Freesound Forums

If anyone has interacted with many different websites as I have you may have noticed that each site has it's own personality created by the mods and the users. For instance CCMixter was weird about me uploading songs full of freesound samples and turned me off to that site altogether. Even though I was clearly attributing things from here and using more freesounds than most of the other stuff. They said I was "dumping my back catalog" even though I finish as many as a couple songs a week when on a roll and avoiding real life. Strange.

Even here an evolution over time has occured. I was discouraged from uploading a guitar solo, split into phrases long, long ago. I have always kept that in the back of my head when choosing what to upload here and as a consequence there are about 5 fulls days worth of individual instrument tracks of all kinds that never got uploaded here. Today I can look and find full compositions of various complexity and think, "that's weird, in 2005 that would not have made it past a moderator". I have since uploaded long, albeit simple, monophonic musical phrases made from synthesizer software... one might ask "what is the difference between a software program calcuating frequency and pitch and my brain doing so on a fret board?". This is just an observation, not a critique. In fact as far as moderation and structure of a website goes, this is by far the best one I have ever used and the only one I have kept using aside from the archive.

I originally started posting my music at ourmedia and ran into someone censoring my comments on political grounds. I forget what it was but something sarcastic I said that directly mimicked someone's else's ridicules comment was edited by someone who obviously agreed with the idiotic subject of my satire. I think it was about censorship in the first place ironically. Anyway, the site went down the drain when all the dissenters eventually left. They hosted everything at archive.org anyway so I figured I would cut out the middle man and started using them exclusively.

Archive.org is a vast treasure of things from old wax cylinders (I should upload them all here! not) and things like the one laptop for every child (except mine?) project (which I also read about being uploaded here as well?). It has public domain and CC movies, music, books and software. It's really an awesome resource but the reviewers there are some of the most brutally rude and ungrateful people in the world. I have uploaded an estimated 140 hours plus of free music there and have gotten everthing from insults to death threats in reviews and forum posts. Crazy huh?

Take a look at a forum like KVR and see what the response is when someone asks for the worst free VST's (I was looking to streamline the hundreds I fooleshly loaded one after another because they were free and came across a post on their forums). They jump all over anyone who trashes someone who makes free plugins, almost to a fault where folks are afraid to tell someone who only wants one subtractic analog synth emulator instead of 15. I found it refreshing on one hand that people had the decency not to attack someone who spent hours on something for free while on the other hand I felt a little disapointed that honest criticism would take a back seat to courtesy.
I eventually sat down and went through my ridiculous collection myself and made notes on which ones to delete. It took me 7 hours for instruments and I still have to do the effects... arghh. I will probably never even get to use them all and I make so much music it's retarded. I do strongly recomend Bram's anachoic chamber plugin though, it's pristine and so real it's scary.

It just goes to show how different atmosphere's can be from one place to the next and is a remarkable observation on humanity. I hope whomever digs us up and studies us appreciates it, I don't think we do.

Anyway, thanks to all those who help keep this place running, I only wish my financial situation was not so drastically fubar so I could donate again. Oh and to you know who, "BOOYAH!".

Hi NoiseCollector - cool, thanks for sharing this. It is interesting to read your experiences on how Freesounds morphs through time. The main reason is probably that the more data and experience Freesound gathers, the more precise its definition becomes. Freesound was pretty juvenile back in 2005 but now, three years later (is it three years? Wow!) it has accumulated so much information from users and the discussions with users and with mods that it developed a sort of mental database about what is allowed and what is not. Freesound explores unknown areas regarding the use and reuse of sounds (sounds is a more encompassing but also vaguer group than, say, music, songs or field-recording) so the changes in policies are a result of the discoveries of the limits of those unknown areas. Some of us have been around and have contributed significantly to that voyage, cool!

Yeah Bram and DFX have some awesome plugins. Oh and I used alot of Koens Granulator back a while ago, any developer who can mess shit up is good in my book. I wish the developers scene had more creativity, You can find 30 or 40 or for that matter thousands of simple filters and compressors made in synthedit. But then again past compiling a bunch of source codes, I know absolutely crap. I like your posts lately noise collector they makes' you think. I agree that KVR can be brutal and ruthless, especially if your a Hip Hopper and don't care about the wicked Electronica scene. Its about what FutureMusic and CM magazine say. The moderation phase is funny too, But I wonder how many people post their stuff that passes, it would be a hell of a lot to listen to. I love Bram and Freesound over alot of forums and the Israeli breakcore forum, theyre pretty cool. hmmmmm.... Well, Caio'

P.S. - The money thing? I don't know who isn't hurting a little lately/./.-=