Create ringtones using WavePad

Posted on April 8, 2008 at 5:04 am

Why would you want to create your own ringtones? If you’re like me you spend a small fortune at the iTunes Music Store and other online retailers. So why pay your cell phone company $1.99 or more for thirty second clips of songs you already own? Instead, download the nifty WavePad audio editor (Windows and OS X) and have fun turning those songs into ringtones. For free!

WavePad “Master’s Edition” is a sophisticated audio editor crammed with features that are fun to use. For most of us though, the free basic features are plenty. You don’t need to purchase WavePad to install it, but after 14 days some of the advanced features are disabled unless you do buy it.

Fret not! WavePad does not annoy you with reminders to purchase every time you run it, and the so-called basic feature list is not only impressive but more than enough to create ringtones and more. Experiment with mashups of two or more song clips, change volume, create echo and reverb effects and more!

The features in the free version include:

Load your own music, then use simple GUI tools to select clip(s)
Cut, copy, paste, delete, insert, silence, autotrim and more.
Adjust volume, fade in/fade out, reverb, echo, reverse.
Supports file formats including wav, mp3, vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and many more.
Includes its own CD ripper with ‘ultrafast ‘rip mode and cddb music database lookup.

WavePad does not work, however, with DRM protected music, for obvious legal reasons.

How to use WavePad to create a ringtone

WavePad is a full featured audio editing tool but it is simple enough for beginners to have fun creating ringtones and performing other sonic feats on their music. I will walk you through the process of creating a thirty-second clip that

samples from a song,
uses some simple sonic effects,
then saves the result in a format for a mobile ringtone.

You can download WavePad here and install it. When you start your editing in WavePad, it shows you a timeline of the song you have opened. The upper section shows you the entire timeline of the file you are working on. The larger lower section shows you just one song section at a time to make editing easier. At the start you will see that the sections actually mirror each other. Once you start editing and mixing song files, you will see the difference.

I am going to sample a clip from Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I will take a short guitar riff, get rid of the rest of the song, add a fade in / fade out then repeat the riff to make up my free 30 seconds ringtone.

WavePad’s intuitive controls such as the “play” button, rewind, fast forward and reverse, let you navigate your song or clip quickly to find the passage(s) you want to work with. The space bar toggles play / hold. The right arrow fast forwards, the left reverses direction. Use the mouse to slide the timeline indicator quickly, and then use the arrow keys to nudge it to find that exact spot you want to start, or end.

In my case the guitar riff I want starts at 23 seconds in. I use the “Trim Start” edit control to eliminate the song up to that point.

Now I use the playback control, then stop and mark the end of the guitar riff that I want to isolate. It ends after 4 seconds on my revised clip. This is where the arrow keys are handy, to nudge back and forth by fractions of a second until you have the exact point where you want to trim.

I use “Trim End” and now have a 4 second passage that I will duplicate to make up a 30 second ringtone. But, I will first add a fade in / fade out effect to the guitar riff, and add a second of silence to my four second clip.

WavePad has fade in / fade out effects, but I will use the envelope feature here, which allows me to adjust the volume level of my clip in an easy graphical manner.

You will notice, now that I trimmed the song down to the guitar riff I wanted, that WavePad’s timeline is now down to four (well 4.14!) seconds. I’m going to put in a fade in / fade out effect…

…and then using the Edit menu options, I add the second of silence to the end:

The resulting song clip is now up to 5 seconds. I extend this six times to make up my 30 second ringtone using the straightforward Edit/Select All, copy and paste functions. I could also use WavePad to splice in another song file or get fancy with echo, reverb and other effects. Be playful and experiment. Undo works wonders!

And now, I just do the File Save-As and give this little clip a new name. I can set bit rates and quality for saving as an mp3 (compressed) file, or use many other file formats. My handset likes mp3s and has a 2gb memory card so I use the default high bit rate setting.

Now I download this to my handset using my USB cable. Next time my special someone calls everyone within earshot will be wondering “Is that Green Day?”

If you have a phone without a USB cable don’t worry! Use the Mobile17 free ringtone download service to send it to your handset. Read about it here.

So you can see, with WavePad its easy to turn your own music library into a ringtone library too. You can do a lot more with the free version than this short example, so turn up your volume, play around with it and have fun!

Pete Kushmeider, Freelance writer and blogger

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