where to find sound track for short animation.

#1

Hey,
I don’t know if this is the right place to post this but I’m doing a short animation (around 1:30-2:00) for a student thesis. I’d like to find some music to play over it but I don’t want to go into the whole getting rights to the song process so I was wondering if anyone knew of any good places where I can find music that I could use for this animation… I’d like to someday submit to a festival but at the moment the plans are just to show it for school graduation.

Any advice would be amazing.

Thanks

#2

um make your own soundtrack with acid+vegas or them beat making machines?

or find a producer and buy a beat from him/her to get exclusive rights to use it, and even sell it if you wanted 2 nahmean?

#3

Regarding rights and all the legal aspects doing your own score is your safest bet.

Do not license music unless you get ALL the rights for ALL time. This gives you all the freedom you need to market your short film.

Marc

#4

Hey, thanks for the advice. I ended up making my own score with a program called “soundtrack”

thanks

#5

just little info, for u to know, if you’ll need some music next time…
there is lot of people around there, desperate to make some music… yea, for free… I saw few groups, offering free music… they feel it is very nice way to promote their work.
unfortunately, don’t have any concrete links now…

greetings

:slight_smile:

#6

Hey, thanks… yea, my deadline is in 9 weeks… so the pressure is on…

#7

If you’re really short on time, and if it’s just for a school graduation thing, I would recommend using commercial music and putting their credits at the back of your project (unless you really want to submit it to festivals, but you mentioned you’re short on time…)

The reason for using music that’s already available is that you won’t have to worry about whether your score is good enough or not. By collecting a number of commercial music (or score), you could listen and see which one fits your project best. Because in the end, the emotion evoked from the music that matches your project is one of the most important aspect. Once that’s done, and if you have free time, you could then make your own score, apply it to your work and then send it off to festivals :slight_smile:

One suggestion for making your own score is this (I read this from CGI Filmmaking: The Creation of Ghost Warrior - by Timothy Albee):
Pick the music/song that you feel fits your project. Once you feel comfortable with the mood and the flow of the music, make them your own that’s similar to what you feel when listening to the commercial one.

[Quoted from the book]
“This temporary score will help you get in the mood of your piece. As you grow accustomed to hearing the different musical bits with your piece, you’ll probably feel the need to change pieces here and there. You are narrowing in on the final feel for the music that you will eventually create. When you compose the final score or purchase the royalty-free loops you will string together in a program like Acid Pro or Cool Edit Pro, you’ll know the different feelings and nuances that you need your tone poem to elicit.”

“As mentioned before, the temporary score is the music that you lay into your animatic to help you get a better feel for flow and timing. This will also help you figure out what kind of music you will want to have composed for your final piece; you’ll be listening to it a lot over the course of production. This is the music you must replace with your own original or commisioned score before releasing your film!”

Unless you’re already an accomplished score-writer, then ignore the above comments…

#8

You’re in nyc!

Look for hardcore music and punk music! NYC is famous for it in some circles. There must be a lot of bands that have been at it for a year or two and need some attention. I think that’s your safest bet if you don’t regularly make music yourself. Usually you can download samples from either their manager or thei own website. Websites cost very little nowadays and they’ll probably have one up and running.

Good luck.

#9

coffeefery: Thanks, awesome post and great idea about having a temp track down…

jmBoekestein: Haha, yea nyc… great for punk and pretty much anything but i need classical :slight_smile: and an orchestra is harder to come by… i think :slight_smile:

#10

Hi, you mentioned about classical and orchestra music…

Well, I would suggest using game music or new age music if your score is into that area. The reason is that I did a few school projects when studying about filmmaking and what I did to find the so-called ‘perfect’ score is this: I would try to imagine the type of music that may fit my project. Then I’d grab a few CDs everyday and listen to them on the bus, when I’m painting in my oil painting class, or during my lunch breaks. Then, once in awhile, I come across a music piece that will match what I’m looking for (you’ll know it too when you come across the one that you need). I’ll then come home from school and try to edit them into my project to see if it’s the right score or not. If it works, great. If not, then I’ll try again the next day…

The reason I suggest using game music is this: many Japanese game soundtracks, although feels as if they’re being ripped from other sources, are nevertheless great! And they kinda work well with many different themes. So do new age music. But the real key is this: the music that you choose shouldn’t be one that’s popular, or better, choose one that no one ever heard of. Otherwise everyone will know where the music came from, and the bad thing about it is that they will probably have pre-conceived images of what the music should be about in their mind, and if you use them on your project, um, it may/may not have a negative effect. However, if you think that popular music is perfect, then by all means use it for your ‘temporary track’ and then change it so that no one will know where you got the inspiration from :slight_smile: Hey, I did it and it works wonders for me…

#11

Free classical!

Check this thread! >>link<<

Good luck! Hope you can get what you’re looking for there.

#12

Hey whats up all. I just came across this post as I’m a sound student and love doing pieces for short animations. So if anyone needs some music or even a little bit of sound design done for a project. I’m looking to do a little bit of free work to get my real going.

I’ve got a good range of styles. Mostly on the down tempo spectrum thus far, but I have no problem doing house and drum and bass. The last thing I did was a hybrid trip hop (80 bpm) to drum and bass (160 bpm) track for a car chase scene.
I’ve been working on getting a real dub sound lately, but can easily crank out lush, emotional, atmospheric tracks. I also get into syncing elements of the music to the actions on screen
I want to do some projects that have a focus on custom tailoring the music to really bring out the emotions of the animation. Ultimately, I would like to find someone with whom there is a lot of creative colaboration, and we could really get into cranking out some awesome projects.

So if anyone has any animation shorts they could use some free custom pieces for, email me at
Taotempo@webmail.expression.edu.

Otherwise, maybe someone could point me to where I could find some people for an animation/audio collaboration.

Thanks,

Jeff

#13

Check out freeplaymusic.com

They have lots of music, and it is fully categorized. The great thing is that all of the music is free. However, check the terms of use though, they are a little tricky. For example, movies release by a major motion picture studio do not have to pay royalties, but anything shown at a film festival does have to. Of course, their tos are not very solid (what defines a major motion picture studio?). But it is stil worth a look.

#14

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