The following are recommendations from Richard Byrne from his blog: Free Technology for Teachers
The Free Music Archive provides free, high-quality, music in a wide range of genres. The content on Free Music Archive is used under various creative commons licenses. The New York State Music Fund provided initial funding for FMA. FMA
seeks to maintain a high-quality resource through the use of selected
curators who approve or deny all submissions to the collection. Anyone
can download music from FMA
for use in podcasts, videos, and other digital presentation formats.
The music collections can be searched by genre or by curator.
PodSafe Audio,
is a resource that I discovered last summer and had some of my students
use last year. PodSafe Audio is good place to locate and download free
music for multimedia presentations. PodSafe Audio is a community of musicians who create music and share it for the purpose of fair-use in podcasts.
Sound Bible is a resource for finding and downloading free sound clips, sound effects, and sound bites. All of the sounds on Sound Bible
are either public domain or labeled with a Creative Commons license.
You can find sounds for use in podcasts, videos, slideshows, or other
multimedia creations.
Royalty Free Music hosts music tracks that can be reused in numerous ways. Royalty Free Music
charges the general public for their downloads, but students and
teachers can download quite a bit of the music for free. To access the
free music tracks students and teachers should visit the education page on Royalty Free Music.
Jamendo is a source of free and legal music downloads. The music on Jamendo
comes from the artists who upload it themselves. While not all of the
music is licensed for re-use, there is a substantial collection of
music labeled with a Creative Commons license. As always, before
re-using any of the music you download make sure it is labeled for
re-use.
From the same people that brought us the great computational search engine Wolfram Alpha comes Wolfram Tones. Wolfram Tones uses algorithms, music theory, and sound samples to generate new collections of sounds. Visitors to Wolfram Tones can experiment with sounds and rhythms to make their own sounds. Wolfram Tones
allows visitors to choose samples from fifteen different genres of
music on which to build their own sounds. Once a genre is selected
visitors can then alter the rhythms, instrumentation, and pitch mapping
of their sounds. When satisfied with their creations, users can
download their sounds or have them sent directly to their cell phones.
Monkey Machine is a free web-based program that allows students to experiment with drum set sounds and rhythms. Using Monkey Machine students can customize the selection of drums and cymbals in their virtual drum set. Monkey Machine
also allows students to customize the tempo in their drum tracks and
the frequency with which each drum or cymbal is played. All tracks
created using Monkey Machine can be downloaded as MIDI files.
