Where to buy royalty free Muzak

farss wrote on 2/10/2004, 1:38 PM

Please don't laugh at me, yes I'll admit it I used to work for them!
OK, a guys got to eat, right!

Anyway, got that out of the way. I've done a bit of a look around at the royalty free music stuff and for what I'm after its too good. I mean it's real music. What I'm after is the music equivalent of the Vision Loops. Something I can just plonk end to end on the time line line and end up with 60 minutes of boring drone in the background.

Why would I want such a thing?

Well these are training videos so there's no dramatic points whatsoever, just lots of talking. I currently have them as two track mono, VO and M/E. But the "M" has been cut so many times by the previous editor there's multiple jumps and it sounds very ragged so I'm looking to replace it.

I was hoping the music from Digital Juice would fill the bill but I'm unable to get their samples to play, maybe someone who has the series could confirm that there music could be used in that way.

And before anyone mentions Acid, I'm one of the ones who doesn't know the difference between a tuba and a bass guitar, well OK I know one needs electricity to work.

Comments

J_Mac wrote on 2/10/2004, 1:48 PM

Check out 'Get media from the web' under File in V4. I've bought similar music from PBMT in the past. John
I mean PBTM.

Chanimal wrote on 2/10/2004, 2:34 PM

You said you couldn't get digital juice to work? I assume you're talking about Backtrax? I have the first set, ripped them all to MP3's and use the MP3 versions day in and day out.

They even have some low-res samples on their site that work as is (although only good for low volume background, since they are low res).

Let me know if this didn't solve it, or if there is another reason you can't get them to work.

Matt_Iserman2 wrote on 2/10/2004, 2:53 PM

I was recently looking for royalty-free music. During me search I came across CSS Music (cssmusic.com). They have a collection of 11 CDs called Econo-Trax which is ~$150 as I recall. They are the older tracks that they have retired. Listening to the samples, they sounded like '80s muzak: a lot of cheesy synths.

Even so, at the price they were selling it for I found it tempting.

Hope that helps.

garo wrote on 2/10/2004, 3:35 PM

www.flashkit.com has a lot of loops for free.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/10/2004, 4:18 PM

Wouldn’t something like MusicMaestro or SonicFire Pro from SmartSound do the trick? You just pick the mood, set the length and it composes the music for you. It couldn’t be easier. If its just background music for a training video this should be just what you need.

You could also use a free utility like Melody Maestro, which will compose music to MIDI with lots of styles to choose from. You can then record the MIDI right into Vegas direct from you sound card as a wav file. MS Music Producer is even better. (found at the same link)

~jr

farss wrote on 2/10/2004, 4:58 PM

Thanks guys,
some good stuff there, I was finally able to get some of the samples at Digital Juice to play and then it crapped out on me, but cssmusic seem to have some good stuff at a reasonable price.

The flashfx music is good and loopable but maybe the loops would be a bit too short (read soon become reptitive) but I'll have a further dig around there.

The new Staxtracks from Digital Juice might be very interesting, you get all the original tracks so you could remix it in Vegas, if nothing else that could be a bit of fun, at least for someone like me, it should be a pretty goof proof way to play around with the music a little.

The problem sort of came abou because II recorded some new VOs with my new kit and now everything else sounds rather second rate.
Guess I could always try to match the new VOs to the old, let me see, add pink noise at -20dB and add 5 % distortion, that should do it!

Fredv wrote on 2/10/2004, 6:07 PM

Check out http://www.tmcentury.com. I recall they had something called "Hula Bear" and some of their not so recent libraries are affordable.

randy-stewart wrote on 2/10/2004, 8:54 PM

Fredv,
I got 20 CD's full of royalty free music from an E-Bay seller for $20.00. He sells under the name RightHandStan and has several different packages. Got excellent service and most of the music is usable, however not too many are gems. Search E-Bay to get his ads. Might be just what you are looking for.
Randy

garo wrote on 2/10/2004, 11:08 PM

I make my own bed music - what kind of theme or feelling are you after?

//Garo

farss wrote on 2/11/2004, 1:27 AM

garo,
I don't know quite how to descirbe it, what's on the video at the moment is just something that has a repetitive upbeat blandness about it. I suppose I could put a sample of it somewhere. It's pretty much the same music for 40 minutes, not much progression to it.

One thing that did strike me wandering around some of the sites everyone had kindly pointed me to is just how 'royalty free' is some of this stuff. I'm certain anything from the big names like Digital Juice is going to be 100% kosher but some of the other stuff I kind of felt a little nervious about.

I suppose (hope?) that this is one of the things that organisations like ARIA are monitoring, I mean one could buy this stuff in good faith only to find someone still owns the copyright to it and land me and the client in a lot of hot water.

The other question I'm not 100% clear on is the Acid projects that one can download from here, I'd assumed all of them were royalty free but thinking that through I'm not so certain, anyone know for sure what the situation is there, if I just opened one in Acid and recorded it as is?

RexA wrote on 2/11/2004, 3:42 AM

>>It's pretty much the same music for 40 minutes, not much progression to it.

Hmm. Not sure what you are looking for exactly. I just did my first project where I put sound behind 40 mins of soundless video. I used a lot of Backtraxx and some PBTM which is easy and time efficient, but I did some stuff in Acid too. The Backtraxx and PTMB tends to be songs of about 3 min max duration. I'm thinking if you just want somthing sort of consistant for 40 min of background you might be better building somethin with acid and Sony (sofo) libs.

I'm far from an expert but things like the Orchestral series, Slow Silhouette, or Spektral Milimalism come to mind. I'm not that musical either but you can do some amazing things easily with Acid and some of these libraries. A bit of a learning curve to get started and much more to find sounds you like, but its a fun and satisfying process if you can find the time to play with it.

I do like things like backtraxx because it is so easy if you find something that matches what you are looking for, but to fill 40 mins with stuff that flows, you better be a pretty good DJ.

corug7 wrote on 2/11/2004, 10:06 AM

I got a pretty good library off of EBAY called TracksNow 1-4. I paid about $40.00 for it and the guy selling it is the one doing the composing, so I'm not too worried about copyright hassles. Most of the tracks are under 5 mins long, but you could do some minimal mixing/repetition to get the effect you want.

Corey

Summersond wrote on 2/11/2004, 10:21 AM

I agree with Randy Stewart about Ebay. If you search for royalty free music, you can find a lot of stuff. I also bought from Right Hand Stan and agree that that there are a few gems in the lot (I bought the 43 vol. version...) , but a lot of blah stuff. The biggest problem is that he doesnt label the music on the cd's so you dont have an index to what kind of song you are looking for.

dave

shawnm wrote on 2/11/2004, 10:24 AM

Ever try Sound Dogs? Great music beds and sound effects at reasonable prices (and downloadable too).

Thanks,

Shawn

farss wrote on 2/11/2004, 1:32 PM

I've had a look at the SonicFire Pro offering and it doesn't look too bad, I thinks SPOTs comment on it was it does a passable job which is all that I need for this sort of hack work.

Certainly not suitable for my next epic in 35mm but everything has its place.