Visual and Performing Arts: Sounds

About the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive

Before MP3s, CDs, cassettes and vinyl records, people listened to … cylinders. First made of tinfoil, then wax and plastic, cylinder recordings, commonly the size and shape of a soda can, were the first commercially produced sound recordings in the decades around the turn of the 20th century.

This searchable database features all types of recordings made from the late 1800s to early 1900s, including popular songs, vaudeville acts, classical and operatic music, comedic monologues, ethnic and foreign recordings, speeches and readings.

Here's a collection of NASA sounds from historic spaceflights and current missions. You can hear the roar of a space shuttle launch or Neil Armstrong's "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind" every time you get a phone call if you make our sounds your ringtone. Or, you can hear the memorable words "Houston, we've had a problem," every time you make an error on your computer.

In his free time, linguist Rick Aschmann collected a treasure trove of information on the English dialects of North America on his website, North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns. The centerpiece of the site is a hugely detailed interactive dialect map of North America. The map is linked to a huge collection of audio samples of local dialects.

Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world. Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time.

Zapsplat.com is a free, non-profit sound effects library and community featuring a high quality range of sound effects . Their aim is to help teachers, students, aspiring creatives and everyone else gain access to a range of sound effects for their work, and work alongside a pool of talented sound designers by helping them gain valuable exposure

A collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse. Freesound provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to: browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a "sounds-like" type of browsing and more, upload and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license and interact with fellow sound-artists.

Thousands of free sound effects, sound clips, and straight up sounds. Can be used in a variety of sound projects including Video Sound Scores, Movie Scoring, Game Design, Powerpoint Presentations, Sound Boards, and the list goes on. A great source for copyright free sounds.