The website is the brainchild of Lloyd Billing, managing director of The Tape Gallery, whose award-winning team is constantly developing new sound techniques to maintain their position as leading providers to the professional audio market. In 1999, Billing had just 5,000 sounds, today the Website is the largest independent sound effects, music samples and music tracks library in the world, with over 180,000 professional, digital, full broadcast quality sound files.
To create the resource, Lloyd collaborates with a growing list of sound and music library partners worldwide. He has also acquired nearly four million sounds from the Cinesounds Library. Although not on-line as yet, but currently being digitised, it spans over half a century of motion picture and world history and upon request, sound effects from every James Bond movie, Zulu, Platoon, Midnight Express, Battle of Britain, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, American Werewolf in London, amongst a host of others, can be sourced directly from the masters.
Having recently provided original sound effects for the West End production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, associate sound designer for the production, Simon Baker of Autograph Sound Recording Ltd, quotes: "The title ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ is a sound effect in itself. It was essential that we had the original sound - otherwise, it would have been like trying to do the show with a completely different car! Trying to re-create the sound of the original cars would have been virtually impossible because when they were originally recorded they were about 30 years old, whereas now the same car would be 60 or 70 years old, and have a different sound altogether. The sound-effects library has been an invaluable resource for us."
Producers from the worlds of music, stage, film, television and radio are finding it to be a valuable resource that is both a cost effective and an efficient method for sourcing nearly all their sounds. Uniquely, they are able to locate specific sounds in a matter of minutes, listen to them for free, and download them instantly (as high quality 16 bit 44.1kHz) - high quality sound files, without spending thousands on numerous CD libraries.
(Lee Baldock)
