Research Guides: Research Tools for Historic Sound Recordings: Archival Sampling and Remixing

Where to Find Archival Samples

Belfer Cylinders Digital Collections
The Belfer Cylinders Digital Connection provides online access to digital audio files of cylinders in the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive. Belfer's cylinder collection includes over 20,000 cylinders, 12,000 of which are unique titles.
Belfer Latin American 45's Collection
The Belfer Latin American 45s Collection provides access to over 12,000 recordings held in the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive. The bulk of these recordings date from the 1950s to the early-1960s, and include many rare and little-known issues on small independent record labels from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere.
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
"Digital collection of over 8,000 cylinder recordings... listen to thousands of musical and spoken selections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and discover a little-known era of recorded sound." Recordings licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
British Library Sounds
Listen to a selection from the British Library’s extensive collections of unique sound recordings, which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds.
Stanford University Piano Roll Archive
This website is a research portal for piano rolls digitized from the Stanford Libraries’ collection of over 15,000 piano and organ rolls. As of November 2019, the website includes 456 Welte-Mignon T-100 rolls (colloquially called “red welte” rolls since they typically use red paper).
Creative Commons
Openly licensed audio clips and works. Make sure to check the license type and acknowledge the creators when requested.
dig.ccMixter
"Looking for music for a video, school project, game you’re developing, podcast or just for listening in your cubicle or mobile music device? Find exactly the music you’re looking for - podsafe, liberally licensed - using dig.ccMixter Music Discovery tool."
FreePD
Modern public domain music and audio clips.
IMSLP Petrucci Music Library
Featuring over 24,000 sound recordings and more than 240,000 scores from 7,663 composers.
Musopen
"focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free."
OpSound
"Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine."
Archive.org - Audio
"This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users."
Free Music Archive
Instant access to independent artists and original music. Free to play, download and share.
Audio Library
Download free and safe music for content creators (Free Music, No Copyright Music, Royalty-free Music, and Creative Commons)

Mixers and Platforms

Citizen DJ
Make music using the free-to-use audio and video materials from the Library of Congress
ccMixter
"ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want."
SoundTrap
"Explore our extensive collection of beats, loops and instruments or connect your own instrument. If you have the urge to create, there are no longer any excuses."
Mixxx
Mixxx integrates the tools DJs need to perform creative live mixes with digital music files.
Whether you are a new DJ with just a laptop or an experienced turntablist, Mixxx can support your style and techniques of mixing.
MixPad Free
With MixPad, create unlimited audio, music, and vocal tracks, and record single or multiple tracks at the same time. MixPad includes free sound effects and a music library with hundreds of clips at your disposal.
Audacity
Audacity is a popular audio player, editor, mixer, and recorder. Become a virtual DJ with this free program for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Record live music with Audacity as well as computer playback. Convert tapes and records to digital files or put files on discs. Edit WAV, MP3, MP2, AIFF, FLAC, and other file types, plus cut, copy, mix, and splice sounds together. You can even record calls with Audacity.

Projects

Re:Vive
"Working with renowned electronic and experimental musicians such as Lakker, Roly Porter, and Bas Mooy, the project from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision draws on global archives and museums to encourage legal, creative reuse of historic sounds."
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https://creativecommons.org/2016/12/14/revive/
Boiler Room
We brought Matthew Herbert into the British Library's Sound Archive where he made a playlist from over five million different unique recordings of music, sound and spoken word. The recordings heard on the show are accessible on the Library's http://sounds.bl.uk/ website.
Remix Theory
Remix Theory is an online resource by Eduardo Navas that offers some of his research on Remix.

Navas focuses on Remix itself as opposed to Remix Culture. In this site you will find a brief definition of Remix, which is examined more extensively in essays that will be added to this website as they become available.
Open Music Archive Projects
Open Music Archive initiated by artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White, is a collaborative project to explore the potentials of public domain archive material.
Rule No 5
A library and sound archive project from NYU, coming January 2023 by Amanda Belantara & Ashley Maynor.