Need suggestion for "documentary" music . . .

[LGO]

I'm making approx. a 30 minute video about the history of a special purpose library here in town. It'll be made into a DVD that the library can use to attract groups of new patrons as well as in soliciting donations and grants.

I'm in the process of doing the research and gathering old photos and (hopefully) videos for the content.

This is going to be a documentary . . . so I need to have background documentary music. I've been browsing royalty free music web sites like wavtracks.com, studioland.com, stock20.com, audiosparx.com, etc. until I'm blue in the face but haven't found anything quite right, yet.

I'm looking for something semi-serious. Anyone have any suggestions on where to look? What to look for? A name of a particular selection?

Many thanks!

LGO

[WestbrookNH]

I don't know if one exists, but you might be able to find a non-copyrighted performance of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, which I think would be good backdrop for a documentary about a library. It's music that everybody has heard bits and pieces of, so it's not totally unfamiliar, yet it is not something most folks have heard a lot of.

If i remember correctly, the royalty fees for what you're doing would be pretty small, anyway. You are not redistributing the work, but presenting it publically in a public milieu or perhaps over the air in a one-time broadcast.

I think I saw posted in this forum once a web site where you can pay a few dollars and download a license. If I remember correctly, the fees were pretty small.

.

[MrA]

You can either go to Ulead's web site and click on 3rd party partners, or go directly to http://www.smartsound.com and find what you need. There is a whole category just for such style videos. The cost is about $100 US dollars per cd set, but, ULead has a Smartsound set for about $30. Also, on the Smartsound site there is a compatability chart showing library's work with what software. All of the sound libraries work with the auto music ability of Smartsound, except were noted in the chart. On the Smartsound site, you can preview the music as well.

[meshuken]

I like these two sites:

http://www.sonnyboo.com/music/music.htm

http://ghostnotes.blogspot.com/

Both are royalty free music sites, but make sure that you follow their requests before using the music (Sonnyboo asks for credit, William asks for you to request his permission, but is quite generous in letting you use his songs...)

Thanks for asking - in this new digital world people don't seem to care about the theft of commercial music, one just has to look at YouTube where every other video has pirated music, even some of the videos people here have made and linked to contain copyrighted material.

As Sonnyboo puts it:

All royalty free - meaning download & use it - there's no lawsuit if you do. One of the common things occuring today thanks to DV is that everyone feels they can just steal popular or even copyrighted music & use it in their movies. It's just music right ? Well, what's the difference between you stealing music & some other DV filmmaker stealing parts of your movie & using it in their movie? It's all art & it's all protected. Here is a solution - use this music for free and don't worry.

All you have to do is credit the songwriter - Peter John Ross (www.sonnyboo.com) and the music is your to use for free. They may not be "Beatles" songs, but they can be the difference between your movie getting popular, or getting a "Cease & Desist" court order. And there is no more music for sale on this site or any other site from Peter John Ross. These are just a donation to the public domain.

[njdowding]

I would take a look here

http://freeplaymusic.com/

They have a great search engine where you can put in mood etc to find what you want and the music is all good quality stuff.

Nick

[LGO]

Thank you all for your suggestions and I apologize for the tardiness of this reply. Been working on a deadline for the "day job" that has consumed waking moments this past week.

WestbrookNH . . . Yes, I have heard Bach's Brandenburg Concerto. Have a midi file of it someplace in my archives. The problem I have (besides finding a version in the public domain) is that I need various lengths of it for several parts of the presentation. I have an audio editor so maybe I can play around with that.

MrAmigo2121 . . . I had completely forgotten about smartsound! Thanks! I am basically a clod when it comes to creating music (can't carry a tune or read a note) so I dismissed smartsound a long time ago. I like the idea of being able to set the length of the audio type you need, but does that really work well? I'll check it out. I do have a concern about copyright since the library group wants to also distribute some DVDs to individuals in consideration of a small "donation" like on Public Television fundraising. Wonder if smartsound would consider that "selling"?

meshuken . . . thanks for the suggestions to sonybono.com and the ghostnote.blogspot.com. I'll check these out as well. Never heard of them before so I appreciate you making me aware of them.

njdowding . . . freeplaymusic.com I have visited before and like, but in this instance the "Terms of Use" are a bit confusing. I can read it where a license must be purchased for each song I want to use. That might be a bit pricey for this exercise and group. I guess I need to just call/write freeplaymusic explaining the situation and see what they say. Thanks for mentioning it!

Thanks, again, to all and now back to the deadline.

Regards,

LGO

[htchien]

Maybe you can check the Audio Archive from Internet Archive.

http://www.archive.org/details/audio

Hope this helps.

H.T.