There are many sources of free bell, carillon, warning tone, chime, and music files on the internet. Dowloaded sounds can be easily loaded into the Technomad Schedulon automatic music player for carillon, school bell, or other uses. The Schedulon plays audio on a schedule you create, and you can trigger sound manually as desired. Here are several sound-file sources:
High-Quality Bell / Carillon Sounds
- The University of Michigan recorded their 60-bell Ann & Robert H. Lurie Carillon, and has posted the bell recordings free use. Click here for a direct download link (ZIP folder).
- UC Berkley has posted free-to-use recording of their Carillon. Click here to download.
Other Sound Resources
The Freesound Project is a useful resource to access and download legal audio files. Looking for bell sounds or carillon tones or your school or church? Perhaps you need sound effects for football and baseball games, or background music for your office or store? Freesound offers a variety of licensed sounds to complement your environment or facility.
Follow these instructions to use downloaded sounds:
- Visit freesound.org or the Carillon bell-sources above and identify the sounds you want.
- (For FreeSound only) Confirm that the Creative Commons license applied to that sound allows it to be used in your commercial or non-commercial application (read more about this below)
- Download MP3, WAV, AIF, or OGG Vorbis versions of the sounds (the Schedulon plays most common audio formats).
- Upload the file(s) to the Schedulon via the Web Interface.
- Use the files in Schedulon knob-assignments and/or automatic playback schedules
Creative Commons – What is it?
The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. It collects audio snippets, samples and other partial recordings released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The website provides a simple search engine where users can find the type of audio files by entering specific keywords (bell, carillon, crowd, music, etc.)
Creative Commons is a non-profit corporation that provides free licenses and other legal tools for creative work that is consistent with copyright rules. The organization provides content creators with licenses that define how others may use their creative material:
- Attribution: Others may copy, distribute, display and perform copyrighted work and derivative works, with credit given to the creator as requested.
- Share Alike: Others may distribute derivative works under an identical license to the governing license.
- Non-Commercial: Others may copy, distribute and perform copyrighted work and derivative works for non-commercial purposes.
- No Derivative Works: Others may copy, distribute, display and perform copyrighted work verbatim, but not derivative works.
Based on the above licenses, most available sounds can be used for non-profit organizations such as schools, churches and municipal-based public services (such as parks and recreational facilities). Businesses can also take advantage of any sounds that are not tagged as non-commercial works.
Background about the Schedulon Automatic Music Player
The Schedulon provides storage for an unlimited number of sounds (2GB standard memory). Once uploaded, sounds are available for immediate on-demand playback from a front-panel, push-and-turn knob. Audio files can be assigned to any of the 99 available knob positions.
Users can also create schedules for automatic playback. Scheduling can be as straightforward or complex as desired, down to the exact time of day, from single-event playback to continuously repeated messages.
Sounds and audio files can also be added to a precise, user-defined playback schedule based on an internal clock or synchronized network time server. Please visit https://technomad.com/products/schedulon/ for more information.
Technomad offers complete Carillon systems with waterproof amplifiers and all-weather loudspeakers which deliver outstanding sound quality in harsh environments for years. Click here to learn more about these US-made audio systems.