Free Sound Design
- Featured, Opinion
- Album, ASX, Audiosweets, Free SFX, Sound Design, zFX
- May 28, 2021
My interest in Sound Design began years before I started in Radio – I used to search for videos on YouTube of Movie Sound Design and then discovered foley – it blew my mind.
In my teens, I began creating mock Imaging pieces to send to Radio Stations as “demos”. While, they are horrific to listen to now – I had one big problem.
Sound Design
Sound Design then was hard to come by if you were starting out, sending demos or producing for Internet Radio (which I did for four years). I was either hit with the problem of not having any money to buy a package for €100+ and there was little option of free sounds, other than really poorly produced Youtube.
When I eventually got working in Irish Radio – there was heaps of FX Packages but the problem here was that they were ALL crack copies, dodgy downloads. Totally unethical and quite sly. You are just a tiny step away from a law suit in doing that..
The option I was eventually left with was – producing my own! They were basically produced by splicing instruments and sounds together to make cohesive sounds.
After several years I launched my first album through my website, zFX. This was aimed at smaller budget stations who couldn’t afford a huge library, but would get something unique and different from others in their market.
The success was surprising, so I released a free version so even more people could discover it and more people would have access to a free package, where they just report the usage. That was probably the best idea ever – the orders came in every hour or so, and still to this day are getting regular downloads.
I have been very fortunate to have now got two officially published albums, “Sound Designer Vol. 2” which I produced for Boost Music and Zone Music – which is available for broadcast by those registered with their music rights organisations.
More recently I was delighted to have published “ASX Softees” with Audiosweets and S2Blue. This package was completely reimagined and designed for this who need sounds that down get in the way, ones that are light and perfect for mixing with older and more laid back songs.
I have another few albums in the pipework and that I am currently working on for ASX and Audiosweets. It’s been a heck of a journey on these new albums and the sound will be something not heard before in their series.