Free sound effects

Sound effects are a crucial part of audio production. Sound effects are used in a broad spectrum of media: games, video, music. Produtique aims to offer a broad spectrum of free sound effects, available for anyone to download.

What are sound effects?

Sound effects come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Explosion sounds, ding dong sound effects, roaring dragons.. anything can fall into the sound effects category. During movie production, these sound effects are usually created in an artificial way through foley. Foley is best described as reproducing every day sounds and adding them after a movie is done. This enhances the movie greatly and gives it a bit more spice. If you’ve ever watched an eighties kung-fu movie, you’ve had your fair share of post-production punches and kicks. Ever played a World War 2 video game? Every shot you fire with that M1 Garand was meticulously recorded.

Of course, foley isn’t the only way to create sound effects. A lot of sound effects are simply recorded with a field recorder.

When to use sound effects in music production?

Judging by a producer standpoint, you use sound effects whenever said sound effect adds to your track. Don’t add ‘just because’.

What sort of sound effects can you use for music production?

When producing music, I’d say there are a few sound effects that can make your track more interesting.

  • Sweeps
    The most simple form of a sweep is a white noise sample going from inaudible to audible in a linear fashion, or vice versa. These are excellent to introduce a break, or to use  in the dreaded ‘drop’ of a track. Sweeps are used frequently in electronic dance music. You can basically use ANYTHING to create a cool sweep. Reverse the reverb tail of a vocal or synthesizer, or use part of a reversed ride. Anything goes.
  • Impacts
    Kicks with reverb and some pitch bending are often times used as an impact effect. Usually an impact is used to signal a transition in a track. Start of the track, end of the track, drop or break.. all are perfect for an impact.
  • Atmosphere
    Atmosphere is a rather broad term. It is frequently used to describe longer sound effects that add just a bit extra to your track. Weird voices in the background, a fading pad, some fluttering sound effect.
  • Real recordings
    These are your typical foley sound effects. Barking dogs, children laughing, explosions.. pretty much anything can fall into this category.

Where can you find sound effects?

There are various placed where you can find excellent free sound effects, Produtique being one of them. We are big fans of the following websites.

Freesound.org

Freesound.org is probably one of the biggest online databases with, well, free sounds! Sound effects being one of them. They are planning to offer 500.000 sound effects by the end of 2020. That’s a LOT of sounds.

Zapsplat.com

Although these guys aren’t nearly as big as Freesound.org, they offer a lot of interesting free sound effects.

Freesoundeffects.com

Freesoundeffects.com offers about 10.000 free sound effects. Next to that, they offer a pro library with 100.000 sounds.

Produtique.com

Yes! Produtique.com. Although we do not have nearly as much sound effects as other websites, we’re aiming to grow every day. And you can help by uploading your sound effects.

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