Sound Effects and Music

[Kevin Wells]

Hi all.

I am researching music and sound effects for a project currently in pre production. It is a civil war era piece about tug boats on the Cape Fear River in NC. I am looking for suggestions on where to look for civil war esque music for the piece. Also, a good place to look for certain sound effects for the era as well. I'm looking for some suggestions on where to look, and some points in the right direction. Thanks!

-Kevin

 

[filmsparK]

Hmm...the freesound project (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/) has thousands of high-quality sounds (for free, obviously) - you just have to look around a little bit before you find what you want. As far as music, are you looking for royalty-free music, simple one/two instrument pieces, or orchestral stuff? If you want orchestral stuff, you can probably find that quickly on Amazon, but it'll cost you in copyrights if you want to use it. If it's simple one/two instrument stuff, it'd probably be easier just to get some sheet music of civil war ballads and have a friend (of a friend of a friend, as much as it takes) play it for you. I'm pretty sure that music from this era wasn't copyrighted, so as long as the performer is cool with you using it, you should be set as far as rights.

 

[Noiz2]

That is a very vague request. What specific types of music are you looking for? What specific sounds are you looking for. There are no "period" recordings from then so everything will need to be "created". What I mean is if you said "I need sounds of NYC in the 90's" I could say I have a bunch. But "I need sounds from the mid 1800's is ah??? Could be almost anything. Do you need battle scenes? I'm guessing not. For FX you need to get a bunch more specific.
Sound Dogs is a good starting point since they have many commercial libraries on line. But you need to ask for things like "I need sounds of old steam tugboat engines" In that case I would say do a search and see if you can find one still running. My guess is that the answer is yes. Then arrange to record it.
For music (non score) I would do some research into what songs were popular and pick the ones that will work for you. The music is almost surly out of copyright by now (but check). Then find an appropriate bunch of musicians to play the songs. You could search and buy production music but the pickings for this kind of thing are going to be slim and it's probably cheaper to get a few folks with guitars and banjos or what ever to just play the music.