An alert signal of a communication device (1), such as the ring signal of a mobile phone, comprises a set of musical samples that are played by the communication device in sequence. The sequence may be randomly generated, either in response to the event causing the alert or in a set up phase. Alternatively, the user of the device can create a tune to be used as the alert signal by creating a sequence of samples. The user selects samples from a list of samples to create the sequence of samples as individual samples may appear more than once in the tune.