Create your own ringtones!

Well, actually this is not an "Ubuntu-Exclusive" but I think you guys should know.

Let's say you have a cool song and want to have a ringtone of it on your cellphone...Prepare yourself, if you buy it from your carrier you'll end up paying $3.00+ for the song and the Internet time you use to download it to your cell.

Well, there's an easy and inexpensive way to do this...and it's called "Audacity"! No, no need to take out your credit card, Audacity is absolutely free and it's a very handy program for all your music-editing needs, not to mention that it is available on the repositories.

Let's stick to the topic here. To make a ringtone simply choose your favorite song.

Now open up Audacity by going to Applications>Sound & Video>Audacity.



Click File>Open and then select the song you want to ringtonify...




Now with the cursor in Selection mode select the part of the song you want for your ringtone by dragging the cursor.



Fiddle back and forth with Play and Pause and make sure that the selected area is exactly how you want it. Once the area is selected click the "Trim" button (check the picture below to see the location of the button).






Now switch the cursor to Time Shift Tool. And drag the chosen part to the start of the timeline.



Now switch back to Selection mode. And select the areas where you might want to add an effect, like Fade IN or Fade OUT. For these effects select the beginning of the song (where you want the fade to take effect). Now click on Effects and select Fade In from the dropdown list.




For fade out do the exact same thing but selecting the end of the song and then Fade Out on the dropdown.

And DONE! You now have a freshly baked ringtone for your cellphone! Now simply go to File> Export and give it a name and a format on the new window. Select Mp3 Files on the dropdown on the bottom of the window.

And now all you need is aBluetooth adapter or a card reader to send it to your cellphone. I won't be going into great detail here because every cellhpone works different. In my case I use both Bluetooth and a card reader 9sometimes) to sync my new ringtones to my LG Shine CU720.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful and I hope I was clear enough! Remember to post comments!

NOTE: You can do the exact same thing in Windows. Audacity is multi-platform!