Sound Sunday has shifted from random free music downloads and plain genre editions, to focusing on practical uses of music, including music collections that can help you relax, work out, or fall asleep. Today, I prepared a wild mix of Creative Commons licensed music.
Creative Commons copyright licenses offer creators an easy way to grant copyright permissions to creative work. If you are in need of a soundtrack or background music for a non-commercial project, look for matching material below. If you just enjoy quality music, scroll down for the playlist, which features the best songs from this week's collection.
All music in this edition is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. This means you can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format (Share), as long as you give appropriate credit (Attribution), do not use the material for commercial purposes (NonCommercial), and do not distribute remixed, transformed, or otherwise modified material (NoDerivatives).
Pop & Rock
Genre: alternative, indie, pop, rock
Alternating between introspective melancholy and playful exuberance, byron play alternative rock with a progressive flair. They're equally comfortable with loud amps or no amps at all, and they filmed a gig in a salt mine (300ft below) just to show they mean business.
Source: Bandcamp
Genre: indie, alternative, acoustic, folk, pop
An acoustic indie-folk album offering up stories of The Wild Land, a place where the untameable aspects of humanity and existence are brought back into the light and celebrated; everything from the birth cycle to the death cycle is raised up in celebration and gratitude, giving thanks for the wholeness of our reality, without exception. Maingard also offers his other albums under the same creative commons license.
Source: Bandcamp
Ambient Jazz
Genre: ambient, electronic, bass, jazz, violin
The UK's most celebrated solo bassist, here with lots of looped/layered solo albums, & collaborations, most notably with genius singer Lobelia. Dig in deep, there's a lot to discover. All albums come with a creative commons license.
Source: Bandcamp
Genre: ambient, jazz, piano, drums
Trio Metrik completely improvised this album with a large collection of classical instruments and even a typewriter.
Genre: ambient, instrumental, jazz, bass, folk, piano
Much of the album has a melancholic touch, but every other song delivers upbeat and energetic sounds to your ears.
Ambient Electronic
Genre: electronic, instrumental, experimental, chill, hip hop
The debut album by Den Kokoro is a chilled mix of classical, pop, and electronic elements.
Genre: ambient, electronic, new age, relaxation, sleep
C.paradisi is the moniker of Free Floating Music founder Brad Ross-MacLeod. His site promotes legal free ambient music downloads. Sketches from the Edge of Silence Volumes I & II is his own work.
Genre: ambient, electronic, instrumental, chillout, downtempo, trip hop
Sound engineer Jonathan Frémont makes music as 28 and Akira Club. The second track on his EP is a remix from a song found on the Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero.
Genre: ambient, instrumental, drone, noise, shoegaze
35'45" of tape loops, pink noise and the occasional guitar improvisation. Cut up recordings all-but-destroyed digitally then recorded in glorious 24bit. Worn drones fading in their own reverb. A hommage to thirty+ year old VHS tapes. A sonic trip along the roads of the pacific Northwest. The record shifts glacially, a grainy collage of slow motion.
Source: Bandcamp
The Playlist
Listen to the best of each edition with the Minilogs Mixtape.
Did You Know About Creative Commons Before?
Do you actually pay attention to copyrights when downloading things from the Internet? Have you searched for CC licensed material before and do you use music in any of your creative work? Please share your take on copyrights and how this edition impacts you in the comments!
You can also add music to the Sound Sunday Suggestions playlist on minilogs, get in touch with me @TinaSieber on Twitter, or email tina at this domain.
Featured image credit: CC Music Sheet by opensourceway via Flickr