So you’re a music prodigy. You’ve got something in mind for a new tune or “composition” and you need some kind of special effect to really get the sound you crave. Maybe you’re looking for some real-world ambiance, some background noise to channel Pink Floyd or Nellie McKay (sure didn’t think those two would pop up next to one another, eh?) or some other theatrical act. What do you do? Well, you could probably find some producer with a catalogue of odd samples to add to your mix. Or you could you save the effort - and the cash - and instead head on over to Soundsnap.Soundsnap is an online resource that promises to share “pro-quality” sounds, samples and loops with the world of audio experimentalists and songsmiths without any cost to the end user. Yes, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicense-transferable and high-fidelity recordings are what the site is advertising, and having given it a good once-over, I’ve concluded that for those of you out there who like to dabble and like to assemble lots of little things into larger, interesting things, the site is a real pleasure to use.
With an archive of some 30,000+ audio clips, ranging in length from seconds to minutes, the volume of material that you can piece together and mold at will is fairly immense. Big enough for spark some new ideas, for sure. What’s more, the library presented by Soundsnap is almost entirely user generated and user supplied. Only at its very start did the site require the investment of time and talent by a number of sound designers and producers to get things rolling.
Indeed, if you feel so inclined as to contribute a riff or some other amusing recording, you may do so, and your piece(s) to the grander puzzle even has a good chance of being recognized and perhaps even utilized. In the category labeled ‘Interiors,’ which one might suspect would be seen as obscure and relatively barren and unappealing to visitors, Soundsnap shows that some of the most recent contributions have been sampled and downloaded hundreds of times. A 55-second clip of sounds emanating within a cafe in Tokyo, Japan, racks a 3-star rating and has been downloaded 374 times and counting, either as an MP3 or AIFF file. Surprising? I think so. Intriguing as well.
The interface provided by Soundsnap is an intuitive one. Genres are easy to decipher and icons are similarly simplified. You spend a few seconds browsing its homepage and any substrata and you’re immediately get it. Which is a good thing. It turns visitors into repeat users, which really quite crucial to making this type of service work and work well. If it weren’t so easy to use, it wouldn’t garner the attention is has thus far.
All in all, I’d very much recommend any audio geeks to give Soundsnap a try. You may not find precisely what you’re looking for. But I’m almost certain that anyone interested in sound samples of extraordinary varieties will find something that catches their ear.
Curious as to how Sounsnap survives? It’s a mix of advertising and sponsorships, of which it lists Digidesign, Ableton, Novation, Focusrite, and Propellerhead as partnerships underwriting the project. Soundsnap, open to the public since July 2007, is run by a Greek sound designer and engineer by the name of Tazos Frantzolas who’s spent the last 5 years residing in London, England.
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