The N2FNH Sound Effects Library: Part 2 - Sounds from the Internet!

No matter how many sound effects libraries you have in your possession, there will always be some sound or noise that you need that you do not have on a storage disc, a magnetic tape or a non-volatile memory card. This leaves you with two options: produce the effect yourself (something which I will detail further in the next installment) or you can turn to the Internet.

You can view the Internet as an endless planetary ocean of digital detritus (a five dollar word - used in crossword puzzles and by science fiction writers everywhere) text, sounds, images, videos, all reduced to their digitally diatomic lowest common denominator, liberally sprinkled across an equally endless coral reef of web pages, each page covering yet another equally endless array of subjects, topics,thoughts, ideas and opinions.

Pursuant to this metaphor, you should be able to find just any sound or noise you may want, but of course, it's not always so easy. Go to Google and insert an argument such as SOUND EFFECTS AUDIO CLIP or SOUND EFFECTS WAV and you soon discover that SOUND or SOUND EFFECTS more often than not refers to voice clips from popular motion pictures and television shows. If this is what you were looking for to begin with, then you're all set. Otherwise you may need to spend a few extra minutes refining your search strategy and then trolling around for just the right source.

There are a number of sound effects web page categories:

1) Non-commercial or Commercial List Sites - A list of sound effects websites.
Akin to an online 411 directory assistance. An individual or group has scrutinized the Internet. The result is a list of site recommendations: sometimes nothing more than a wholesale rundown, sometimes select personal choices.

2) Non-Commercial Websites - Free audio file downloads:
An individual or non-profit group harvests public domain audio content from other Internet sources or creates custom in-house or in-the-field recordings and posts the product for royalty-free access via a web page or an FTP site. Find Sounds is a good example of a non-commercial website which offers no cost, good quality content. Wave Surfer offers an online site navigation
file directory for free sounds by category. They even offer a free CD ROM of movie clips and effects. The downside is that many such websites provide recordings where the fidelity is abysmal. You may find exactly what you need: only to discover that the playback is has been brutally clipped or there is a noise level or an alien interference pattern that is difficult or impossible to remove.

I once came across a clip of MOTHER computer sounds from the motion picture "Alien" but the recording contained a wide band noise artifact which could not be removed.

3) Commercial Websites - Free audio file downloads:
A business in the business of selling sound effects CDs or sound effects hard drives offers preselected free audio files as an enticement to purchase a much larger package. Companies like The Hollywood Edge and SoundDogs provide free MP3 downloads. In some cases,these may be down sampled to 11 KHz/8 Bit and lower and so will be of lesser quality but with a decent
digital audio editor, the file can reverse engineered for improved fidelity. There is at least one truly obnoxious, virtually parasitic website. Try placing a search argument such as WAR OF THE WORLDS+SOUND EFFECTS into Google and invariably you will find reference to Audiosparx. Audiosparx has found a way to take your search entries and back link them to their web page. Click the link and there will be little at Audiosparx that relates to your search. They want you to purchase their custom produced libraries.

4) Pirated Sound Effects Libraries - Free...but risky!
It would appear that there are a number of website locations dedicated to the idea that media should be free. Free of purchase cost, free of copyright royalty, free of copyright restriction. In the world of multi-media, bootleg sound effects records seems laughable, but it is indeed serious business to legitimate purveyors like Sound Ideas who ask customers in their newsletter
to report cases of piracy with a promise to prosecute the offender. Beyond the legal risks, such sites may be focal points for unseen digital predators: the viruses, the worms and the programmers who breed them.

5) eBAY- The Island of Misfit Toys!
It is here on eBAY where you can bid or BUY NOW on millions of records that somebody else no longer wants. I was able to secure a copy of Sound Ideas Cartoon Express for less than a fourth of the manufacturers original suggested retail price: likewise the same with Sound Ideas The Sounds of War. Unlike pirated copies, they were not free. They were cheap, but not they were not free. In my next installment: ROLLING YOUR OWN!

What follows is an address list of just a few vendors and sound effects fanboys. Some may offer additional outbound links to even more locations:

http://www.bargus.org/files/sounds/

http://www.coppoletta.net/ctastuff/ctasounds.htm

http://www.findsounds.com/types.html

http://www.freeaudioclips.com/

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/254761

http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/pir/PIRsfx.shtml

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/sound-effects.html

http://www.sdrm.org/sounds/

http://www.sounddogs.com/htm/soundeffects.htm

http://www.stdimension.org/MediaLib/medialibe.htm

http://www.trainweb.org/reynolds/nyc98snd.html

http://www.wavsurfer.com/

The N2FNH Sound Effects Library! Part 1: The Commercially Available Sounds!

WHENIWASAKID! From about the age of eight and on through my late teens, my one favorite pre-computer age geek thing to do was record sounds off the television with my trusty reel-to-reel tape machine. And there were several of those, each of which I used and used until they could be used no more. Among the recorders: a Wards Airline three inch reel-to-reel portable with a coily cord microphone, a Mercury five inch portable job, a fifteen pound WebCor seven inch vacuum tube machine, my father's equally tube driven Roberts and another Wards Airline Model Number GEN3659A. This last one I know the model number because I won one of those on eBAY, although at the moment that tape recorder is on display in a bedroom closet. My best guess is that I got the idea of making sound recordings from watching a 1955 episode of The Adventures of Superman. It was the story of "The Talking Clue"!

"Ray Henderson (Richard Shakelton), son of police inspector Bill Henderson (Roberty Shayne), has been using his tape recorder to "collect" weird sounds. Unfortunately, Ray is hoodwinked into selling a tape containing the sound of tumblers on a safe to gangster Muscles McGurk (Billy Nelson). When McGurk uses the recorded information to steal evidence against him in an upcoming investigation, Ray is implicated in the crime--and Henderson may be forced to
arrest his own son. If there was ever a job for Superman (George Reeves), this is it!"
Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sitting here right next to me stuffed inside the drawers of a heavy 50's vintage office desk constructed of heavy pine are boxes of audio compact discs and rows of SanDisk and Sony digital memory flash cards. Down the hall in a side closet are additional volumes vertically stacked, all housing ten inch reels of magnetic tape. Each archive is host to a mini-library of sound effects which I have amassed for the past thirty years. This is what I may occasionally refer to as my N2FNH Sound Effects Library.

The aggregate inventory consists of recordings compiled from three principal sources:


1) Commercially available sound effects.


2) WAV and MP3 files downloaded from the Internet.


3) Sounds designed and home brewed in house or recorded in the field.

Sound effects published on both audio and data compact discs can be purchased by anyone and there are many purveyors of this product. The two major players are Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge. Both companies offer a bewildering array of effects, detailing just about any conceivable category. It should be noted that these libraries tend to be expensive but I have discovered that there is quite an Internet fraternity of sounds effects aficionados and fanboys along with their affiliated forums.


Here is what I bought with a ten second critique for each. From Sound Ideas,

1) The Hanna Barbera Sound FX Library
Five discs of almost all the best animation effects ever. I say "almost" because there were notable absences.

2) The Sound Effects of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends:
To truly appreciate this three disc set, you have to be closely in tune with what you have heard in the Jay Ward classics. Many of these effects were also present in UPA films. Again, some notable MIAs.

3) The Warner Brothers Sound Effects Library:
The big disappointment! Most are Foley sounds! Not on the list: the Road Runner's rocket jet sound and the Tazmanian Devil's wind up.

4) The Universal Pictures Sound Effects Library: A boatload of classic movie western effects. Every pistol, every rifle and every screaming PTWAAANG! you can imagine!

Missing: the original Frankenstein Thunder, in some circles identified as Castle Thunder, although various versions show on both the Hanna Barbera and 20th Century Fox sets.

From the Hollywood Edge,

1) CartoonTrax:
These are mostly unpublicized vintage recordings from Walt Disney Productions. There are quite a few unexpected gems clearly linked to Disney, along with many other unfamiliar sounds.

I have two additional libraries of note.

1) The Hanna-Barbera Library of Sounds:
An out-of-print two compact disc set version of an equally out-of-print eight vinyl disc set offered thirty years ago exclusively to broadcast radio and television stations. Unfortunately, these recordings are low quality, less common and mostly animal noises. With a digital editor though, these can be nicely cleaned. Some of the effects at large from the newer package
appear in this archive.

2) The O'Connor Crazies:
Still available for purchase! A comparatively low quality compact disc of Hanna-Barbera sound effects lifted from the Hanna Barbera Library of Sound and from a much earlier almost impossible to find vinyl offering from the late 1960's: The Hanna Barbera's Drop-Ins. Much cheaper now than when I bought it. Again, some of the sounds not in the inventory of the Sound
Ideas offering can be found on this recording.

So if you're a fanboy and I can only guess that this might be what I am then, like the Pokemon, you gotta catch them all. What follows is a bit of text on commercially available animation music that I lifted from myself from a forum dedicated to film and television animation.
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There have been a number of compact discs produced in the last few years which have focused on the music of film and television animation. Here are just a few.

1) Hanna Barbera Classics - Volume 1
Rhino Records
Contains main titles, sub-titles and underscores from many first generation animation efforts such as Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear,Quick Draw McGraw, Magilla Gorilla and more. Many of the earlier recordings were sourced from the Capital Records Production Music Library. There is even one track which was also used as the underscore for My Three Sons. There was supposed to a volume 2 but I never acquired the disc.

2) The Flintstones - Modern Stone Age Melodies

Rhino Records
Here, all the vocals that were heard though out the lifetime of this program. While the vocals are great to hear, even better are the underscores and music cues that are sandwiched in between those selections. Included in the clear is the classic laughing music cue that was used anytime a big joke needed audio support. All the songs and music beds composed by Hoyt Curtain.

3) The Carl Stalling Project - Music from Warner Brothers Cartoons. 1936-1958
Warner Brothers Records
Carl Stalling was perhaps the best known and most creative music composer and director at Warner Brothers during their Golden Age. A combination of select music cues and full length music and sound effects features makes this disc a must have. There is even a clip of the Yada Yada sound in the clear at the end of one of the tracks - an easy lift to add to your own
library!

4) Carl Stalling - Volume 2. 1939-1957
Warner Brothers Records
More fantastic Carl Stalling Music, again a combination of of individual music cues and full length track minus voices.

5) That's All Folks! Cartoon Songs from Merrie Melodies & Looney Tunes.
Rhino/Warner Brothers Records
This is a two disc set including full length features such as What's Opera Doc? and Three Little Bops and a massive 100 page booklet detailing behind the scenes activities at Warner Brothers way back when.

6) Warner Brothers Presents Bugs Bunny on Broadway
Warner Brothers Records
This album features newly recorded renditions of classic cartoon music by the Warner Brothers Symphony Orchestra but there are also some original audio segments on the disc as well.

7) The Best of WB Sound FX - CRASH! BANG! BOOM!
Kid Rhino/Warner Brothers Records
Some music, a lot of sounds from the commercial Warner Brothers Sound Effects Library for use at parties, on videos, computers and answering machines.

8) Toon Tunes
Kid Rhino
A compilation of television animation themes including the best Scholastic Rock song - Conjunction Junction

9) Music for TV Dinners - the 1950's
Scamp Records.
It is here on this disc where you will find a number of recordings directly associated with Ren and Stimpy, including Happy Go Lively - Laurie Johnson, Workaday World - Jack Beaver, Holiday Playtime - King Palmer and Stop Gap -Wilfred Burns (I believe this last one was used for a number of years on Bob Barker's Truth or Consequences). Many of these selections were sourced from KPM and Associated Production Music. Actually, when you think about it, it's amazing just how much old sound escaped the studio vaults and landed in our own record collections!