18
I've got one (actually a group of 3 that I'll pull from) that I've started hiding in everything I work on.
A little over a year ago, a friend and coworker died in a motorcycle accident. He was the primary camera operator for our company, and I was able to find a few relatively clean recordings of him in the footage from one of our previous productions. I ...
10
Likely (and this may not be the answer you want to hear) you'll have to roll up your sleeves and build it. It's the hallmark of good BGz actually, building from the ground up. Finding some thick and dense air tones which create the right mood, a nice rumble, some HVAC tones and fluorescent buzzing, maybe OS alley drips if it's a wet scene, some OS tire ...
7
About ten years ago I had borrowed an unimpressive but functional Mini DV-camera which I used to record sounds (this was before my first real field-recorder). At one time I brought it with me just to get some nice sounds from a special place I found quite a bit from where I stayed for the moment.
The recording went well, and eventually I got home and began ...
6
First off, go read the jetstreaming blog for tons of insights. Given everything that Paul says there -
I'd rate the value of a library on three different scales:
1) ability to use out of context:
Tim prebble's contact mics library and his tortured piano library are just overflowing with sounds that beg to be sped up, slowed down, and otherwise ...
6
No. This would come under the heading of selling "derivatives," which most licenses specify that you may not do. If you want to sell sound effects, they have to be ones that you own the distribution rights to...from source to finish.
This doesn't preclude you from hiring someone to record or generate some source material for you, but it would have to be in ...
6
Mine is not one i use very often, I've used it (not always the same take) around 5 or 6 times, but i like knowing its around. And come to think of it, i've recorded in my first ever field recording session!
It was at a friends jewelry workshop, the sound of melting silver being cooled in warm sulfuric acid. It sounds pretty much like a volcanic spaceshuttle ...
5
My family has a black powder cannon that was custom built for my Dad many years ago. It's about 4 feet long and has a barrel nearly 6 inches across. Every Fourth of July (or anytime he feels like it, really) we load it up with packs of powder, newspaper, and a nice round hunk of granite from the beach and let it rip. It has a tremendous THUD and signature ...
5
I have a set of 4 body falls I recorded a few years ago that I end up using all the time. They are a mixture of a few different elements but the final result is magic. They work for falls on wood, cement or dirt. They have this great thud that is all body and really translates pain to the listener. Between the four falls I have used them maybe 50 times ...
5
Here's my process for creating loopable sound files:
Select a reasonable amount of audio from the tail end of the file ("reasonable" is variable and entirely dependent on the content of what you're working with), cut it off and paste it onto the front of the file. You'll need to make a crossfade from the tail end of the region you just cut onto the head of ...
3
I've always believed that if you are going to process a borrowed source to the extent of being unrecognizable, why not just create it originally? The purpose of borrowing, sampling a source would be to utilize a characteristic of the source. If it's truly processed past that point then why did you use it?
If you can only get the result desired by using the ...
3
I agree with Chuck.
A single library bundle, or perhaps 10, won't have much impact. You'll need to bulk up your library, and add to it over time. When your library grows, you'll see it take off.
A story from my own experience: I began selling individual downloads about 6 years ago. I had 2,500 sounds. I placed them on a handful of websites. They did ...
3
500 to 1000 downloads of a single sound library? No, you're probably not going to get that. 50 to 100 downloads maybe, and it would probably take you a year to get close to that number. 10 to 20 downloads of a library is realistic. I'm not trying to be negative, just being honest. The market is just not that big.
Now, if you're offering thousands of ...
3
this is a pretty good starting point for you: http://www.jetstreaming.org/2012/09/05/an-introduction-to-sound-effects-mastering/
Once you have read that article explore the rest of the jetstreaming blog, as a lot of it will be useful info for what you are tackling.
3
Before getting into the business I read a lot about the pride of using your own sounds. But I think that was comments by people with big budgets and years of experience. Many of the projects I've worked on has a limited budget and limited time.
I guess by stock you don't actually mean that as in Audiojungle, Pond5 and Audiomicro but more Sound Ideas, ...
3
I'd prefer to have it just chopped into sections 4-5 minutes long and have them labeled a,b,c,d,e etc. It makes it easy to import a short section when you only need 30 seconds of ambience but then you can piece them together if you need long sections.
2
Actually, these days it's often hearing too much.
Sometimes it seems that current sound design follows the idea of 'everything must make a sound', even if in reality it really doesn't make a sound. For example, the other day I was watching an action film, one of the current big franchises. The main character unplugged a security camera, like a little 12v ...
2
If your own sound works better than a library sound, then use it. If the library sound works better than your sound, then use it.
What matters is the whole composition and how it works, not that much individual sounds.
I would still try to avoid using commonly used library sounds as very exposed sounds in the mix or relying too much on library sounds "as ...
2
Hi Melissa,
Rene has covered the bulk of it (thanks for the mention, Rene!). If you produce a library with his three tips, you can't go wrong.
There's a few other things I'd add to supplement his post:
Distinctiveness: I find these categories do well: cars, guns,
multimedia (whooshes, buttons),
materials (water, wood, ice, fire),
weather (rain, waves, ...
2
Here is another perspective amongst some great posts already made. About 14 years ago I released an SFX library which was sold by all the usual suspects. It became very popular and sold well. A few years down the road one of the companies who was selling it released a library in the same genre. While working at my current and long-time gig I was auditioning ...
2
I made I have a few, but one that gets used pretty frequently at the moment is a recording of a 12" speaker being fed a 5Hz square wave with a 100 watt amplifier. The mechanics of the speaker cone flapping all over the place and the higher sounds that start to creep in over time give me a great "breakup" layer to lots of different things I have to build. I ...
2
Sound Dogs might be your best bet: http://sounddogs.com/
If you want a lot of door sounds, you could check out Sound Ideas door library: http://sound-ideas.com/9000.html
2
I had the same problem a few years ago, so I made Excel table for it manually from Juicer searcher, you can download it here - hope it'll help:
http://liquidblasted.net/other/juicy_sound_tracklist_4.zip
UPD: Here is a link to all tracklists for Digital Juice I, II, III and IV volumes:
http://liquidblasted.net/other/digital_juice_tracklists.zip
2
I'm certain it's a scam, and advise running the other direction immediately:
The website name alone is very suspect
"blog" posts on his site about his gear and DSLR shooting, are just a series of copy-pasted technical data with no opinionated and articulated details (e.g. not "taking the talk")
Zach King has no IMDb listing (especially so with how much ...
1
I saw on your site that sounds are recorded at 44.1kHz 16 bits, most other libraries are in 96kHz 24 Bits... It's a huge difference when you are doing sound design, especially when you use pitch and time stretch effects.
1
Laura, let me tell you why your library actually defeats its purpose.
First of all, price. Do you know how many boutique sound effects libraries I can get for $1500? And even if I can't get 56k sound effects, I can get exactly what I need, without having to make a hole in my budget.
Most of the times, a freelancer such as myself will also have several ...
1
Just to add to the great comments already here.
@Shaun is indeed right about selling derivatives. It's not allowed, except in very special circumstances.
As @minion mentioned, I wrote about the "grey area" and that "nothing is created in a vacuum." That's mentioned in International law mostly because, if it wasn't, you could be sued for having ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
