IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

The credit crunch is affecting everyone, especially struggling artists and film makers. Putting together a library of royalty free music can be expensive and time consuming, so I came up with a great idea that will save you time and money. If you fancy a bargain?....you could save yourself £23.00 if download all 3 albums (Music 4 Movies, Direction, Out of the darkness) of bobsongs music for media in one convenient zip file for a CRAZY bargain basement price of only £40.00... thats 42 tracks for less than £1.00 per track....I must be mad!
Hurry and take advantage of this incredible offer before I change my mind!!!
"A useful addition to any movie makers royalty free library. Recommended."
Go to http://www.bobsongsmusic.com and download yourself a bargain!
All the best
Bob Chambers.

Newer readers may wonder why Bob does not get short shrift here like some other advertisers ... well he has posted in the past. As a result of his earlier messages I used a couple of his tracks in the last UNICA promo film I made.

But the general theme of economy rings a bell for most of us. The "Toolbox" page on the main website lists some free programs that are very useful and in previous threads some other ideas have been suggested. Graeme was keen on Celtx the organising suite of programs for film makers.

What other money-saving ideas can people suggest?

Dave

I'm looking for music reminiscent of the 19i00s. Royalty free of course, and am tending to use Band-in-a-Box (check it out at http://www.pgmusic.com/ ) so I can 'create it, or adapt out of copyright music. It copes with all forms of music though.

BIAB is an amazing piece of software, intended and written for musicians essentially. However, it is fairly easy to get to grips with from a 'create a piece of music' point of view - automatic, even, and the beauty of it is since you create the music - or an interpretation of an existing song - the perfoming rights are yours. Choose out-of-copyright music - and the royalties belong to you too. However, adapting existing music does take a bit of time if you're not a musician or had any musical training.

Be warned though - if you download a demo version of the package, write off about three days ... it is very addictive!! (Especially as it can create brand new, never heard before melodies with a start, an end, and a 'middle eight' - using virtually any combination of instruments you like to put together, including the techniques and sounds of well known musicians (eg - write a new Fats Waller or George Shearing melody!). Tip - when you create a piece of music you like - save it immediately as a wav (or mp3) file - otherwise, you'll never hear it again! The full package also includes tutorial help for guitar and piano etc., and it will score any (midi) music input into it so you can print it out if you want the sheet music for each instrument. As I said, this is for musicians primarily, but great for film makers.

Price - well, I bought it years and years ago, so I just upgrade it every other year - I think it costs around the £100 mark for the full whack. Less endowed versions - probaby around £40 - check it out.

There are also stacks and stacks of sites providing BIAB music you can freely download and adapt. I have over 10,000 songs and pieces of traditional music on my machine (thankfully, there is a very good search feature in it as well to find a piece you want!)

And, if you do go for a demo, don't blame me if you get nothing done for a few days!!

(Thinks ... maybe an article for FVM on it??)

PS - There is a demo movie on the Home page of the site - it shows what is new, for musicians. However, don't panic! There is a 'Melody' button in the tool bar - if you press that, it creates a random chord sequence (for ninnies like me) - so you don't have to understand chord sequences. If you don't like the sequence, press it again (it actuially comes up with a page full of options - for starters, just accept all the defaultas, then explore option by olption).

The basic Band in a Box set costs around £80 for a first-time buyer and there are various packages of the program and music samples going up to about £345. All but the basic version have the RealBand feature which helps expand and develop your creations.

The demo versions last around 7 weeks - so there is plenty of time to try them out ... but the demo versions do not let you save compositions and a couple of specialised functions are disabled.

So good ... but not that cheap. (I'm mean!)

Dave

Oh, more expensive than I thought - as I say, I upgrade only every other year - that used to be around £35 or so. But it looks like there's a new feature - this 'real-time' music. Originally - or with the basic version, all the sounds are midi generated (so you really need a pretty good sound card or 'sound font' installed. However, with this new featuyre, it seems they're using genuine samples. Might be worth an upgrade before time. On the other hand, 2009 isn't so far away ... I might wait for that.

Still not had my FVM. Not sure I can cope much longer - especially as we have a regional meeting on Saturday where content of the area newsletter is being discussed. Oh woe and triple times woe!!

I have Bobsongs music, a good buy. No, I don't know him other than his posts here. Any more in the pipeline Bob?

ned c

Hi Ned,
Thanks for using my music in your projects, I would be very interested to see how you have utilised my tracks on your films and would be more than happy to post the films or clips on my website if that is at all possible. Just to view them would be a buzz!

In between my day job as a community bus driver I've been recording some more country songs which I have available on my other website http://www.bob-chambers.com and am currently recording another album of my songs, only this time it's a rock/pop collection.

I have added a few loops and some new tracks to the bobsongsmusic website and I look forward to writing and recording a new album of music for movies, however, it would help me greatly if I had some feedback from the people who come to my site and are interested in using my music if they gave me some feedback. I don't want to record a whole batch of new material that isn't suited to the type of films that are being made. It would really inspire me if I new what kind of tracks film makers are looking for, so any suggestions?

Bob Chambers

My band are quite happy for people to use our tracks in their movies as long as we are told and get the credit of course.

If you go here http://www.mp3unsigned.com/showmp3.asp?mp3id=54814

You can listen to a sample of our tracks. If you like it, let me know, and i'll be happy to burn you a CD.