GowlerMusic has released Movie Dialogue Vol.2, the second installment of their free movie dialogue sample pack.
One thing that kept me sane during childhood and then later the high school was watching super old horror, sci-fi, and kung fu b-movies.
See also: 99 Sound Effects Is A FREE Sound Library By 99SoundsSomething about the terrible absurdity and campiness just spelled peak human condition to me.
Anyway, back in 2007 I watched Fred Dekker’s 1986 classic ‘Night of the Creeps’, possibly the greatest movie ever made and a crowning achievement in high art. Something about that movie made me want to extract the audio track and cut up some of the cooler lines and use them as intros for track.
Now, that’s not something new. Artists have been doing that forever – White Zombie sampled ‘Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!’ on ‘Thunder Kiss ‘65’, Kate Bush sampled ‘Night of the Demon’ on ‘Hounds of Love’, and even the Fab 4 sampled a radio production of ‘King Lear’ on ‘I am the Walrus’.
Entire genres like horror punk and psychobilly are built on starting tracks with some obscure 50s/60s movie sample. Also – early Wu-Tang Clan, anyone?
And it’s no wonder, too – there’s something about the buzzy, mid-heavy sound of older movies that’s just immediately inspiring.
Well, now you don’t have to rummage through dozens of hours of terrible old movies (though you should) to find usable stuff.
GowlerMusic are offering a pack of 50 samples – featuring both dialogue and FX from various old movies and shows, completely free to download AND royalty-free – a great way to kickstart a song idea or something to manipulate to add a bit of interest in an already-existing track.
You can both download and preview all the samples on their Bandcamp page. Just click on ‘Buy Digital Album’, write in 0 as the price, click on ‘download to your computer’, and try your best to silence your consciousness at night for the next week. Do keep in mind that this will add you to the company’s mailing list.
GowlerMusic’s website is also worth checking out, as they not only provide a large number of completely free sample packs, but all of their premium stuff only costs something ridiculously low, with most of them as low as £1. That’s literally insane.
More info: Movie Dialogue Vol.2 Sample Pack (available in a wide variety of formats between 4.8 MB and 37.7 MB)
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7 Comments
4113ND3
onThe only way this is truly royalty free, is if the movies they are sampled from are in public domain, which I doubt many are (if any). Don’t want to be an ass about it, but it’s a bit scetchy to sample from copyrighted work and sell it, even if you can enter 0 $ as the price. There are plenty of misconceptions about sampling, what is legal, how long samples you can use, and I can tell you none of it’s legal. Even a 1 second sample is copyright material, and in theory someone could sue you or have your track taken down from platforms for using it. In reality that’s never going to happen of course, but I just wanted to point this out.
Michal Ochedowski
onThat’s a valid point. I was wondering about it myself. I will stick to my first thought about not using this sample pack, just to be on the safe side. The only workaround about legal terms would be using a sample and modifying it beyond the point of recognition. I once read about an artist who actually dared people to identify any of his sampled sounds.
Brenny C
onI’m almost certain these samples, and many other packs on Gowler’s site, are from public domain media.
SNEED
onUmmmmm. It say’s on the website pertaining to the free “Movie Seeds dialogue’s” sample pack that it is 100% ROYALTY FREE! Did you or did you NOT SNEED!
sneed
onEhem. *clears throat*
sneed
SNEED
onI meant to reply to JIMMY. There goes the joke. Goddammit.
4113ND3
onJust because it’s says it’s royalty free on the seller’s site doesn’t guarantee it’s royalty free. Anyone can sample whatever song or movie and sell it and claim it’s royalty free, but that doesn’t make it so. Sometimes the sellers might not even know that what they are selling isn’t royalty free. For instance possibly the most sampled thing ever the “amen break” isn’t copyright free. But thousands of people have used it, tweaked it, sold it, bought it. You might sample something from a record, slice it and process it, but it still isn’t legally yours to sell.
Stating that something is 100% royalty free is what all sample pack creators do, all it means that when you purchase (or free download) their sample pack, you can then use it in your music and even make money of from it, without any further fees. That doesn’t guarantee that samples are royalty free if the seller didn’t personally record them.
That said, there are plenty of old movies especially from the 1950s that are in the public domain and listening to these they sound like they fit that time period, so they most likely are royalty free. However if you’d have movie samples from the 1980s and so on, it’s very rare that many (if any) are public domain, from the more famous ones in particular. It was not my intention to attack on this seller in particular, I just generally wanted point out the legality of sampling something and selling it forward. Didn’t expect anyone to get that upset over it.