Ask Abbie; How Do I Get Sound Effects for My Songs?
I have a home studio and need sound effects for songs, commercials, short films. Most of the sites I’ve found are limited or too expensive. Can you help?
Abbie’s Reply:
Over the years I have purchased CD’s from EBay that have license-free sounds. It doesn’t take long to build a great library from a few of these CD’s. When I have a need for something very specific, I use a site called Freesound. Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Unfortunately, that removes the simplicity of just finding a sample and adding it to your project.
Freesound has a huge collaborative database of audio samples easily searchable by keyword. The samples can be remixed to make new, derivative works in the form of music or soundtracks. Their sound extensions and sample resolutions are wide in format and extensive. Many of these go beyond the standard .wav or .jpeg extensions and are designed for many high-end video and audio applications.
I mentioned Creative Commons. To visit their site is overwhelming. In a nutshell: Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but they are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee.
Here are three Creative Commons links that explain their licensing in a very simplistic way: Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication; Attribution; Attribution-Non Commercial;
Unless you want to construct your own library, I suggest you get a better understanding of the Creative Commons licensing. Although sounds are often hijacked without thought or remorse, we, as engineers and artists, want to respect the hard work that others have dedicated to create such a library.
Good Luck and God Bless!
