tool to move the segment to the beginning of the time.
6. Lastly, I converted the file to mp3 via the Export command on the File menu.

It’s the simplest way I know to make a custom ringtone. There’s probably fade in and fade out somewhere. The moment I figure out how to use it, I’d definitely let you know.