Splice

I’ve been a fan of Creative Commons for a while, but I’ve often found it hard to translate its philosophy into practical application. Great video resources like the Prelinger Archive put public domain footage at your fingertips, but I’ve been underwhelmed by the amount and quality of sharable audio content.

Enter Splice. It’s still young, but Splice has real promise. The simplest way to use Splice is to find CC-licensed audio for your mograph projects, but that’s not really anything new.

What makes Splice interesting is its online sequencer, allowing you to mix and match user-uploaded loops and audio files to create your own music. If you’ve ever opened Garageband or Acid, the Splice sequencer will be instantly familiar. Even if you’ve never played with loop based software, I think it’s a pretty intuitive experience.

And because everything is CC-licensed, your song is downloadable and ready to be used in a motion project.

The main problem Splice currently faces is a lack of high-quality audio files. That’s to be expected for a fledgling site with a growing user base. I’m going to upload some loops of my own, and I encourage other musically minded folks to do the same. At the very least, you can use Splice to create scratch tracks and explore different moods for your sound design.

Big ups to my buddy Adam Smith.