ringtones

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on ringtones:

How to set custom vibration alerts on your iPhone

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custom vibration drums
Satisfy your inner drummer by creating custom vibration alerts.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Custom ringtones and text tones are great for letting your know who’s calling, or who just sent a message. But what about when your iPhone is sett to silent, and hidden in your pocket? All your alerts use the same vibration, so you have no idea if that buzz was a message from your awesome and hot significant other, or yet another eBay alert about those paperclip auctions you’re watching.

Did you know that you can set custom vibration alerts for each of your contacts? And that you can actually record your own vibration patterns and assign them to whoever you like? You can, and you’re going to love how easy it is.

iRingg sends YouTube ringtones to your iPhone wirelessly

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iRingg is like the Microsoft Word of ringtones.
Photo: Softorino

If you’re still living in the early-to-mid ’00s, then you may still be interested in personal ringtones for your iPhone. And if you are, there’s no easier way to take a piece of music from your iTunes library, or to rip it from YouTube or SoundCloud, than iRingg.

This app from Softorino lets you quickly create a ringtone and push it wirelessly to your iPhone.

How to turn any song into a ringtone with GarageBand for iOS

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custom ringtones itunes
This is a screenshot of the original iTunes, on an iPad.
Photo: Cult of Mac

There are very few iOS tasks that still require a Mac. One of those is getting your own ringtones onto your iPhone. You can buy them, but you can’t add a downloaded ringtone onto your iPhone without hooking up to iTunes. Or can you? GarageBand on iOS lets you save your own creations as ringtones, to be used immediately. Here’s how.

How to find your custom ringtones after iTunes dumped them

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custom ringtones itunes
This is a screenshot of the original iTunes, on an iPad.
Photo: Cult of Mac

The latest version of iTunes — 12.7 — removes the App Store. That’s bad news for folks who like to keep backups of old iOS apps around, but good news for people who have bloat and clutter. But the update also removes all your custom ringtones, so you can’t manage them from your Mac.

Don’t despair. You can still download purchased ringtones, and copy your own tones across from the Mac. It’s just not obvious how to do it any more.

Pianist remixes iconic iPhone ringtones into classical song

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Tony Ann is a master at piano remixes.
Tony Ann is a master at piano remixes.
Photo: Tony Ann

The iPhone’s classic marimba ringtone has grown a bit annoying after nine years of playing in pockets across the globe. We’ve seen the classic tone remixed a ton of different ways, but perhaps none are better than this classical remix cooked up by musician Tony Ann.

The pianist has recreated the most popular ringtones ever into one incredible classic arrangement that includes some little gems from other carriers and cellphone makers that you’ll recognize instantly.

Check it out:

Turn your favorite tunes into ringtones with quick iTunes tip

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With so many people in the world having iPhones with the same ringtones, hearing a ringer go off can be irritating and confusing. The iTunes Store sells ringtones, but they can become quite expensive if you like switching things up a lot.

In today’s video, we show you how to solve this annoying problem by creating your own free ringtones in iTunes. Just follow these simple steps to separate yourself from the crowd instantly.

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Cleartones Organic, The Least Annoying Ringtones In The World

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There can’t be much I hate more than a bad ringtone. I have one (because my phone is a Samsung and all of its tones are awful); my neighbor has one, which he takes forever to answer when his family call from overseas at like two in the morning every day; idiots on the bus and metro have them (usually some tinny-sounding “music” snippet of a record I never want to hear in full); and even my parents have them — not that anyone ever calls their cellphones, thank god.

In fact, there are only two things in the world of ringtones that make me optimistic. The first is that — with the slow death of Nokia — the horrible default Gran Vals tone (and its cheesily remixed derivatives) is also dying.

The second is Cleartones Organic, a set of 50 ringtones and 50 notifications which will calm you like a cool forest breeze.

Tones, A Full-Featured Ringtone Editor That Runs On The iPhone Itself

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Using Tones might actually be more fun than hearing the result.

 

Tones looks to be just about the coolest way to create custom ringtones for your iPhone that I have seen. Then again, I haven’t seen many as I’m not a thoughtless teenager who thinks that other people want to hear his crappy music every time a call comes in.

Better still, Tones puts iPhone ringtone editing just where it should be: on the iPhone itself.

Four Super Cool Things You Can Do With GarageBand for OS X [Feature]

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GarageBand '11 OS X

GarageBand for OS X changed the way us mere mortals create great music on their Macs. Included with all new Macs or available in the Mac App store for $15, it gives musicians from the brand new to the seasoned veteran a way to record all kinds of music, connecting real instruments, MIDI devices, and microphones to your Mac for easy music sessions. It also does some other cool things, which we’ll tell you about right now.

Create Ringtones And Other Alert Sounds Easily And Quickly With GarageBand [OS X Tips]

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Custom Ringtone in GarageBand

Ringtones, right? How can you be the coolest kid on the bus without your own custom ringtone? You can’t, that’s how.

With GarageBand ’11, it’s very simple to make one, and we’re here to show you how.

All you need is the latest copy of GarageBand, iTunes 7.5 or later, a Mac that runs OS X, and some music. Oh, and an iPhone, of course. You can use music that you create with Magic GarageBand, record yourself all fancy-like, or import an MP3 track to GarageBand to make your ringtone. Here’s how.

Sick Of Marimba? This Remix Is So Good It Could Be Used In An Apple Commercial

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The iPhone Marimba ringtone is iconic. It’s just a few notes played on an African xylophone, but somehow, it captures everything that is light and breezy about Apple’s platform.

The problem is, everyone uses it as a ringtone. Like Nokia’s overexposed ringtone before it, Marimba’s musical resonance has been oversaturated for most of us.

That’s why I really like the Marimba Take Two mix by Will Neaverson, embedded above. It takes the original Marimba and builds layers upon it, until it almost sounds like a Coldplay track.

As one of Reddit’s commenters note, it sounds so good, you can imagine Apple even using it in a commercial. That’s an ad I’d like to see. (Update: One of our readers made one!)

Source: Soundcloud
Via: Reddit

The Beatles Release 24 Songs As iPhone Ringtones

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A few weekends ago, I had some friends over, and we all got drunk and played Beatles Rock Band for a fun couple of hours. It was great. There really is something for everyone in the Beatles’ music catalogue.

One particularly funny moment came as I was singing “I Am The Walrus.” John Lennon has always claimed that the song is a blistering parody of caterwauling crooner Bob Dylan’s nonsense lyrics, but a friend of mine made an utterly bizarre case that the song is, instead, a subversive anthem in support of polysexual sodomy… an interesting interpretation, to say the least.

The key to the interpretation, he argued, is the chorus line. “Ooompah oompah! Stick it in your jumper. Everyone has one,” my friend quoted, his eyes bulging meaningfully. I found the whole exchange so funny that I immediately made myself an iPhone ringtone of the appropriate section of the song.

On a tangentially related note, The Fab Four has just released their first ever batch of iTunes ringtones. “I Am The Walrus” isn’t there, making my ringtone unique and signaling a conspiracy, but there are a ton of good songs available. Full list below.

Ringtone Making Apps Now Welcome On The App Store

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More and more, the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines is starting to seem like it might be a promise of the end of arbitrary app rejection. Following the surprise about course by Apple when it comes to allowing Google Voice apps on the App Store, it now appears that they’ve also rescinded their long-standing ban on App Store ringtone makers.

Pretty much since the App Store’s inception, applications that allowed users to make ringtones from the songs on their iPhone have been verboten. Exactly “why” has always been up for debate: although Apple did sell ringtones through iTunes, they clearly didn’t mind users rolling their own, as evidenced by GarageBand’s Export Ringtone feature. Whatever the reason, though, it was plenty hard to sneak a ringtone maker by Apple up until recently. Since the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, though, no less than five ringtone makers have gone live on iTunes… seemingly ending the arbitrary blacklisting.