Capturing the laughter of a live crowd, Bob Bailey adds to his unusual arsenal of sound effects that he shares and sells online at A1FreeSoundEffects.com. Photo by Phil Houseal
Details:
Bob Bailey has posted more than 600 free sound effects at his web site A1FreeSoundEffects.com.
| Do you have a musical artist, event, or topic you would like featured in this column? I love to hear from readers. Send comments to: phil@ fullhouseproductions.net. To be included in the free listing of live music events, send details to: Articles published weekly in the Permission granted to reproduce articles and photos with credit to: |
Sounds and silence
by Phil Houseal
Mar 3, 2010
Bob Bailey’s sound effects business has taken him from a hillside in a thunderstorm to a closed room with friends sitting around a pot of beans.
For the past five years Bailey has made a living in the hill country by creating and recording stereo sound effects and sharing them online at A1FreeSoundEffects.com. While he is enjoying good sales success, he admits the concept is something he stumbled onto.
“I had another web site where I would send out sound effects for free,” Bailey said. “Then companies started coming to me asking for particular sound. I saw the business opportunity and jumped on it.”
Bailey’s clients include AOL, MTV, CBS, NBC, ABC, all the major networks, plus school and university film, computer, and theater departments.
Bailey never knows where his sounds will be used, but he recognizes them even when he hears them years later.
“There’s the show, How It’s Made,” he said. “They have a sound I created in 2002 - Fast Click. They use it in transitions between scenes. I hear it and think, Oh, that’s my spray can rattle!”
Bailey now has amassed 50 different kinds of CDs - each with a particular theme. It might be Transportation, Weather, Animals, or Sirens. Individual sound clips go by such colorful names as Pant, Hurry Up, War Drums, Smoking, Hiss, Zipper, Traffic Jam, Speed, Special Kiss, Ooh You Mean So Much To Me, and many I can’t print here.
His most popular requests are for weather sounds, especially thunder. Why?
“During Easter, a lot of churches want thunder sounds for their passion plays,” he noted.
Interestingly, thunder is one of the hardest sounds to capture. He prefers late night thunderstorms, when there will be less traffic noise. When he hears a storm is on the way, he packs up his microphone and digital record and heads for a secret location that is miles away from other activity. Then thunder always comes with wind, rain, and lightning static, and all he wants is the thunder sound.
“You never get enough thunder sounds. You might catch the one that hits two feet in front of you. You never know what you are going to get.”
Bailey’s busiest season is Halloween, when party planners request screams, boos, howls, and shrieks.
Another top seller is crowd noise. The night I interviewed Bailey, he was recording the audience at a live comedy show. Back in the studio, he will edit out the jokes and end up with a CD of people laughing.
One would not think a CD of human flatulence would sit high on the charts. But that is another of his best sellers. Capturing that type of thunder is pretty straightforward.
“It pretty much means sitting at home, eating a pot of beans, not answering the phone, and not answering the door,” he explained. Believe it or not, it sells to more women than men.
Also believe it or not, that is not the strangest request Bailey has gotten. That would be “the sound of nothing.” Somebody actually asked for that... twice.
“Someone wanted silence for between song tracks. So we did it with the mics turned off.”
Strange, certainly. But Bailey sold it happily.
“Hey, silence is golden.”