Freesound Forums

I saw some issues in regards to uploading scores / soundscapes that contain material from commercial sound libraries. In this post.

AlienXXX wrote:
The idea is that if you make sounds to use in the piece, you must make those available at freesound for others to use in the future.
I believe Symphonic Orchestra is a sample library (with a VST sample player).
You can't upload library sounds to freesound (copyright violation). So you can't use this VST instrument.
Sorry.

If doing orchestrals, you can consider to use Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra which is a creative commons-licensed orchestral sample library. Its a pretty nice free library.

You can find the product at: http://sso.mattiaswestlund.net/

Bliss wrote:
If doing orchestrals, you can consider to use Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra which is a creative commons-licensed orchestral sample library. Its a pretty nice free library.

You can find the product at: http://sso.mattiaswestlund.net/

AWESONE !
Respect and thanks!
I am downloading this.

That quite is a nice piece AlienXXX. love the transitions you got going on there!

Bliss wrote:
That quite is a nice piece AlienXXX. love the transitions you got going on there!

i meant http://soundcloud.com/alienxxx/dare-6-a-dark-dark-place

What a great contribution you've made Bliss. Couldn't i persuade you to put it on soundcloud? It's so nice to be able to comment on it, both timed comments and in general

I think that's why we decided to upload the dares to soundcloud. Also it's nice to have all dares the same place.

(I don't want to be an ass about it though )

Kyster wrote:
What a great contribution you've made Bliss. Couldn't i persuade you to put it on soundcloud? It's so nice to be able to comment on it, both timed comments and in general

I think that's why we decided to upload the dares to soundcloud. Also it's nice to have all dares the same place.

(I don't want to be an ass about it though )

Thank you Kyster for listening and kudo's. I have posted the war drums version on sound cloud.
http://soundcloud.com/tcpx/dare16-the-visit-war-drums

Bliss wrote:

Thank you Kyster for listening and kudo's. I have posted the war drums version on sound cloud.
http://soundcloud.com/tcpx/dare16-the-visit-war-drums

Thanks Bliss. It just makes it so much easier to manage what tracks i've been listening to

Bliss wrote:

Bliss wrote:
That quite is a nice piece AlienXXX. love the transitions you got going on there!

i meant http://soundcloud.com/alienxxx/dare-6-a-dark-dark-place

That was 'one I made earlier' LOL. For an earlier dare.
Just threw that in there for inspiration.
Still working on my dare entry for this month.

Glad you like it

I wanna applaud carmsie for the choice of samples. His composition is marvelous given his equipment, but he has been really successful in getting the samples right. Kudos!

afleetingspeck wrote:
I wanna applaud carmsie for the choice of samples. His composition is marvelous given his equipment, but he has been really successful in getting the samples right. Kudos!

Awww, thanks for the feedback afleetingspec. You're right, it was time consuming but i am v grateful all those sounds were available for use. I had noooo idea what i was doing as this is all new to me, including the freebie software. so my method was "fiddle with lots of buttons and sliders see what happens" haha! it was great to play around with it all and to create. one tiny correction ... I'm a girl

carmsie wrote:
Awww, thanks for the feedback afleetingspec
...
one tiny correction ... I'm a girl

Here are the sample credits (also found under the original post):
12776, 12777, 12778, 12779, 12780, 12781 - All EP sounds from Jovica (C1 through C6), sampled in a sampler.

42260 - Cello G4 Note from Corsica, used as pizzicato strings; also used as the bass.

12930, 12931, 12942 - Kalimba samples from schluppipuppie

37999 - Cello Symphonic from ERH (used as a regular cello)

17599 - Cello Work (the suspense cello) from Noid
_______________________________________________________________

I use reason extensively for most of my musical ventures. So quite regularly my choice of samples is, often subconsciously, dependent on the tools available within reason. That's how I selected the samples above for this piece.

I had recently uploaded a little haunting melody for a sample request, and as far as spooky stuff goes, if you compare my original entry for the dare and that particular sample, I am quite limited in terms of spooky creativity.

And that thought of being stuck was excellent because I remembered this one time when James Bernard (I believe a person who works with the Reason guys) said that oftentimes limiting the self makes you experiment and learn more.

That's what I went with. I chose fewer instrument sounds - piano, cello, pizzicato, bass and kalimba, and decided not to add rhythm to it (actually, I will be posting the same entry with a rhythm section to it, because that was my original take on this piece). But I wanted to get out of that habit of adding percussion every single time.

The arrangement itself came in two parts; initially I was going to collaborate with Head-Phaze, so I sent him a demo (up until the part the first suspense cello ends). He said he wanted to sculpt more of a soundscape than a musical piece, and I was fine with that, but none of us got the time to start with any ideas.

Come October 25, I didn't have any soundscape/musical piece with me, but I wanted to enter the dare. So I picked up my demo, and finished the latter half. For some reason I thought the due date was October 25th, so I submitted it right as I finished it.

About the actual usage of samples:
1) Sampled EP sounds in NN-XT in reason (played through the on-screen keyboard - that was one of the joyful limiting factors).
2) Sampled the G4 Cello note and duplicated the NN-XT to use one as bass and the other as high pizzicatos.
3) Sampled ERH's Cello and used it as a sort of a pseudo-double bass (for sustain notes).
4) Loaded the Kalimba sounds in redrum and programmed a pattern; there were two patterns. One for the first half of the song and one for the second half.
5) Finally, used the suspense cello work at various instances.
6) FX - mostly EQ; widening (stereo) of a couple sounds; reverb and compression used variably.

Hi afleetingspeck

two important points you make:

Use of percussion - I too feel lost if I have no percussion in a piece. It blurrs my sense of time/tempo!
And, whenever I have created a piece that does not contain percussion... it has been more of a sound-scene, such as my submission for Dare-16.
Being able to work without percussion is something I too want to develop.
I recommend learning from the masters - Listen to ThatJeffCarter's pieces! That should give you some good ideas of how a great piece can be made with no percussion/rhythmic elements.

The other point about limmiting one-self to improve creativity.
Doesn't always work, but it often does.
Here is another take on that same concept: start simple. Build a simple idea of what you want to do.
Once you know where you are heading, more samples / instruments / effects can be brought in to reinforce that idea.
For example. You want to create an aggressive piece. You have a great grungy bass sample from Freesound, you add some big noisy industrial percussion sounds. You get the bassline and rhythm going...
Now, add some guitar samples...
You realize that the guitar is nowhere aggressive enough to sit well in that mix. You bring out a couple of distortion effects and after a bit of experimenting and maybe some EQ, you got the guitar to fit in nicely. - You are on a good path to finish a great track.
If, however, you started by experimenting (aimlessly) with distortion effects on those guitar samples to get "the right tone", you could well be there forever!... and never finish any tune at all!
But when the effect is brought in with a clear purpose, it is easy (or easier) to filter out what works and what doesn't.

Ehh I fail xD I am trying to get something in before the deadline just for fun (hopefully I wont lose power because of the storm that would suck...) I was wondering do you need to have the actual link to the sound effects or is the file name just as good?

11linda wrote:
Ehh I fail xD I am trying to get something in before the deadline just for fun (hopefully I wont lose power because of the storm that would suck...) I was wondering do you need to have the actual link to the sound effects or is the file name just as good?

If you haven't already uploaded the sounds, I think the file names would do just fine for the time being (and then you can edit your post to reference the actual links).
The most preferred way (at least as far as I am concerned) is to put the sample number of the sound because that's a unique and non-changing identifier for all sounds on freesound.
Links would work great, but I know it is sometimes cumbersome to go back and find all your sounds (point to note for many: it helps to be organized right from the outset; I guess my research teacher was right about that bibliography thing - research is so much easier if you are organized from the beginning -- but I digress).

So yes, I think putting the sample number _at the minimum_ would be great. File name, links are secondary to me as long as "freesound" as the source is credited.

AlienXXX wrote:
If, however, you started by experimenting (aimlessly) with distortion effects on those guitar samples to get "the right tone", you could well be there forever!... and never finish any tune at all!
But when the effect is brought in with a clear purpose, it is easy (or easier) to filter out what works and what doesn't.

I sincerely and wholeheartedly agree with this, except that it's very hard to have a clear purpose in mind for a beginner. If there is one thing these dares have definitely done, it is help me have a "focus" towards which I am working. If the focus is not from the beginning, I usually know what I want to do by the time I have messed around with a couple sounds. That's part of the reason why I keep coming back to the dares - it allows me a "different," and more structured and logical way of going about things.

AlienXXX wrote:

Being able to work without percussion is something I too want to develop.
I recommend learning from the masters - Listen to ThatJeffCarter's pieces! That should give you some good ideas of how a great piece can be made with no percussion/rhythmic elements.

Master? whoa!

The funny thing is... my percussion-less piece for the halloween dare BEGAN as a percussion loop:

http://www.freesound.org/people/pulse00/sounds/53404/

afleetingspeck wrote:
I sincerely and wholeheartedly agree with this, except that it's very hard to have a clear purpose in mind for a beginner.

Ahhhh.... Yes. Practice you must, Padwan!

Jokes aside I am not saying it is easy. And I don't always do it myself (I wish!). But I can clearly see the difference between the times when I did and when I did not.
There is also no magic button in your brains labelled "press this to be organized and creative". As with many things creative, sometimes you are inspired and sometimes you are not.

In the context of the dares, it is easier to do this in some more than others: a clear theme or subject might help you focus. If the dare is instead based on me throwing 10 random samples at you, it will force you to experiment and, in a way, have the opposite effect...

The 'random sounds' dares actually have a different purpose: to show you that great things can be made out of sounds you would normally discard.... But now it is me who is digressing...

Hopefully it is amusing as well as a chance to better our skills and learn from others. That is the purpose

thatjeffcarter wrote:
The funny thing is... my percussion-less piece for the halloween dare BEGAN as a percussion loop:

http://www.freesound.org/people/pulse00/sounds/53404/

Funny indeed !!!

Because of the a large storm last night I was unable to sleep, so I decided to try to animate a bit of my entry, figured I would sure it =P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9wCQAgwd30

Also, I wanted to thanks AlienXXX for messaging me to do a few voice samples for him because if he hadn't I wouldn't of known about the dares, I have been getting sounds from this site for months and never really checked out the forums so I had no clue about the community here!

I know that has little to do with the competition itself but just wanted to say I am happy to be apart!

There's something a user last year said in one of the dare discussion threads (for dare 8 ):

ericksommers wrote:
Hey, Triple-Alien-san:

Thanks for the feedback, man; it really helped me analyze not just this piece in particular but some of the ways I work on music in general.

As to the specifics, I can only suggest the bumpiness you found was an artifact of the pitching effect interacting in some strange way with the waveform. Also: NICE CATCH. After a tortuous bit of editing I killed it and you are right; it sounds noticeably better. Can I send you all my mixes?

And I agree totally, in retrospect, about that abrupt change. So I re-did that, too … seriously, you wanna produce my next album? Great suggestions!

This case that made me think "How did I convince myself that was good enough?" Been ciphering about it for a couple days now and as the conclusion is "laziness," I will change a few things around in my 'process' because of your elegant criticisms. Thanks a million.

THIS DARE WAS AWESOME. When's the next one?

I hope this dare with so many entries (I think this has been one of the most successful dares ever, here at freesound), gives us all a chance at self-reflection.
The most important point I see stated above is: "How did I convince myself that was good enough?"

Voting is fun (or not), but critiques are definitely the thing that any of us darers (or the observers) can benefit from out of this whole concept of dares.

I will start posting my critiques soon, and I hope many of you will, too!