Music for Video : A Portal For Producers

A mix of songs that are inspired, euphoric, and a little flirty. Tracks that remind you that it's getting warmer outside every day, and things are starting to grow.

As a follow up to our moody April Showers Mix, a collection of instrumentals for new loves, new creative challenges, and that feeling when the air outside perfectly matches your body temperature. A mix for noticing flowers on trees. For when all the girls start wearing skirts without tights again, and you leave your jacket at home. Let's go outside and enjoy every minute together.

Have you spotted Free Music Archive tracks out in the wild? Send us your links.

This is Snoop Dog's favorite Music for Video collection, because it's perfect for drizzle.

A mix of mellow, reflective and moody songs, perfect for watching Spring rainstorms outside your window. It's like lying upside down off the edge of your bed thinking about someone far away. Like walking home early in the morning, after sleeping somewhere you shouldn't have, while the streets are still wet. It's a mix that makes you want to throw away all your adderall and start feeling again.

The Free Music Archive is full of interesting finds, but some of them are easier to find than others. I was recently chatting with a talented animator, who told me she scours our Sound Collage page for her projects. It made me realize that our Music for Video series is slanted towards entire songs for your projects, when sometimes you might just need a little 4 second long doodad.

For this special edition, we present a collection of elements to repurpose for your intro bumpers, loops, and transitions. From simple beeps, mellow beats, and the occasional bark, we hope this helps you fill your digital craft box full of sonic whatevers to cut, paste and cover with glitter.

In setting out to discover how the music on the Free Music Archive gets put to use, a good place to start seemed to be with Jared C. Balogh. Since he started sharing his music for free online in the mid-aughts, he’s seen it applied in any way you could imagine -- from student films to promotions for a public television series. it can be a challenge to find time to make music and corresponding with people from around the world interested in using his music in their projects, and then keeping track of how it’s used.

When you hear the depth and range of his genre-spanning catalog, it’s no wonder that so many other artists hear things that resonate with their own work. While Jared’s been recording since the 90’s, he started his own label, Altered State Reflections, in 2006 and used it to launch his Trans Atlantic Rage project. He began recording under his own name in 2010, which he discussed with us about a year ago on the blog.

For our new Music for Video interview series, he took some time out to chat with us again, this time about how it feels to see your work used everyplace from motion pictures to podcasts.

What’s it like to have people constantly sharing how they’ve used your music with you? What are those e-mails like to get?

At times it is overwhelming, but I find ways to manage it. More than half of my time now is devoted to answering e-mails, IM sessions, updating websites, posting on social networks etc.... with all the usages of my music. I guess you can say it is a good problem to have. My time for writing music is dramatically cut in half. It is more than a full time job (7 days a week) several hours a day. I want to post everything on my website because I am honored and grateful that all of these people spend all this time creating something with the music I create. I watch all videos, films, documentaries, listen to all podcast, radio, newscast etc.... Then I leave a comments. I don't want to come off as being ungrateful. No ways do I want it to stop. I am enjoying every minute of it. It is fun and exciting!

Want to see your music live long and prosper? Star Studios in Oklahoma City are seeking music for use in Star Trek fan films. The independent studio provides set and props free of charge for anyone who wants to make thier own non-commercial productions, and they are close to completing their main set, the bridge of a Constitution Class Starship. Plus, they are part of an association of fan film producers that has a good working relationship with CBS/Paramount, who own the Star Trek franchise.

The group is interested specifically in instrumental, mostly orchestral songs, and feel that loops and electronic tracks are not appropriate to the era. You can contact them for more information on their website.

Cozy up next to your space heater's comforting humm, rest a warm laptop over your thighs, and use your headphones as earmuffs as you enjoy a collection of instrumentals made by machines. For our latest Music for Video selection, a mix of beeps, buzzes, clicks and whirrs. Few of these sounds come from an instrument you learned in band class. They are perfect for your sexy robot love stories, hackday montages, and lonely urban sunrises.

For our latest Music for Video selection, we offer a wintery mix of instrumental tracks perfect for your projects. The first half features a light dusting of gentle piano sounds full of nostalgia  As the mix grows into a full on blizzard, the tracks turn more dissonent and stressful, like a tree heavy with ice leaning over your roof. We hope this free mix helps kick off an exciting new year of projects.

Don't forget to send us links to your proud creations. We'd love to share them all over town.

For our Past Re-Imagined As The Future video mashup contest, remixers were invited to use tracks from the Free Music Archive as the soundtrack to the Prelinger Archives. But what does that sound like, exactly? The answer is a lot of dub, some tape pops and hisses, and an overall attraction to all that's dark and strange.

We've assembled just a sliver of the songs that inspired our remixers here below, and we hope they'll continue to inspire future creative works of all types. Don't forget to keep voting for your favorite contest entries on our voting portal from now through Sunday, November 25 at 5pm ET.

After you've wiped all the makeup off your zombie actor friends, it's time for the real scarey part -- picking out music for your Horror flick. Music to Video has assembled a mix that will send shivers down your spine, make all the ghouls dance, and get grandma to climb out of her grave, just to tell you to turn down the volume.

You could also use these tracks as you prepare your entries for our video contest with the Prelinger Archives. May I suggest their footage of a Halloween Party or Experiments in the Revival of Organisms? Deadline for this contest is creepily close: November 4th.