Why Name This Post?

Sure, you could drop a couple thousand dollars on recording equipment and then travel around North America looking for field recordings like Amon Tobin did for his latest album, The Foley Room. But the rest of us are probably a bit too budget-challenged for all that.

For musicians looking for noises lifted from the real world, the world wide web can be a great resource. The three sites that I’ve found most useful so far are Freesound, SoundSnap, and FindSounds.

The first two use only Creative Commons licensed sounds and tag all of their samples for easy browsing. All employ high quality sounds, and can be downloaded in a variety of sound files. (If you run into a sound file you’re not sure how to use, like .ogg or .aiff, click here for file converters. You wont need to download any software.)

So, if you’re bored of hearing a setup that consists of a lead guitar, bass guitar, and drummer, work something out and flip it Musique Concrète style. With these sites, you can dig up sounds ranging from the audio from a factory floor to the rattle of a spray can to the purr of a tiger.

For a recent example of someone taking this idea as far as you could, check my post on Coldcut’s "Timber".