Karen’s Mashups

In this show, we’re going to do something a little different, looking at sources for freely-usable audio materials. (See the list below for links.) It’s summer, and many of us are working on creating new curriculum resources. So in the next few shows, we’ll be highlighting free multimedia resources you can use and incorporate into your own work. Today we’ll be listening to a sample of great free audio material. Our next show will feature free sources for photos, clipart, and video. (Audio books, poetry, and distance learning courses will all be covered in future shows.)

These free resources will include public domain content, as well as “copyleft” content. Copyleft refers generally to content that is licensed for free use by others. This includes materials licensed under GNU licenses, as well as various Creative Commons licenses. The individual licenses vary, so make sure to read the terms. Some allow for modification of the materials (derivatives), for example using them in a mashup like this. Many require that you credit the source (attribution), which is always a good idea anyway. Some stipulate that the resulting product must be free to others as well (share and share alike).

This kind of licensing is a great boon to creative folks like us. Copyleft licensing may also revolutionize the world of education by providing a variety of free accessible educational materials that may one day replace commercial textbooks, software, and media resources.

As a side note, this show was a lot of fun to research, put together, and edit. (It was also more work than a normal show!) One of the challenges in editing audio and video is that there are so many file formats…for this show alone, I used mp3, oog, wav, aif, and flac files. If you’re looking for an easy way to convert all these, Audacity works with most. For those that it won’t handle, Zamzar is a good free online conversion tool.
——————–
Here are some of the sources for “copyleft” audio that you might want to look at:

Music
* ccMixter
* Wikimedia Commons music
* Internet Archive (wide variety of stuff here, not all copyleft)
* Partners in Rhyme

Spoken word
* Spoken Wikipedia
* Library of Congress
* Voice of America
* Internet Archive (wide variety of stuff here, not all copyleft)

Sound Effects
* The Freesound Project
* Partners in Rhyme
* US Fish and Wildlife Service (animal sounds)

Search engines for other copyleft content
* Creative Commons
* Wikimedia Commons
* Common Content
* ibiblio
——————–
Here are the credits for all the great pieces used in this show (in the order played):

Opening music
Semitono Podcast by Mario Mattioli (keyborg)
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

Transition sound of an airplane taking off
By Bram
License: Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0

Spoken Wikipedia article about the History of the Grand Canyon
Recorded by Norvy
License: GNU Free Documentation License

Music accompanying Grand Canyon article
“Mojo B Good” by Balla Gergely (mojo)
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommericial 2.5

Transition sound effect of thunderstorm
By Rhumphries
License: Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0

Oral Argument in US Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe
OYEZ Project
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

Transition sound effect of trumpet loop
By Synapse
License: Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0

Theodore Roosevelt on the right of people to rule
Made available through the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, University of California, Santa Barbara
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommericial 2.5

Hello in English
Recorded by Celestianpower
License: public domain

Hello in Spanish
Recorded by Orgullomoore
License: GNU Free Documentation License

Hello in Hebrew
Recorded by Nadavspi [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nadavspi]
License: GNU Free Documentation License

Hello in Russian
Recorded by MaGIc2laNTern
License: public domain

Hello in Italian
Recorded by Fibonacci
License: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0

Hello in Polish
Recorded by Julo
License: public domain

Music accompanying “hellos”
Relaxation Spa Treatment – Dan the Automator
from the WIRED Magazine CD
License: Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0

A Brief History of the World Trade Organization
from Voice of America
License: public domain

Transition sound effect of crowd cheering
By Halleck
License: Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0

Closing music “Crazy Love – The Alex & Lang mix”
by J.Lang [http://ccmixter.org/media/people/djlang59/profile]
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported

Thanks to everyone who chooses to make their content available to others through copyleft licensing!

 

 Show 7 - Free Audio [9:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Professional dev. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.