Dear friends,

We have a new feature on our site. It's perhaps not immediately obvious, because it doesn't make a big splash -- but we think some of you will find this useful. If you are browsing vocal music, you can now view the lyrics for a track directly from our website:


Any vocal track for which we have the lyrics on file will show this [View lyrics] option and that will come up in a separate "pop-up" window, with the track title, artist, composer and publisher included. At the bottom of the lyrics page we've put a link directly to this track in our catalogue; in case you've printed the lyrics and now come back to our site to license it.

If you see a vocal track that doesn't have the [View lyrics] feature available, it means that we do not actually have the lyrics in our database. Please feel free to write in and ask for it to be added. We should be able get the songwriter and get him/her to send in the lyrics so we can add it.

Hi all!

Traditionally, at Shockwave-Sound.com we have been all about instrumental royalty-free music, but over the past couple of weeks, and over the next few weeks, we are going to start offering more and more vocal music as well. Great bands such as Jamestown Story, Twirl, Neil White, Lessons (Pictured left) are soon to be joined by many more talented pop, rock, singer-songwriter, folk and country bands with vocals. Where ever possible, we also include an instrumental version of each track.

We are aware that most of our customers are still looking for only instrumental music. As I mentioned, we always also include an instrumental version of each song when ever that is possible. Also, if you are absolutely not interested in hearing/browsing any tracks with vocals, it's easy to remove all vocal tracks from all music browses on our site. To do this, go to "Advanced Browse", then set a music Genre (or Production Type) that you wish to browse for, then click "Prominent instruments" -> "Vocals - singing (with lyrics)", and set this selection to "NOT". This way, all tracks that include sung vocals are removed from your music browsing results.

All the best,
Shockwave-Sound.com team

Today we removed some old tracks from our catalogue. If you come searching for these tracks, they will not appear in search results any more.

If you need to license a track that has been removed, you can still do so! We just deal with it manually and set up the purchase for you "by hand", since you can't buy it through the online shopping cart any more. To enquire about this, contact us via our contact page.

Why remove tracks? It has to do with trying to keep the music fresh and up to date. I remember when we first set out to start up Shockwave-Sound.com, back in the early weeks of year 2000. We were checking out existing stock music libraries and stock music sites, and their music sounded really outdated. Clearly, they had been in business maybe 15-20 years, and - unsurprisingly - their music sounded 15-20 years old!

I remember thinking clearly to ourselves at that point, that we would not allow that to happen to Shockwave-Sound. Unlike other stock music sites, we would actually remove old tracks, so that the overall sound of our library was always fresh and new.

We still add new tracks at a much higher rate than we remove old one - so our catalogue is increasing in size all the time. I think this just makes it even more important to get rid of some old tracks now and then.

What are the criteria for choosing which tracks to remove? Well, it's a subjective decision based on each track in the end, but if a track has been on our site for more than 6 years and made only 0-1 sales over the past 12 months, then that track is usually selected for "pruning" (removing).

The following tracks were pruned today:

• At First Glance
• Brand New Delhi
• Byte Size
• Chit Chat
• Cruisin
• Crunked Up
• Dark Sound
• De Profundis
• Dot Co Dot UK
• E Motion
• EZ Street
• First Contact
• Flamenco
• Flight
• Funked Up
• Hope For Peace
• In D Pocket
• Its a Lurve Thang
• Jubilate Deo
• LA Nights
• Leisuretime
• Lets Talk
• Lucky Thirteen
• Manuels Party
• Mission Implausible
• New Strides
• Nicole
• Nightflight
• Numbafive
• Ostinato in D
• Present Tense
• Redbeard the Pirate
• Rio Rio
• Sahara
• Sands Of Time
• Sautille
• Showtime
• Sierra Martes
• Sky Hooks
• Snake Hips
• Snapback
• So Piano
• Something in the Mud
• Space Is Information
• Steel Dawn
• Still Waters
• Summer Vistas
• Summer Vistas
• Sunshine
• Superhighway
• Taste The Space
• The Embalm
• The Fall
• The Sicilian Job
• Triste
• Truth
• Under Attack
• Undercurrent

Today's music composers and producers have an embarrassement of wealth available to them when they are trying to "simulate" an orchestral performance. It's not like in the late 80's or early 90's when we had synth units with the sounds "Strings 1", "Strings 2" and "Strings 3".

Today's composers tools consists of gigabytes of samples, where every possible note every musical instrument in the orchestra is sampled individually, and at many different velocity / intensity levels. The level of detail to which you can simulate an orchestra today is quite staggering. Just listen to some of the tracks, for example, in our "Massive Impact" series, all of which are created with very clever use of sampled orchestral sounds, MIDI, and one or two actual live instruments here and there to "sweeten" the sound.

Even so, even in this day and age, only a real orchestra performance is the real thing. Nothing beats the real thing. Humans putting fingers on strings, breath into reeds, fingers on piano keys, in an actual room/hall where they sit together, interact, the sound fills the hall and is captured there and then.

Recently we had the opportunity to take advantage of a real live symphony orchestra, and we had two of our existing tracks re-recorded with the live orchestra: "Arriving at Haven Village" by Jon Adamich and "A Grand Adventure" by Jack Francis. These tracks already existed in our catalogue, originally made with samples, MIDI, clever programming. We had them "re-done" with a live orchestra and we think they came out great! It cost us an absolute fortune (all those musicians want to be paid, and rightly so!), but I think it was worth it. Feel free to let us know what you think.

We will contact all existing Shockwave-Sound.com customers who bought these tracks from us in the past, and offer them a free download / license for the new real orchestra version.

The photo below shows the actual orchestra while recording our tracks. It was recorded in the Frankfurt Oder Concert Hall in Germany, January 2013.

Recently we added a few new instruments to choose from when you are browsing our royalty-free music / stock music catalogue based on Prominent Instrument (e.g. you click on the blue "Prominent Instruments" button on the right-hand side over our site, or choose instrument from the Advanced Browse panel).

One of the instruments we added was the Hang Drum. This is a very unique and nice sounding instrument which has got a lot of new fans over the past year or so. It is a melodic / pitched percussion instrument with a really beautiful and interesting tone.

Despite the instrument having a very "earthy", almost exotic, ethnic tone, it is actually a Swiss invention. It has a really natural, ancient sounding timbre which makes us think of ancient cultures, rainforests, African landscapes, South American / Inca / Maya ancient civilizations etc. This instrument sound wonderful in Ethnic / World type music, especially if you are trying to create an earthy / natural / tribal tone but without connecting the sound to any particular country or region.

As the time of writing this, we have 9 tracks of Royalty-Free Hang Drum music, featuring prominent use of the Hang Drum, including two tracks that are available in pure, solo, Hang Drum versions without any other instruments. I'm sure more tracks will come over the coming months and years, as more of our producers discover the versatile and beautiful sound of this instrument.