New Product Release: Royalty Free Music Library, UniqueTracks Inc., has just released another album in its series of retro 60s/70s era production music soundtracks.
Retro Groove & Disco is in all ways old school. The rhythms, the arrangements, the instrumentation, even the recording techniques, all hark back to a period before digitization. Performances evoke the 1960s, 70s and 80s with a concentration on 1970s era soundtrack style – think of the Rocky soundtrack as a guide – lots of strings and brass played over solid funk grooves (“the Philadelphia sound”).
The album also visits jazz styles including acoustic music and “jazz fusion” – a mix of jazz and funk elements with electronic instruments. If you remember the music of Chuck Mangione (trumpet) and Herb Alpert, you’ll recognize some of the other instrumental music here, it combines mellow trumpet playing over what are basically disco beats.
All in all, this is a unique and varied album that truly is something new to the royalty free music space.
New Product Release: We’ve added another in our series of retro sounding soundtracks from the 70s and 80s. This album features TV show themes written in a big, orchestral style by Emmy Award winning composer Misha Segal.
With over 40 individual themes, Retro TV Show Themes is packed with music. These tracks are all written in the TV production styles of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. There is music in the style of classic 1970s TV movie dramas like Dallas and Dynasty, game show themes, chat show intros, family TV-sitcom themes and music for informercial use. There is also plenty of music for broadcast news and political show productions.
All of the music is upbeat including several tracks written in the style of the grand orchestral fanfares used at the Academy and Emmy Awards presentations. Much of the music is perfect for Corporate productions and there is also a good bit of patriotic music for American Independence Day, July 4th celebrations or for any traditionally American projects.
New Product Release: Royalty Free Music Library, UniqueTracks, has just released a new album of soundtracks written in the style of the grand Hollywood films of the past. This album was composed by Emmy Award winning film composer Misha Segal.
Retro Hollywood Movie Soundtracks is a collection of film scores that captures the Hollywood of bygone eras from pre-war black-and-white movies up to the movies of the 1970s.
Included in this set are grand orchestral fanfares, underscores for suspense thrillers, film noir themes, a good helping of early Dixieland jazz, action adventure and cowboy western scores, spy movie themes and romantic comedy cues, all performed in a retro orchestral style from Hollywood’s glorious past.
Storytelling has been used to impart knowledge from prehistory to today. Stories captivate listeners and accelerate the retention process.
The only thing that has changed about storytelling over the years is the tools used to transmit those stories to others. Springing from origins in oral transmission, storytelling has been shared in pictures, stained glass, written text, radio waves, and television. Now, with the advent of increasingly powerful computers and software, storytelling has entered its next phase of development…digital storytelling.
Education of Total Immersion
As educators, you’re very aware that students of all ages learn in different ways. Some are auditory, many are visual, and there’s an entire segment of the population that is so kinesthetic that they simply must get their hands dirty (so-to-speak) before they’ll learn much of anything.
Digital storytelling can be a beautiful melding of all three styles of learning. Students will deepen their understanding of the world and make better sense of it. Projects will help them sharpen their powers of observation and develop a sense of creativity.
In the process, narration, visuals, and hands on creation has the unique ability to meet all learning styles in a single project.
Ways to Implement Digital Storytelling in Education
Creating a digital project isn’t much different than developing any other type of project. You’ll have a brainstorming session and select a project. Extensive research will be conducted to gather the materials needed for the project and an outline will be made.
The only real difference will be in the development.
You’ll need to storyboard the project. Because you’re bringing together video, slides, narration, role play, interviews, and a great deal more into a single project, you’ll want to draw out the progression in detail. This will allow you to assign individual parts to single students or groups of students while you act as the executive producer overseeing the entire project.
Project ideas are limited only by your creativity, but here is an extensive starter list. Try some, merge several into a single project, and customize them to your students’ needs.
Meet an artist, public figure, musician, etc.
Oral histories
Fictional stories
How to videos
The story of [insert subject]
Book reports
Poetry readings
Recap of a trip (summer vacation, field trip, etc.)
Cooking meals from other cultures
A day at my parents’ work
Ponder your current curriculum for areas where converting your current approach to a digital storytelling session might make a bigger impact on your students.
21st Century Minstrel
Just as people would come from miles around to hear the minstrel in the town square tell the stories of heroes and watershed moments of history. So, digital storytelling will captivate your students and fix in their minds those key stories they will carry with them their entire lives.
How to Use Music As An Aid to Digital Storytelling
The role of a music soundtrack in a multimedia presentation is similar to the use of spices in cooking. Used correctly, adding just the right spices brings out the flavor in a dish and enhances its overall taste. Spices shouldn’t dominate, but they should be a presence, contributing to the overall effect.
The soundtrack is not the main ingredient in a media project either. Its role is to support and to bring out the drama already built-in to the production’s story. Using music soundtracks expands the story’s power to communicate.
UniqueTracks "Royalty Free" Music CDs provide music that can be used in your school’s visual or multimedia presentations without further licensing or royalties to be paid.
Listen to our music – you’ll see that the ability to legally use these tracks as often as you like in your classes more than earns back what you spend for the initial purchase. If you have questions regarding music licensing or your rights regarding the use of royalty free music, please call us toll free at
888-400-2149.
Educators receive over 15% off of UniqueTracks regular pricing (regular pricing is the pricing you’ll see next to the products on this site). Please download our free 19 page Pricing and Information Guide which lists our music products along with the Educator discount pricing pre-calculated for each item.
I thought the hands-down best commercial during this year’s Super Bowl was the 2-minute ad for the Chrysler 200 featuring Eminem. Brilliantly written and produced with a pitch-perfect narration by voice-over artist and Michigan resident Kevin Yon, the commercial shows downtown Detroit in all its glory as Eminem slowly drives the new Chyrsler 200 through the Motor City.
The soundtrack begins with ominous low electronic rumblings and sound effects. Then, at about the 40 second mark, the instantly recognizable guitar-riff from Enimen’s song "Lose Yourself" (from the 8 Mile album) is layered on top. Finally, the addition of a gospel choir at the commercial’s high-point adds a sense of triumph to mix. It’s a brilliantly constructed soundtrack.
Camera shots create a poetic montage inter-cutting Detroit’s gritty industrial landscape, with American flags, modern factories, boarded up buildings and Diego Rivera’s mural of factory laborers (from the Detroit Institue of the Arts). Shots of snow falling on downtown buildings add to the creation of a tough, resolute image. We end up at Detroit’s historic Fox Theatre. The marquis out front reads “Keep Detroit Beautiful” Inside, Enimen takes the stage in front of the gospel choir and confidently utters these words, “This is the Motor City and this is what we do”.
All of the elements; the voice-over performance, the text, the soundtrack, the camera work, Eminem’s passion, work toward a climatic celebration of Detroit. It gave me chills the first time I saw it.
Known as the Motor City, Detroit was built on manufacturing and as manufacturing has left the US economy, outsourced to other nations with cheaper labor costs, Detroit, like a lot of smaller manufacturing towns, has suffered. Suffered greatly. Must the American economy be so bereft of manufacturing? Are we right to just cede this important segment to emerging nations with cheaper labor costs?
The "Imported from Detroit" ad reminded me of a video produced last year by filmmaker Scott Smith. Scott’s company, River Run Productions, created a film for the trade organization Opportunity2 called Advanced Manufacturing in Southern Iowa. Scott used UniqueTracks’ music as underscore for this 9 minute industrial film.
The film shows one way manufacturing can exist in the American economy. Actually the advanced manufacturing, using robotics, laser optics and other high-end technologies shown in this film, are probably best done in America. The idea of factory work being associated with dimly lit, dirty, over-crowded spaces is not the reality in these high-tech manufacturing plants.
Scott adds, "Iowa is known for its farming, but in Southeast Iowa, where we shot the video, 30% of the jobs are in advanced manufacturing. I didn’t even really know what advanced manufacturing was before I produced this video. I learned that everywhere you go you are surrounded by the results of advanced manufacturing. And once I realized that advanced manufacturing involved welding and robotics I knew I’d have some cool visuals to play with. Then we began looking for stories that would be of interest to the intended audience of middle school and high school students. And because of that young audience and the interesting visuals we wanted to find some high energy music that would help drive the video.
Note: Scott used primarily rock music from UnqiueTracks albums Speed Demons and Modern Rock.
I grew up, on the other side of the Detroit River, across from Detroit, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Both cities are manufacturing towns whose economies are linked to the making of cars. By the mid-1970s, when the automobile industry first bottomed out, almost everyone I grew up with in Windsor had left the city. As a boy, I watched from across the river as Detroit burned as fires swept the city during the riot of 1967. In a way, this event seems to be the flashpoint from which Detroit never fully recovered.
The "Imported from Detroit" ad succeeds in attempting to show the human side of a city that has, as the ad says, “been to hell and back”.
I am grateful to Scott Smith for his contributions to this article. Scott W. Smith is an old film school grad who after living in Miami, Los Angeles, and Orlandio ended up in Cedar Falls, Iowa in 2003. He and his company, River Run Productions, have worked on a variety of projects over the years including commercials, web videos, promotional DVDs, short films and documentaries. They’ve also provided camera support and field producing for various groups including the national TV programs The Montel Williams Show and The Doctors. In February, Scott added two Addy Awards to his shelf full of hardware that also includes two Regional Emmy Awards.
This is what TomCruise.com said about the blog last year: "For a more off-beat look at writing, the Screenwriting from Iowa blog provides screenwriters with a slightly removed take from the Hollywood norm. Scott Smith blogs about how people outside of Los Angeles can have their stories told and sold for production in TinselTown. It’s inspiring for those of us around the world who aspire to Hollywood magic without having to live in Hollywood itself."
I thought the text to the "Imported from Detroit" ad was incrediblly well-written. I could not find out who wrote the copy but this text and it’s delivery by Mr Yon really pack a punch.
Here is the full text of the ad
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I ‘ve got a question for you. What does this city know about luxury? What does a town that’s been to hell and back know about the finer things in life? Well I’ll tell you. More than most. You see it’s the hottest fires that make the hottest steel. Add hard work, conviction, and a know-how that runs generations deep in every last one of us. That’s who we are. That’s our story. Now it’s probably not the one you’ve been reading in the papers. The one being written by folks who’ve never even been here and don’t know what we’re capable of. Because when it comes to luxury, it’s as much about where it’s from as who it’s for. Now we’re from America. But this isn’t New York City, or the Windy City, nor Sin City and we’re certainly no one’s Emerald City.
This is the motor city. And this is what we do.
The Chrysler 200 has arrived
Imported from Detroit.
Podcaster – Sound Effects for Podcasting
Podcaster has everything you need to produce a professional podcast. Add music or just a beat loop to your intro and immediately give a focus to the theme of your show. With over 500 sound effects (Animals, Cartoon Effects, Crashes, Human Effects, Vehicles, Weapons and more), this set will let you underscore the humerous, contentious and exciting moments of your podcast.
WebTones – Sound Effects for Flash and Web Site Production
If you design and create professional Flash productions or web sites, then you will want to add this large assortment of multimedia sounds to your production toolbox. The WebTones collection features 1000 unique buttons, clicks, rollovers, pings, beeps, hits and production elements that can easily be plugged into your next production. This collection will provide you with the tools you need to add sonic life to your virtual creations.
Spoilers – Movie Trailer Cinematic Sound Effects
If you’ve ever wondered where to find those great sonic effects that Hollywood post production editors lay into movies, trailers and commercials, look no further. This incredible set by Blastwave FX will amp-up your production with the latest, most modern audio effects available on the royalty free market. This collection, on 4 DVDs, has 300 stereo movie trailers and compositions with matching 5.1 surround files, plus 200 high impact stereo imaging elements.
Drones – Hollywood-style Sound Effects
Using long, sustained, audio drone effects is one of the most effective ways of using sound to build drama and interest in a media production. The material contained in the 4 DVD set Drones by Blastwave FX is specially made to give your production a professional, Hollywood-caliber sheen. In total, this collection has over 10 hours of unique sound effects in stereo and 5.1 Surround Sound.
Blastwave FX develops next-generation HD sound effects libraries for professional audio production. Their design and engineering team constantly pushes the sound envelope with innovative product formats, rich metadata, multi-channel libraries and the highest resolution audio that technology allows.
Stephanie Drotos’ Teaching Media Production is a very valuable website for educators interested in creating a media production curriculum. This site lays out in very clear detail, everything you need to teach a nine week middle school media production course. The site was created by a middle teacher for other middle school teachers interested in creating (or expanding) media production courses concentrating on teaching stop-motion animation, desktop publishing, video production.
The site includes course outlines, day-to-day lesson plans, sample class handouts and teacher resources.
Stephanie explains, “For two years, I taught a middle school class called Media Production. This course lasted for nine weeks and was taught four times a year to both 8th graders and 6th graders. I designed the course and included topics in which I was personally interested. I’ve had lots of requests for information about teaching Media Production and wanted to make the information available to help other teachers.”
If you are an educator teaching media production, I think you’ll be well rewarded looking at Stehpanie’s course ideas.
Whooshes, Washes, Crunches, Crashes, Hits, Rumbles, Pings…
Our new 1300+ Audio Imaging Sound Effects Library includes production elements geared towards Radio, Television, Multimedia and Game Design. You can download individual sound effects or choose a complete sound effects collection on CD-ROM.
High Impact Radio- Beds, Station IDs, Low Rumbles, Whooshes, Washes, Hits, Power Ups, Power Downs, Ascends, Descends, Stabs, Ramps, Start Ups and Stops
High Impact Television- Drone Beds, Promo Static, Whooshes to Hits, Low Rumbles, Laser Hits, Liquid Hits, Sweeps, Explosions, Feedback and Distortion, Transmissions
High Impact Multimedia – Clicks, Buttons, Beeps. Chimes, Pings, Start Up Screens, Musical Tones, Window Effects, Error Messages, Flash Elements, Pop-Up Elements, Shut Down Screens, Digital Readouts
High Impact Game Design – Explosions, Crashes, Crunches, Combat Weapons, Low Rumbles, Force Fields, Alien Movements, Fight Impacts, Underscores, Thunder, Fire, Static
Four Volume CD-ROM Pack – The four volume series is a great way to quickly build a substantial sound effects library with over 4 hours of royalty free production elements and sound effects.
Sound Effects Downloads – It is possible to purchase any single track from over 1300 individual sound files in our Audio Imaging Library and download it immediately to your computer as as an uncompressed WAV file (Red Book Audio 16 bit 44.1 kHz).
One of the ways you can maximize the recordings you license from UniqueTracks is to use audio editing software to shape the music so that it works perfectly within your media project.
A simple example of this would be creating your own fade in or fade out on a portion of a track. A more complex example would be cutting an 8 measure section from the full length track and looping this segment as underscore.
Digital audio editing software lets you easily zoom in to a selection of the recording and accomplish powerful editing maneuvers.
There are a lot of digital editors available for both Windows and Mac platforms. Today I want to introduce you to a few of the lowest-priced editors available. These editors still pack a lot of editing power but at are priced at a level that will get you cutting and shaping your audio tracks for just a minimal investment.
To me, the real power of production music is attained when the end-user is free to edit the tracks. This is entirely within UniqueTracks’ standard license agreement. In fact, we really encourage you to experiment with the recordings to draw as much use from them as possible. You’ll just find that you can do much more with the tracks if you have the ability to massage and shape them, rather than just plop the whole thing in your timeline and live with it as is.
We’ve started a new Tools section on the UniqueTracks web site where we have made arrangements with various companies to offer trial versions of their audio editing software. I apologize in advance to Mac users, right now we only have Windows editors available.
So if you are a Windows user and maybe new to the whole world of digital audio editing, please browse through the various software packages we’ve included on the site. These are all try-before-you-buy programs that let you download a completely working version of the software to test for a certain period. If you find that the product is something of value and something you’ll use, you must purchase the product at the end of the trial period or the working version will expire. Prices are very reasonable for the editing power you’ll get (from $19 to $50).
Even if you already have a digital audio editor that you use, there is probably a small application here that will help you in your editing. We also have included some affordable digital video editing software and some cool little Flash apps that, if you develop for Flash, you may want to check out.
I have another reason for recommending these editors and it’s because in upcoming issues of the Underscore newsletter, I’d like to start offering some audio editing advice taking real examples from our music library. I field quite a few phone calls and emails from customers who are encountering audio editing issues and are looking for help.
A case in point, this week I was asked why MP3 files don’t seem to loop seamlessly – you can hear a bump in the loop. This is because the MP3 spec puts a sliver of silence at the beginning and ending of the audio file. You really can’t loop an MP3 file. That’s why all UniqueTracks loops are delivered in WAV format. I’d like to start talking about some of these issues. So grab yourself an digital editor and we can begin examining some cool audio editing techniques.
