The FreeSound Project: Downloading Ambience
Making a new website and need something to help it stand out from the crowd? Or filming a Youtube video and want some interesting sounds to emphasize your actions? Or just tired of the same old ringtones?
The FreeSound Project is an enormous database of sounds, most of which are licensed under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus license, allowing you to mash-up, sample and transform the sounds as much as you like, as long as you provide credit to the source.
You can also add sound files to their database, which will be credited to you every time the sound is used. Each sound has a description, as well as a link to the type of license. The sounds can be commented on and rated, providing you with instant reviews while you are searching for that perfect soundbite.
The FreeSound Project currently has over 86,000 sound files and more are added every day. When searching for “frog” it comes up with over 300 hits.
You can search with the geotagged option, which specifies where the file was recorded, as well as taking a look at the remix tree, which shows samples which have been remixed from other samples (which may have been remixed from other samples) and how they all connect to the original sound. Or you could just use the random sample, a surprisingly addictive option that throws up sound files at random.
However you use it, The FreeSound Project has the potential to be a powerful asset in creativity.
