Sound Sample Resources and Suggestions

[l.b.]

once again find myself offering a contrary perspective: I use lots of easily-available samples culled from the internet, because my samples usually are thematically related to to "concept" as it were. There's no obscure, cool story of me sampling congressman mo brooks talking about steve scalise getting shot on CNN, or orson welles on the dick cavett show. But they serve a narrative and conceptual function primarily. Sampling from hollywood movies is another thing...

edit: on tech side would strenuously recommend the free program AUDIO HIJACK for sampling from the computer

[Balor/SS1535]

once again find myself offering a contrary perspective: I use lots of easily-available samples culled from the internet, because my samples usually are thematically related to to "concept" as it were. There's no obscure, cool story of me sampling congressman mo brooks talking about steve scalise getting shot on CNN, or orson welles on the dick cavett show. But they serve a narrative and conceptual function primarily. Sampling from hollywood movies is another thing...

edit: on tech side would strenuously recommend the free program AUDIO HIJACK for sampling from the computer

I think that the secret is finding something that matches your intention with the project.  If it meshes well with what you intend to create and the noise tones that are used, then it shouldn't be problematic whether the sample is easy to identify/find or not.  The result would probably be even better in spite of it due to the conceptual integrity of the work taken as a whole.  There is no point in being obscure simply for the sake of obscurity.

[Foss]

I have always liked to go on physical record hunting missions, and besides finding actual good records there is the hunt to find really obscure stuff to sample. I like to keep a physical archive of tapes and lps with different stuff that can be used on occation. Same goes for movie/soundtrack samples. Having been involved in making beats for some time, also way before every movie was online, there was always a quest of finding killer loops from old movies. Even back when i first saw Cannibal Holocaust on some dusty vhs for the first time the song was so obvious a great sample from an infamous that someone for sure would have lifted it before. Flea markets and garage sales forever!

[theworldisawarfilm]

There is no point in being obscure simply for the sake of obscurity.

[Peterson]

You can sort of tell who's willing to work hard at these sorts of things versus who's lazier based on their justifications. Abundance in the digital age is convenient yet clearly expedites and therefore cheapens "the search." Spending time finding, acquiring and using the found sound has a more personal and relevant function in one's worl when more effort and physical energy is required.  Give me home recorded tapes from thrift stores and vhs copies of old documentaries any day over somebody's YouTube channel. You can find some media-exploited surviving victim of some predator crying on camera for your PE project or whatever quite easily, but instead you might look at secondhand shops for tapes of trauma counseling sessions. If you're supposedly dedicated to your craft/art, the work involved should reflect that.

[deutscheasphalt]

[...]work hard at these sorts of things versus who's lazier [...] cheapens "the search." [...] more effort and physical energy

Some weird value statements here - as if the defining factor of a good recording was how much energy you spent on it...

Give me home recorded tapes from thrift stores and vhs copies of old documentaries any day over somebody's YouTube channel. You can find some media-exploited surviving victim of some predator crying on camera for your PE project or whatever quite easily, but instead you might look at secondhand shops for tapes of trauma counseling sessions. If you're supposedly dedicated to your craft/art, the work involved should reflect that.

I generally agree that it's more likely to find "better" material for conceptual use by obtaining recordings as close to the source of matter as possible. Material that is not heavily pre-selected as you would expect it from many internet sources and that requires to really dig in and look for appropriate samples (an own unique recording of a witnessed counselling session might be superior to your example for instance).
However you make this sound so dismissive. If the output is the same, the source for the used sample material is absolutely irrelevant.

[Peterson]

I get what you mean, and I guess it's a pretty opinionated point of view, but it's honestly how I feel. Hey, if someone whose work I love can find something with ease and expediency, more power to them. When it comes to what I do, though, I have serious regrets re: taking the easy route in past projects and such. I just think that ultimately if I'm to present something to an audience, it should be a labor of love and fussed over until as close to my vision as it can get. This means being neurotic about every detail.

[Balor/SS1535]

You can sort of tell who's willing to work hard at these sorts of things versus who's lazier based on their justifications. Abundance in the digital age is convenient yet clearly expedites and therefore cheapens "the search." Spending time finding, acquiring and using the found sound has a more personal and relevant function in one's worl when more effort and physical energy is required.  Give me home recorded tapes from thrift stores and vhs copies of old documentaries any day over somebody's YouTube channel. You can find some media-exploited surviving victim of some predator crying on camera for your PE project or whatever quite easily, but instead you might look at secondhand shops for tapes of trauma counseling sessions. If you're supposedly dedicated to your craft/art, the work involved should reflect that.

I am not so sure that just because a sample was puled from the internet that the search for it was necessarily easier or quicker.  As GEWALTMONOPOL suggested above, the sheer volume of digital material often means that the process of finding the perfect sample is often long and difficult.

[Bloated Slutbag]

There is no point in being obscure simply for the sake of obscurity.

This may or may not be true, but I think I need to get N. Senada's input on the subject.

[Cementimental]

100gb of high quality recordings of malfunctioning equipment, via Tom Whitwell (Music Thing) -

https://zenodo.org/record/3384388?fbclid=IwAR28gQw9pJ2d6dMkOF1GqaFo2NIcl6wiKJBJTjmdcw1HdgG6VsoM8kWjNoo#.XYjCZZNKjUJ

This dataset is a sound dataset for malfunctioning industrial machine investigation and inspection (MIMII dataset). It contains the sounds generated from four types of industrial machines, i.e. valves, pumps, fans, and slide rails. Each type of machine includes seven individual product models*1, and the data for each model contains normal sounds (from 5000 seconds to 10000 seconds) and anomalous sounds (about 1000 seconds). To resemble a real-life scenario, various anomalous sounds were recorded (e.g., contamination, leakage, rotating unbalance, and rail damage). Also, the background noise recorded in multiple real factories was mixed with the machine sounds. The sounds were recorded by eight-channel microphone array with 16 kHz sampling rate and 16 bit per sample. The MIMII dataset assists benchmark for sound-based machine fault diagnosis. Users can test the performance for specific functions e.g., unsupervised anomaly detection, transfer learning, noise robustness, etc. The detail of the dataset is described in [1][2].

This dataset is made available by Hitachi, Ltd. under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

[NaturalOrthodoxy]

There is no point in being obscure simply for the sake of obscurity.

This may or may not be true, but I think I need to get N. Senada's input on the subject.

At first I read that as Neil Sedaka

[theworldisawarfilm]

100gb of high quality recordings of malfunctioning equipment, via Tom Whitwell (Music Thing) -

https://zenodo.org/record/3384388?fbclid=IwAR28gQw9pJ2d6dMkOF1GqaFo2NIcl6wiKJBJTjmdcw1HdgG6VsoM8kWjNoo#.XYjCZZNKjUJ

This dataset is a sound dataset for malfunctioning industrial machine investigation and inspection (MIMII dataset). It contains the sounds generated from four types of industrial machines, i.e. valves, pumps, fans, and slide rails. Each type of machine includes seven individual product models*1, and the data for each model contains normal sounds (from 5000 seconds to 10000 seconds) and anomalous sounds (about 1000 seconds). To resemble a real-life scenario, various anomalous sounds were recorded (e.g., contamination, leakage, rotating unbalance, and rail damage). Also, the background noise recorded in multiple real factories was mixed with the machine sounds. The sounds were recorded by eight-channel microphone array with 16 kHz sampling rate and 16 bit per sample. The MIMII dataset assists benchmark for sound-based machine fault diagnosis. Users can test the performance for specific functions e.g., unsupervised anomaly detection, transfer learning, noise robustness, etc. The detail of the dataset is described in [1][2].

This dataset is made available by Hitachi, Ltd. under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Very cool.