Filed under: iLife, How-tos, Tips and tricks, iTunes, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Make iPhone ringtones with GarageBand
An earlier post about PocketMac Ringtone Studio for iPhone reminded me of how I put together ringtones for my iPhone. I just fire up GarageBand and iTunes, do a little quick magic, and out come the ringtones I want.
This doesn't work with protected files such as those you've purchased from the iTunes Store -- hell, Apple wants you to spend $0.99 for the tune and another $0.99 to turn it into a ringtone. The method described here works very well turning those CD snippets that you've ripped into iTunes into ringtones. Follow along after the break for the step-by-step.
1) Launch both iTunes and GarageBand '08.
2) In iTunes, select the tune that you want to grab a short ringtone from. GarageBand can perform its magic with regular MP3 files or with AAC-encoded (iTunes standard) files.
3) In GarageBand, create a New Music Project. You can do this either by closing an open project and then clicking the Create New Music Project button on the GarageBand splash screen, or by selecting New from the File menu. Select a name (in the example shown below, it's the name of the song -- Thomas Dolby's "Blinded Me With Science") and location to save the GarageBand project, then click Create.
5) Drag your selected tune from iTunes to GarageBand. The song is imported into GarageBand and a new music track appears:
6) Now comes the fun part -- listen to the song and pick out a short (30-40 second) snippet for be your ringtone. I seem to always pick the most recognizable part of the tune, which is usually a refrain or some hook that is memorable. As you play through the song and find the start of the ringtone, pause the playback, and move the playhead (the vertical red line) to about the beginning of the ringtone. Don't worry about getting it exactly since you can do some additional editing later.
7) You'll need to delete the music ahead of the start of your ringtone. To do this, click on the track to select it, then choose Split from the Edit menu to split the track at the playhead. Click the blank GarageBand work area to deselect the track, then click on the portion you want to delete and press the Delete key on your keyboard.
8) Figure out where the end of your ringtone is going to be and make sure that the playhead is situated somewhere close to it. Use the same technique described in step 7 to delete the music after the end of your ringtone. At t his point, you should have a short piece of the overall song to turn into a ringtone.
9) Drag the beginning of the ringtone all the way to the left side of the track timeline. This is probably a good time to save your GarageBand project as well.
10) Now, let's soften the beginning and end of the ringtone to cover up any mistakes we've made in editing. To do this, click on the track automation button. See that set of five buttons at the beginning of the track? Click the little downward pointing triangle to bring up track automation. We're going to set a fade-in and fade-out on our ringtone.
11) About a half-second or so into the beginning of the track, click the volume line to create an edit point (left, below). Next, click and drag the beginning of the volume line down to zero volume (right, below -- -144.0 db).
What you've just done is create a fade-in for the beginning of the ringtone. It starts off silently and builds to full volume in about a second. If you find that you need the fade-in to be longer or shorter, just move that second volume dot left or right.
12) Do the same for the end of the ringtone. Click the volume line to create an edit point about one second from the end of the ringtone. Then click and drag the end of the volume line down to zero volume (-144.0 dB).
13) Listen to the entire ringtone to make sure that the fade-in and fade-out sound good. If they do, save the project one more time. If they don't, adjust the fades and then save the project.
14) Now we need to make sure that the ringtone will repeat as your phone rings. To do this, click on the button to turn the cycle region on and off. What? You don't know what button this is? Look at the bottom of the GarageBand window. See the controls (screenshot below)? It's the one on the far right that looks like a set of arrows chasing each other:
14) Now we need to make sure that the ringtone will repeat as your phone rings. To do this, click on the button to turn the cycle region on and off. What? You don't know what button this is? Look at the bottom of the GarageBand window. See the controls (screenshot below)? It's the one on the far right that looks like a set of arrows chasing each other:
15) When you click that button, a bright yellow line appears above your track. Drag the right side of the line so that it matches the length of your ringtone (see below):
Doing this ensures that your ringtone will repeat over and over until you answer the phone or your caller goes to Visual Voice Mail. Do one final save of your project.
16) You're almost there! Go to the Share menu in GarageBand and choose "Send Ringtone to iTunes." Your project is converted to an iPhone ringtone that opens and plays in iTunes.
17) To move the ringtone to your iPhone, connect the iPhone while iTunes is open. Select the iPhone in the Devices list on the left side of iTunes, then click on the Ringtones tab. Make sure that Sync Ringtones is checked (see below), and select either All Ringtones or Selected Ringtones to sync with your iPhone. Click Sync, and your ringtone is copied to the iPhone.
16) You're almost there! Go to the Share menu in GarageBand and choose "Send Ringtone to iTunes." Your project is converted to an iPhone ringtone that opens and plays in iTunes.
17) To move the ringtone to your iPhone, connect the iPhone while iTunes is open. Select the iPhone in the Devices list on the left side of iTunes, then click on the Ringtones tab. Make sure that Sync Ringtones is checked (see below), and select either All Ringtones or Selected Ringtones to sync with your iPhone. Click Sync, and your ringtone is copied to the iPhone.
Have fun filling up your iPhone with custom ringtones!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Atariboy said 9:25AM on 7-08-2008
Dugg: http://digg.com/apple/Guide_Make_iPhone_ringtones_with_GarageBand
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Pete said 9:35AM on 7-08-2008
You can do the same thing, just alot simpler with quicktime pro and an app called makeiphoneringtone.
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AlphaDeltaVIII said 10:15AM on 7-08-2008
Yes, but GarageBand is free
Pete said 10:23AM on 7-08-2008
If you already have garageband 08...for those of us who don't see the need i would rather pay 29 dollars for quicktime
jay said 9:28AM on 7-08-2008
Actually on step 7 you can just turn on the looping and use that. You don't have to delete. It works the same and save a step as you don't need to drag anything.
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h8rain said 9:29AM on 7-08-2008
"This doesn't work with protected files such as those you've purchased from the iTunes Store"
*cough* burn to cd and import back in, *cough* cheaper than 99 cents *cough*
I should get that cough looked at.......
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noal said 12:25AM on 8-07-2008
i think if you were to just convert the protected file to aac in the first place it should work just fine. It did for me!
mark said 10:29AM on 7-08-2008
Garageband didn't come FREE with my MacBook Pro. I had to get iLife. Hello?
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Joe Woody said 11:24AM on 7-08-2008
Then you got ripped off.
Joe Woody said 11:24AM on 7-08-2008
I've been doing this with my Treo for years (well, besides the last few steps). Everyone always wonders how I get the latest songs on my phone, so I usually tell them to shut up and get a Treo or another smartphone that can play mp3 files instead of a ridiculously priced song download. Of course, I will suggest them getting an iPhone now! (which I will be doing as soon as my contract with Verizon is up)
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chadwick said 10:42AM on 7-08-2008
does this work with all versions of garage band?
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(01) said 10:55AM on 7-08-2008
Mark, you should have, every Mac comes with it. I think only the most recent versions have this capability though.
Isn't this easier to do in iTunes? As our own Ms. Sadun suggests (you'll need to select the start/stop time for the ringtone in the track, and save as an AAC):
It goes basically like this: iTunes uses the m4r file extension for Ringtones. If you remove an AAC file from your library and rename it from .m4a to .m4r and then add it back to iTunes, the program reads it back in as a ringtone rather than a normal library track. You can then sync it to your iPhone. I’ve tested this with both an MP3 that I converted to AAC and with a track I purchased from the iTunes store. They both worked.
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Jason Smith said 10:58AM on 7-08-2008
You can also strip the iTunes DRM through iMovie, export out in Quicktime format, then bring into GarageBand. Saves having to burn a CD! :)
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Jason Smith said 11:03AM on 7-08-2008
iMovie '06 that is.
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elmor said 11:21AM on 7-08-2008
For some reason my files do not show up in the sync window. Also converted them to aac. Using 7.6.2 and garageband. Followed the instructions. Am I missing something?
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SpinThis! said 6:48PM on 8-05-2008
If you don't have Garage Band (for example, you did a clean install of the OS), you could also use Audacity to do the importing and editing. Just export your file as aif, import into iTunes, and have iTunes convert it to an AAC.
Although it's not mentioned in the article, some sensible discretion is also advisable when picking out your ringtone. For other people's sanity (and quite possibly your own), just because you can pick any song—for example, She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby—doesn't mean you should. ;) I tend to go for more sound-fx type ringtones, since they tend not to get stale after a dozen rings.
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elmor said 11:41AM on 7-08-2008
Can't seem to get the ringtones to sync up with iTunes. Have followed the steps. I'm using iTunes 7.6.2 and garageband. In iPhone tabs, no ringtone shows up even though I also tried the .m4r change. Suggestions?
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Xavier Watson said 11:59AM on 7-08-2008
Coincidentally, I was doing this all day yesterday to prepare for my iPhone 3G.
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DJFriar said 12:05PM on 7-08-2008
If you don't feel like loading all of Garageband up or don't have the '08 version, Fission can do the same thing. It does cost money, and I don't recall its cost. The steps are pretty much identical, and the program is way smaller (20MB or so), quicker, etc. Its what I use anyway. The only difference is you have to save it as a standard file. then rename it to .m4r then drag it to iTunes.
Anyway, just my $0.02
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Miller Harris said 1:14PM on 7-08-2008
By the time you do all this, Apple's 99 cent charge doesn't seem all that expensive.
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