Music, Sound Effects, Tech News, and More — The AudioMicro Blog

Ready for some free classic synth samples? MusicRadar.com is celebrating “synth week” and they want you to come along to the party. The powers-that-be at the popular royalty free music website are giving you a selection of classic synth sounds. The sounds come from ARP’s Odyssey and Solina instruments, and Roland’s System 100. As a fun and additional bonus, you can also download single hits from some of the finest drum machines throughout history, including Roland’s TR-909 and 808 beatboxes.

All you need to do is download the samples and get to work using and mixing them. According to MusicRadar.com, the samples are split into four different folders. Three folders cover the featured synths, and the fourth folder contains all of the drum machine content. There are riffs, multisamples and single hits available. All the music samples are supplied as WAV files, so they can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. The best part is that the samples are royalty free music, so you can use them however you like. MusicRadar.com’s only stipulation is that you do not redistribute the music samples. All of the classic synth samples are supplied in a zip file, so you will need to download and remove them before they will show up on your computer. You can listen to some of the synth samples that are available at MusicRadar.com.

MusicRadar.com is part of a consortium of royalty free music websites, and is a subsidy of Future Publishing. Created by musicians for musicians, MusicRadar.com is the number one website for guitarists, drummers and producers. Check out their latest gear updates and artist news through one of their many music-related publications. You can also read expert reviews on the best new kit, play along with their expert video lessons, or try out handy tips and projects suggested on the website. They also offer numerous music-related blogs, podcasts, competitions and a vibrant forum full of hungry royalty free music users. Visit www.musicradar.com to start using their free classic synth samples today. What are you waiting for?

Posted in: classic synth samples, royalty free music

PrimeLoops.com is considered to be the “definitive new supplier of modern, cutting edge sound suites.” Their website promises users a wealth of highly flexible and unique music samples, in all the latest formats. An independent music team based out of the United Kingdom, PrimeLoops.com has brought together talented musicians, experienced sound technicians, DJs and studio engineers in order to create a new dimension in pro-audio development, resulting in crystal clear audio fusion covering the entire spectrum.

The latest sample products offered by PrimeLoops.com, include R&B Progressions and Dubhop Scores. Here’s the information provided by the press release:

R&B Progressions — This is a new addition to the Core Series. It’s 600mb in size, and contains over 180 “distinguished piano progressions, inspirational string arrangements, and sexy synth hooks” tempos ranging from 75-125 bpm, bringing you a selection of luscious instrumental loops in many R&B styles. Some styles include Smooth Ballads, Funky Vibes, Oldskool Classics and Contemporary Pop. Music formats are available as Wav, Acid Loops, Apple Loops, Rex2, Reason Refill, Ableton, Akai MPC and many others. They have all been professionally recorded, mastered, and are completely royalty free. These riffs and chord sequences have been engineered for all producers seeking to capture legendary sounds from the evolving R&B scene, taking influences from Destiny’s Child to Jodeci, Mary J. Blige to Usher, Brandy to Alicia Keys and from Akon to Ne-Yo, Beyoncé, Ciara and Rihanna.

Dubhop Scores — Dub has influenced every dance music genre around, and now Dubhop Scores is here to continue the tradition, providing you with the synths, basses, guitars scores influenced by the likes of legendary engineers such as King Tubby, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Adrian Sherwood, Prince Far-I, Mad Professor, Massive Attack and many more. The Dubhop Scores sample pack is suited to breakbeat, upfront hip hop, drum n’ bass, trip hop, dubstep and other modern forms of electronic music, and has been engineered with authentic analogue warmth from deep within the PrimeLoops.com dub lab. With 80 catchy dubbed out riffs ranging from 70-90 Bpm, over 20 hardware synthesizers and several tape delay units have been used to create this authentic Fusion Series release.

Visit www.primeloops.com for more information on these royalty free music products.

Posted in: Prime Loops, R&B Progressions, royalty free music

Looking for a new royalty free music player? Check out Themusicase.com. Themusiccase.com has one of the largest royalty free music libraries, and now they are offering an innovative new tool for developers, flash designers and websites owners who need quality music background on their projects. Without any pay-per-track fee, the new music player introduces a new model in the royalty free music industry. You’ll also get unlimited royalty free music when you download the player at www.themusiccase.com.

There is no cost to download the music player, and users can listen to royalty free music simply with the use of the embed code. There are no pay-per-track fees. The program for the music player is extremely compatible and the interface connects with each user’s “favorites” section in order to create a playlist. The music player can be used in HTML websites, Flash Actionscript 2 websites, and Flash Actionscript 3 websites. Users may select any genre of music from the 15,000 royalty free tracks library. Experienced producers have handpicked each track, so you’ll definitely find a unique selection of all music styles. Enjoy all classic composers available in commercial cuts (featuring 30 sec, 60, sec, underscores, etc.). The only drawback is that playlists may have to be reorganized every time users wish to change their music background page.

According to their website, TheMusicCase.com is a leading world class music provider for producers. Representing some of the most experienced music producers from all over the world, we provide our clients with high quality production tracks and songs covering a wide list of musical styles and genres. All music is designed for professional users such as: Directors, Advertisement producers, Web-designers, Television and radio stations, Video art creators, Music Supervisors and Record companies (tracks for mechanical reproduction for use in compilation CD’s). Users can locate database music themes that work best with their project, and purchase the relevant license in real time.

Visit www.themusicase.com for more information about the music player and royalty free music services.

Posted in: flash, royalty free music players, website design

Enjoy a new sample pack of free royalty music from Xylote.com, featuring 10 sample packs. The Super Discount Bundle will be available for 14 days only, and includes a unique package full of sounds, samples, construction kits, royalty-free music loops and sound effects for creative music producers, aspiring DJs, web designers and individuals in the film industry.

The Super Discount Bundle is available for download with only 30 credits and features titles like Urbanstrasse, Modern Kits for PRH, Web Series, Crazy Humans, Nuclear Fx and more.

Some features include: Urbanstrasse, which is a mixture of Hip Hop and R&B. Choose from eight different professional construction kits that are ready to use from 85 to 120 BPM over 75 new percussion sounds, 5 EXS Drum Kits and 30 drum loops; music Loops over 170 music loops that are ready to use from 5 to 57 seconds long in the following genres — Jazz, Hip Hop/R&B, Techno, House, Orchestral, Pop, Acoustic, Eurodance, Minimal, Film/Action, Electronic, D&B, Medieval, Pop Rap and more. Producer beats include 538 professional drum loops compatible with software like ACID Pro, Pro Tools, SONAR, GarageBand, Nuendo, Logic, Cubase, Reason, Digital Performer, Session, Sequel, Live, FL Studio. Also enjoy 50 different and unique sound effects of human sounds, which were recorded with 24-bit technology for an incredible stereo sound, and 160 spoken word sound effects featuring numbers, days of the week, surround speakers, and the alphabet letters from A to Z.

You can easily listen and download every sound from the entire library available on this bundle pack at Xylote.com.  You can also choose to download samples, pro audio loops, royalty free music for YouTube videos, music loops for web templates, button sounds and much more.

Xylote.com is a web-based company that was built on futuristic ideas, matching a large variety of styles and sound effects from the smallest clicks/buttons for web utilities to sci-fi/drones and special effects for film productions.  Professional producers carefully selected each available selection, with an extensive background in creating original music for almost any type of music projects from jingles to commercial music and sound for picture.

Posted in: royalty-free music loops, Sound Effects, YouTube videos

Spotify is Europe’s biggest and most recognizable subscription music service, with over 8 million users. Part of Spotify’s service includes the ability to share music through different transporting networks, offering users the option to choose how they want to access royalty free music. According to Spotify’s website, “there are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when. Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organizing them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.”

Daniel Ek, owner founder of Spotify, recently pleaded with the Swedish music industry not to charge high royalty fees for streaming music services, but to try and plan a system where money is made through a number of different routes, instead. According to IBTimes, Ek suggested such feasible routes as music downloads, advertising, merchandising and tickets to live events. Ek’s fear is that high royalty music fees would cause online music businesses, such as Spotify, to fail.

Right now, royalty free music services are relying mainly on advertising revenue in order to survive. Spotify’s future looks “spotty” at best, and is going down the same road as Napster did 10 years ago. Napster was the original royalty free music pioneer, offering free music downloads and music-sharing capabilities between users. Music executives and artists from all over the world joined in the fight to shut Napster down. Eventually, Napster became a paid-subscription service but lost out to bigger and more powerful services such as Itunes. Unlike Napster, Spotify cleared the rights to all of the music it offers online. But, the royalty fees are a heavy price to pay.

Spotify does not want to become the next Napster, and Ek is fighting hard to keep royalty free music alive and well. There are a variety of royalty free music services available online. But if royalty fees increase and regulations intensify, you will see those services decline and eventually they will cease to exist.

Posted in: music downloads, Spotify, Swedish music industry

Billed as “explosive,” P5Audio.com recently introduced two additional sample sounds for Garageband. Garageband is great way to create your own tracks, using loops from other samples (royalty free, of course.) Aspiring producers can play with the loops and audio samples without having to worry about copyright issues. The samples are available for instant download at P5Audio.com.

“We are really fired-up about these scorchin’ new sounds for Garageband since we started this new music samples inventory blitz,” states P5Audio President, David Whiteside, “and these sounds are inspired by the music industry greats with the highest quality music production that our customers expect from P5Audio!”

The two new and innovative music samples include:

• Wayne’s Voodoo Rebirth Music Loop Set

• Digeridoo World Grime

Wayne’s Voodoo Rebirth Music Loop Set is a tribute to the famous and grimy rapper, Lil’ Wayne. With the download, you’ll get 25 royalty free tracks featuring the Dirty South New Orleans Style that Lil’ Wayne made famous, and seven loop sets with Wayne-style female vocals including pitched vocals, sexy shout outs and auto-tune. There are many more features included in the download package as well.

Digerido World Grime features one of the oldest instruments of all time. The Didgeridoo, originally from Australia, is made from Eucalyptus trees, which have been naturally hollowed out by termites. With the download, you’ll get the?unique Didgeridoo World Grime sounds, which are dirty, grimy, urban, and “gangsta.” You’ll also get Didgeridoo World Grime Loops n’ Licks, containing 219 Licks and 158 Loops. There are additional features included with the download package as well.

P5Audio.com prides itself on providing 100 percent royalty free music that is always available for instant download. The website offers “multi track music loops and sample downloads, hip hop samples, music loops and sample sounds for fruity loops, apple garage band, acid pro — ready to use in all major software sampler formats, as well as all music hardware samplers.”

Posted in: Apple, garageband, P5 audio

If you’re someone who enjoys getting up on your soapbox now and again, then this tidbit of news is just what you’ve been waiting for. Is there a better platform for you to voice your opinions, talk about music and play DJ other than to have your own radio show? Really, who wouldn’t want to have their own radio show? You get to control the music, talk about whatever and whoever you want, and reach millions of listeners.

Music News Industry Network, otherwise known as MI2N.com, is having a promo. The deal is a 30-minute radio show, to be aired twice a day over a period of 30 days for a one-time fee. That’s 30 minutes of uninterrupted, royalty free music featuring none other than: you. Royalty Free Music Radio is played throughout businesses and retail outlets throughout the United Kingdom. Basically, you’ll be getting wide coverage while listeners get to hear some great, royalty free music. The best part, aside from the fact that you’ll be an international sensation, is that you can use that 30 minutes however you like. This is your opportunity to abuse the airwaves for your own pleasure. You can promote your music, your band and your CD, your next show or tour, your website — anything! It’s entirely up to you. That’s 30 minutes, twice a day for 30 days. Talk about free promotion. The possibilities are endless. Did we mention that it’s all about royalty free music?

All you have to do is send in your royalty free music or sound effects, and a script of everything you’ve ever wanted to say on the radio. Then, the radio station will have professional DJs repeat (word for word) everything written on the script. Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Just visit Royalty Free Music Radio for more details.

Here’s a quick rundown of everything that is included in the promo:

• 30 minutes of a professionally, DJ-produced radio show

• No third party advertisers

• You get to provide the music AND the script

• Promote anything you want — CD, shows, website, etc.

• You get to choose your DJ

• You get a featured spot on Royalty Free Music Radio’s website

• Your show will run for 30 minutes, twice a day, for 30 days

Posted in: music

The AudioMicro Team will be attending the Music in Media Interactive Conference (MIMCON) on November 20th through 22nd at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, CA. If you are interested in attending the conference and networking with music supervisors and industry insiders, we are pleased to present you with conference PROMO code “SPECIAL199″, which will get you into the 3 day event for just $199 (regular $295).  You can also submit your music for awards consideration anytime prior to October 15th.  There are still a few days left to be considered for an award, so be sure to submit your music here for the judges to review.

On Saturday November 21st, AudioMicro founder Ryan Born will be hosting a session on licensing royalty free music into alternative media including websites, podcasts, YouTube videos, and iPhone Apps.   The entire conference has a great line up of speakers, sponsors, and attendees.

For more info on The Music in Media Interactive Conference (MIMICON), log on to http://www.hmmawards.com

The Music in Media Interactive Conference (MIMICON)
Friday-Sunday, November 20-22, 2009
Renaissance Hollywood Hotel & Spa
1755 N. Highland Avenue, Hollywood CA 90028

Posted in: HMM Awards, Music in Media Interactive Conference, The Hollywood Music In Media Awards

We have just added over 13,000 record label owned, production music tracks to AudioMicro. The new offering is being called “The Premium Collection“. Historically, this entire collection has only been available to major television networks and feature film producers in a rights managed licensing format. We are please to offer this material to you and hope that you will enjoy all the great new tracks. All Premium Collection Tracks have a special flag that appears in search and browse results to let you know that you are listening to premium material. Please note that with this great new collection carries a more limited, royalty free music license. The main restriction is that the tracks cannot be used on network / cable television or in any project with a budget over fifty thousand dollars. For full license details, please be sure to check out the Premium Content License Agreement. If you need to use tracks in a manner outside the scope of the Premium Content License Agreement, our standard collection is still available with over 24,000 tracks and suitable for nearly any audio visual production imaginable.

Posted in: Free Sound Effects, license music, Production Music, royalty free music, sound bite, sound clips, Sound Effects, The Premium Collection

Creating to 10 lists can be tough. We found a new site that makes it as easy as ever. Not only can you create top 10 lists easily, but you can even create top 500 lists with a few simple clicks. The embedded widget below came from our friend’s over at Ranker who have compiled a nice list of the top 500 Music Artists of All Time. To make your own top 500 list, head on over Ranker.com and create your own.

In this post, we’ll show you a beginner’s look at how to use Audacity, one of our favorite audio editing programs – an easy to operate, downloadble freeware program.  Audacity is an essential for musicians, sound designers, artists, or anyone simply because it is so easy to use and the user can accomplish so much. It is compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems. In this post, we’ll go over some major basics for operating Audacity.

First thing’s first, you need to open up an audio file. Audacity supports mp3, aiff, AU, and wav files but you’ll find that mp4s are not so compatible. Once an audio file has been loaded into the program, you’ll see a set of waveforms that represent that sonic profile of your clip. If you see one row of waveforms, that indicates the audio file is mono. If there are two, it’s in stereo format. Here is a look at the Audacity interface.

The top tool bar has many different icons that are all pretty self explanatory just from the way they look. There are playback buttons, which include the standard record, play, pause, fast forward, and rewind buttons. Input and output volume sliders are also located on the top tool bar. These are for adjusting volume levels of your microphone input and speaker output respectively. Now it’s time to start editing your audio.

Highlight a piece of your clip by dragging your cursor across where you would like to highlight. Towards the top right side of the tool bar you will see several editing buttons. From left to right they are cut, copy, past, trim outside selection, trim inside selection, undo, redo, zoom in, zoom out, fit selection to window, and fit project to window. Become familiar with these operations by simply experimenting with them and your audio clip. Audacity has many audio effects that you can apply to your clip including fade in, fade out, normalize, reverse, and many more. You can even use Audacity to mix two songs together.

Once you’re done editing, simply export your clip as a .wav or mp3 file and enjoy! Many of the users who have contributed to our royalty free music library use Audacity to edit their tracks. New versions of audacity are released frequently so keep checking for updates.

On Wednesday, September 9th, for the first time ever, the music of the Beatles makes its way onto a video game console and quite frankly, it’s about time! After several years of production and development from rhythm game pioneers Harmonix, The Beatles: Rock Band will be released for the big 3: Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3 next week. The game contains 45 classic Beatles tracks that span the band’s entire career starting from “I Wanna Hold your Hand,” through”I Am the Walrus,” and all the way to “Get Back.” There will also more downloadable content including full Beatles album downloads pending the games release.

The Beatles Rock Band game looks like an exciting and refreshing addition to the Rock Band franchise, not to mention the fact that its got to have one of the coolest TV ads, EVER.

Perhaps the release of this game will give Rock Band a boost in the battle against Guitar Hero. In the past, Guitar Hero has released special expansion games featuring one particular band. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was release shortly before Guitar Hero: World Tour, and the newest installment in the GH franchise has been an entire game devoted to Metallica. As big as Aerosmith and Metallica are, no one compares to the Beatles, and Rock Band definitely has an advantage with acquiring this legendary library.

Simultaneous with the relesae of the Beatles Rocd Band game comes a big new annoucement and music event from Apple, where everyone is predicting that Steve Jobs will announce (with Paul and Ringo in attendance) the Beatles catalogue finally being made available on iTunes.  It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for since the start of the digital music era – legally available music online from the greatest band of all time.

Now we’ve been working hard to recruit new artists here and uploads have definitely been on the rise despite our heighted editing stardards. Nothing we’ve go touches the Beatles in terms of popularity, but if you are looking for classic rock and royalty free pop music, be sure to check out the Pop genre on the Stock Music tab.

Our friends over at The Hollywood Edge Sound Effects Library recently provided their sound FX expertise in the season 6 premiere of HBO’s hit series, Entourage. Check out this video posted by the Edge as they take you behind the scenes of their day on the set, creating Entourage Ferrari sound effects and sound recordings for use in the HBO hit series.

In terms of recording audio and sound effects, the everyday listener may not realize that every automobile and its engine generates its own individual sounds and noises, which many car aficionados take very seriously. It may seem obvious that a Ferrari engine will sound different than one belonging to a Honda, but often times these details are overlooked and are taken for granted. Ferrari engines create their own unique sounds which The Hollywood Edge captures by recording such Ferrari models as the 430 Scuderia, the 559, the 612 Scaglietti, the California, and the F430. When you hear the effects on the show, you know you are really getting an authentic Ferrari engine sound recording. The Hollywood Edge and it’s parent company, Soundelux have been recognized as the best in their field, having been nominated for 4 Academy Awards as well as numerous Golden Reel Awards.  These guys are routinely hired by the top film directors in Hollywood to create and record authentic sound effects and sound recordings for major motion pictures.

Posted in: Entourage Ferarri, The Hollywood Edge

Below are 5 easy-to-find resources for all things music and sound effects.  We tried to find something for everyone.

1. Do-It-Your-Selfer? Mac User? Thundercats Ho! Apple’s newest all-in-one music creator Logic Studio lets you write, record, edit, mix, and perform and its getting sweet sweet reviews. Read those sugary reviews here (macworld) or here (tweakheadz) Or check out Logic Studio on Apple’s website ;

2. Bookophile?  Two recommendations:

A.  a copy of The Sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers, or

B.  a copy of Sound Engineering Explained, by Michael Talbot-Smith;

3. Prefer to Learn by Watching? Check out the second video below of a kid on YouTube turing a $2 Piezo Transducer into a contact microphone in 8 minutes using a soldering iron, a jack and some foam padding.  Did somebody say MacGruber?

Imagination Transducer – Grampa’s reading glasses sold separately;

4. Want to Survey the Field? This next video gives one amateur’s view of the Top 10 Free Sound Effects Websites. Somehow the free sound effects of AudioMicro.com failed to make the list.  Also, The Hollywood Edge came in at #3. This video – put together about a year ago – had over 146,000 views as of the time this blog post was put together.  Can’t argue with popularity;

5. Need a Distraction? The South Park guys have you covered.  Remember when Canada went on strike last year?  Or maybe you loved the Dr. Dre and Tupac-like “Californiananah” about how Cal-if-fornia is nice to homeless? The creators of South Park let you download mp3 audio clips from old South Park episodes here . The Kanye West-inspired track “Gay Fish” is hilariously devastating.  Check it out here –> Gay Fish .

Big News! We have just added over 55,000 new sound effects from The Hollywood Edge, the world’s most widely used sound effect library.   These sound effects were created by the Academy Award-winning sound studio Soundelux, whose credits include such films as Kill Bill, Braveheart, and Fast and Furious.  The Hollywood Edge and Soundelux are part of the CSS Studios group of companies. CSS Studios is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Discovery Communications (NASDAQ: DISCA) and provides creative services to major motion picture studios, independent producers, broadcast networks, cable channels, and advertising agencies. CSS services are marketed under the brand names Todd-AO, Sound One, Soundelux, POP Sound, Modern Music, and The Hollywood Edge. This content partnership is a big step forward for AudioMicro and brings our total track count to over 150,000 and growing.

In addition to our superb collection of user-generated content, we can now deliver, on-demand, thousands of sounds created by the world’s most talented sound professionals.  Our users should be impressed with the unprecedented quality, size and scope of The Hollywood Edge collection.  Under the terms of a new licensing agreement, our members have access to The Hollywood Edge’s library of professional-grade sound effects royalty free and under the same pricing and terms as our user generated, crowd-sourced sound effects. Prices for individual sound effects are as little as $1 per minute, while subscription packages start at just $9 per month.  End users are permitted to use the content for all digital media, including websites, short online films, motion pictures, feature films, flash animations, radio advertisings, PowerPoint presentations, live performance, remixes and other purposes.  Historically, The Hollywood Edge library has been available only in the form of large sound effects packages on hard drives, CD’s and DVD’s and aimed at the professional market.

For additional details on the deal, check out the full sound effect press release here.  Thanks again for your support as we continue on our quest to be the web’s leading stock audio distributor.

Posted in: Discovery Communications, hollywood edge, hollywood sound effects, Sound Effects