Ringtone Your Own Way: Personalizing Your Ringtone

March 12, 2012

Short of carving your initials into the screen with a pocketknife, sometimes it’s tough to make your phone stand out from all of the other sleek glass and metal handsets out there.  One easy way to add a little extra personality to your iPhone or Android device is to switch up the ringtone to something that truly represents you. Sure, it’ll be that much easier to pinpoint the guilty party if it goes off in the middle of an important meeting, but with great risk comes great reward! By taking advantage of some popular apps, you can not only replace your ringer, but create one-of-a-kind tones that are unique to you.

Get Creative.

For iPhone users, Ringtonium and Ringtone DJ are a great place to start your quest for individuality. These free apps let you pull music tracks from your iTunes library and then edit them down into custom clips of up to 40 seconds, the maximum allowed by Apple. (Text tones can be created as well, but it’d be smart to keep those short!) Each program works similarly, presenting you with an on-screen waveform representing your selected track, which you can then navigate and preview until you have selected that exact moment of the song that would make the best ringer. If you’re a music lover, you could probably name a great chorus, verse, or bridge from one of your favorite songs right now that would make a suitable ringer. Either Ringtonium or Ringtone DJ will let you make that a reality in just a couple minutes of tinkering. Once you’ve mastered the process, both apps allow you to purchase special effects such as pitch-shifts or turntable scratches that can than can also be applied to your new ringer, resulting in a truly original creation that you won’t hear anywhere else.

On Android, the most popular app for ringtone creation has long been Ringdroid, which works with a waveform editor in a similar way to the previous iPhone examples (but without the option to purchase extra special effects). Also worth checking out, Ringtone Maker adds some slight feature upgrades to the same editing system that Ringdroid uses, such as fading in and out of your selected clip. The best part about changing your ringtone on Android, however, is the app Zedge, where users gather to swap their own ringtone creations in a way that’s almost easy enough to put doing-it-yourself out of business.  At the moment, Zedge is home to over half a million user-created ringers and alert sounds, from all genres of music clips to soundbytes from favorite TV shows and movies.

Can’t find a song in your collection that would make a great ringtone?

If none of the music on your phone is getting your creative juices flowing, don’t give up just yet. Your phone has the internet on it, after all. And the internet has YouTube!

YouTube videos also include audio that can be captured by a number of helpful online tools. This means that in addition regular old songs from your personal library, just about any of the strange clips you come across on the web can be the starting point for your next original ringtone.

For example, I’m sure you’ve heard a phone featuring the Star Wars Imperial March? But what about… the dubstep Imperial March? Once you’ve found a video you like, drop the URL into a YouTube capture website like Youtube-mp3.org to grab just the audio from your chosen clip. Your ringtone creation app will treat these mp3s the same way they treat music, allowing you to pick just a section of a clip to serve as a brand new ringer. With all of the crazy stuff on YouTube, you’re sure to find some sonic inspiration.

Maybe you’d like your phone to spit out some insane beatbox beats or your very own laugh track. And if you’re attached to the synthetic style of ringtones that came packaged with your phone, there’s a lot more of that to be had online, too.

Whatever you decide to go with as your next ringer, just remember this one very important factor: when it goes off, people will hear it. (Hey… that’d make a great ringtone!)

 

Alexei Bochenek is a lifelong tech nerd & film buff based in Los Angeles. When he’s not playing with his phone, it’s because the movie has started. Shhhhh!