What You Need

- A Mac with a Combo Drive or Super Drive
- Mac OS 10.3.9 or later
- iTunes (Free)
- At least one blank CD (About $5)

iTunes is one of Apple's most exciting and practical applications. It allows you to collect and catalog thousands of songs, television shows, podcasts, and movies - and its interface is simple enough for everyone to understand. But don't let the sleek and shiny appearance fool you: iTunes is a powerful piece of software that is capable of much more.

Burning your own music CDs with iTunes is fun, fast and free. It's also one of iTunes' best features! By taking songs stored on your Mac and arranging them in a playlist, you can create custom CDs for friends, family, and yourself. We'll show you how.

Prepping iTunes

Before you start, you should know about an important iTunes option called Sound Check. Sound Check automatically levels out the volume of every song on your CD to ensure you're not "blown out" by songs that were recorded at a higher volume than others. Be sure to enable this if you want all the songs on the CD to play at the same volume.

Here's how:

1. Open the iTunes application. (It's probably on your Dock, but if it isn't, look for it in your Applications folder.)
   
   
2. From the iTunes menu, select Preferences. Select Advanced.
   
   
3. Make sure Disc Format is set to Audio CD. Also make sure the Use Sound Check box is selected.
   
   



4. Click OK.

Now it's time to create a playlist!

Creating a Playlist

If you're like us, you have several thousand songs in your iTunes library. Obviously, you can't fit all of those songs on one CD. To tell iTunes which songs you want on your CD, you're going to have to create a playlist - a special list of songs.

Here's how:

1. From the File menu, select New Playlist.
   
   
2. A new playlist will be added to left-hand sidebar of iTunes. All new playlists are named "untitled playlist" by default, but you can change this by clicking twice, slowly, on the new playlist and typing in a new name.
   
   



3. In the left-hand sidebar, click Music to load your iTunes music library.
   
   
4. Drag the songs you'd like on your CD from your music library onto your new playlist.
   
   



5. Keep adding songs to your playlist. Most CDs allow you to add about 77 minutes of music, although this varies between different types of CDs. To tell how much music is in your playlist, click on the playlist and check the bottom of the iTunes screen.
   
   

Feel free to rearrange the songs in your playlist. Drag and drop songs to reposition them in your list. Remember: your CD will play tracks in the order they appear in your playlist.

Don't worry about adding too much music. Later, when you try to burn your CD, iTunes will let you know if you've put one too many songs in your playlist. If that happens, you'll have to remove songs from your playlist by selecting them and pressing the Delete key. (Note that this only removes the songs from your playlist, not your library.)

It's Go Time!

Now that we've assembled our songs into a playlist, we're ready to burn our music CD! Here's how:

1. Select your playlist.
   
   
2. In the lower right-hand corner of the iTunes window, click the Burn Disc button.
   
   



3. iTunes will prompt you to enter a blank CD. Put one in your Mac's CD drive.
   
   



4. iTunes will burn the CD. Be patient!
   
   



5. You'll know iTunes has finished when your new CD appears under Devices.
   
   

You're all done! Now you can eject the CD and enjoy your music on any CD player.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Matthew Cone is a technical writer living and working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his free time, he does the desert rat thing and hikes and road bikes around the Southwest. The rest of the time, he studies straw-bale houses, reads Anarchist philosophy, and pretends to not be working. You can email him at: matt@macinstruct.com