MP3s for your Cellphone

I enjoy recording the music I write. There are times that I will record little partial songs that aren't quite good enough to put on a compact disk, so I edit them for my phone as a ringtone. Most often I use mp3's instead of midi files because I like to hear organic music. Nothing says synthetic like midi. Since I love to make my own files into ringtones, I thought you might want to do the same with your OWN material. This is an educational article only. Please use only mp3's that you own the copyright to.

Essentials

With all that said you will need:

1. Audacity
2. LAME MP3 Encoder
3. Your Cell phone's text to e-mail address

Audacity

Let's begin with Audacity. It's a free, cross-platform sound editor and recorder that you will use to edit the mp3 into a proper size and length to fit onto your phone. Once you download it, begin the installation process and open a new file when Audacity is finished installing.

LAME

Now we need LAME. This encoder allows Audacity to export your sound byte as an MP3 file. This is a must have file even if you aren't going to just make ringtones. So to obtain this handy encoder go to the site and download the zip file. Since this file is zipped you may need a compression utility to help out. I dig on the 7zip. It can be found on 7-zip . It's a free compression utility that allows you to zip and unzip a lot of different files such as LAME. Unzip the LAME DLL to an easy to locate location, as you will need to find it for Audacity to encode your sound byte.

Text to E-Mail

To find the address to e-mail your MP3 to, send a picture message to your e-mail address. That's it. You will see your phones address in your inbox, just save the message for later and reply to it with an attachment of your finished MP3. Make sure you send a picture message or a video but now a regular text, some phone service providers do not support SMS to e-mail. Now we are ready to rock! Let's dive into Audacity.

Editing an MP3

Editing your song to be a suitable length can be tricky, but this is what makes your tone the one you want. I dig that I can take the chorus, verse or even a melodic bridge and turn it around to be centerpiece of a decent ringtone. Let's face facts here, buying ringtones can be costly in this day and age, especially when gas prices are skyrocketing, the last thing you want to do is fork even more money over to your cell phone service provider for a malformed clip of a song you really didn't want in the first place. Using your own songs and the part of that song you want, is awesome.

Okay, I'm not going to go into extravagant detail about what MP3 is appropriate, point is select an Mp3 file to edit. Open Audacity. Located on the File menu, select Open (CTRL + O) and browse for the MP3 file you would like to edit. When you have opened the file Audacity will give you a loading screen that says “Importing MP3 File”. If your file has loaded correctly the screen shows:

Now you have the power to highlight the portion of song you want. I recommend that the song be no more than 30 seconds. Sending audio anymore than this length can cause your phone to reject the MP3. If you want to get technical keep your ringtone to about 85 kilobytes maximum. Generally speaking, you can edit out whatever you want, but for this demonstration I'm going to edit out the chorus to my song “Against the Rain”.

Play through the sang a good couple of times to get a rough Idea as to where the part is you want to edit is, this way your not fishing blind. Once you know the whereabouts of your chorus is, highlight the area with your mouse and play it again. Now you can fine tune the area to add more shave off what you want. Remember that this is 100% customizable so it's up to you. Once you have the portion you desire, copy and paste it to a new Audacity workspace. To do this, locate the Edit menu and select copy (CTRL + C). Now on the File menu, select New (CTRL + N). Finally, in the new workspace, on the Edit menu, select Paste (CTRL + P).

Awesome! There are only a few things before you're the talk of the town. Remember LAME? Now it's time to tell Audacity where to find the MP3 encoder and at the same time export the file. To accomplish this, find and click the "Export as MP3" task on the File Menu. You will then be prompted if you wish to find the LAME DLL file, click yes and navigate to the file you unzipped earlier. Now that you've spilled the beans to Audacity, your file is now being exported and is almost on its way to your phone.

You only need to send this file to your phone now. In whatever e-mail program or service you use, there is a function to allow the passage of attachments. Just send this file as an attachment to your phone via the address we found earlier, by sending a picture message to your e-mail address. Depending on how fast your computer is this could take anywhere from a few seconds or up to a couple of minutes to be sent to your phone, but rest assured, if your phone supports MP3 files you will get it.