The Sound Collectors’ Club

 

For those of you who’ve never heard of The Sound Collectors’ Club, at its core it’s a hybrid of crowd sourcing and community based sharing of sound effects. The club works on themes which are open to suggestion by the community and change every couple of months. For a small annual fee of £20 you can become a member and get involved.

To get access to the communities contributions to each theme, you need to submit at least one sound effect yourself, after which you’ll be granted access to the relevant Google Drive folder. Turning your one sound effect into many.

Once you have access to a theme, you can download and use the sound effects for pretty much anything, royalty free! The only stipulation is that you don’t just repackage and sell the sound effects in the form that they are on the club.

So, not too long after discovering the SCC on Tonebenders podcast episode 5 featuring an interview from The Sound Collectors’ Club creator Michael Maroussas, I decided to join. After reading through the themes, I thought “Open & Close” would be a good place to start. I recorded the hinges and door lock from my front door with my sE2200a mic, edited and added appropriate metadata using free application Wave Agent (a great tool if you’re on a budget). Once I had my files together, I took a picture of the door and how it was mic’d (pictures aren’t a must but are welcome) and uploaded to my personal SCC Google Drive folder. Low and behold, a few days later I was granted access to “Open & Close” sound effects from recordists all over the world.

As I’m very much in the early stages of my career in audio, having access to these sound effects not only helps me build my library, they are also a valuable reference tool to think about when I’m out recording. Insight into how the pros record and info about their recording setups are invaluable.

So if you’re looking to build your library, join a great community or simply enjoy recording and sharing sounds, check out The Sound Collectors’ Club and get involved.

You can also find updates of newly added effects on The Sound Collector’s Club Twitter, so you’ll never miss a new sound!

Tribute to the Wilhelm Scream – Crowd-sourced Sound Library – Jef Aerts

A short while back I stumbled on a tweet from a fellow Sound Designer Jef Aerts. As the title shows, Jef had the great idea of building a crowd-sourced sound library of probably one of the most well known sound effects (you’d probably recognise it even if you didn’t know it by name), the Wilhelm Scream.

For years this sound effect has found it’s way into so many productions, here’s a compilation showing just a few of the places it’s popped up.

So, Jef’s idea in his own words;

“The Wilhelm scream has probably become one of the most famous sound effect in film history. We, sound designers, try to religiously use this original scream in as many projects as possible. But wouldn’t it be fun if every sound designer recorded his own Wilhelm scream as close to the original sound as possible. This way we can use a Wilhelm sound-alike without damaging our wonderful tradition. As a bonus we can send our fellow sound designer an email telling him that you used his scream in project “x”.”

The original submission date Jef set was June 1st, but I believe due to a queue of people wanting to contribute it’s been pushed back to allow more time.

You can find Jef’s original post with all the ins and outs of whats needed for your submission here; Jef’s Blog

Of course, as I thought this was a cool little project, I hopped on it and recorded my submission

 

Harder than I thought to get it as close as possible!

So, if you’re a fan of the Wilhelm Scream and would like a sound library of crowd-sourced samples in the near future, head over to Jef’s blog and get recording.