EZ Sound

You may remember last week at the end of class I mentioned that sound files can be found for free at soundbible.com, which Professor Shenn has added to our tool section of the blog.  The site is easy to navigate and the link takes you to a series of free sound files which can be download in various forms.  They have multiple categories of sound to look into such as bird sounds, ocean sounds, nature sounds, war sounds, funny sound effects and more.

While these are all free, there are different categories of free use which the site explains and I will do so here just to make sure we all use the sounds correctly.   The first category is Royalty Free Sound.  These sounds are free to use in any medium you wish.  The only rule is that you cannot resell the sound files themselves.  The second is Attribution 3.0.  These sounds are free, but you must give credit to the person that created the sound somewhere in your work or thank you page.  Finally, Public Domain Sounds are sounds that are so common that no one can "own" it, such as doors closing, running water, crickets chirping, etc.  These sounds are owned by the public (us) and can be used in our books without any problems.

The website soundbible.com is very easy to use.  You can preview any sound that you want before you wish to download it.  It also has blog posts that may be useful.  Such as instructions on how to loop sounds or add sound effects to videos. Their instructions and links to AudioFormat.com allow you to convert various sound formats such as mp3, wma, ogg or wav into eachother to help make our ebooks sound more alluring!

P.S. if you are looking for more in depth audio editing programs, Audacity is a free open source program that lets you edit sounds in many ways.  You can cut, copy splice or mix sounds together as well as change their pitch and much much more!  Pairing Audacity editing with free sound files from soundbible.com could be a free way to create unique sounds for your ebook. *disclaimer* like other open source programs such as Inkscape, this is free and may not be up to the professional quality some users may be used to, but for total beginners it's a good free way to get our feet wet.