Episode 3: Cartoon music

Hi, and welcome to the Open Licensed Music Podcast, the show where we highlight music from artists who let you share their music.  I'm Ralph Wacksworth, and today's episode is featuring cartoon music.

The Barber of Seville Overture (7:49)
Strauss Waltz Medley (4:55)

That was The Barber of Seville Overture by Gioacchino Rossini and performed by the Davis High School Symphony Orchestra, and after that we had Strauss Waltz Medley by Johann Strauss Sr. and performed by the US Air Force Band, so it's not exactly just one song but a number of recognizable parts of Strauss songs.  Both of them are available from musopen.org and are licensed under a Public Domain license.

So, with that said, from a license compliance standpoint, I didn't need to say it.  Why?  Because each of the artists in this episode have graciously dropped just about any kind of restriction from this music.  I still want to make sure they're credited though - I feel they deserve it even more for not forcing people to do so.  It's a pretty awesome thing to do, and a lot of the music from musopen.org is licensed that way.  As always, it's a good idea to check the license before redistributing them, but the music on musopen.org has on average the least amount of restrictions of any of the sites I get music from.

So, is it classical music?  Of course not!  It's cartoon music.  And for those of you who watched cartoons as much as I did when I was little, you're probably seeing characters hitting each other over the head with giant hammers, running over each other with steam rollers, or falling off cliffs while listening to this.  Many of these will be different cartoons to different listeners due to the number of different cartoons that used a number of these songs.  The nice thing is that you can listen to this and actually know what the songs you know so well are really called and/or who they were composed by.  You, too, can learn to be a classical music fan through watching cartoons from the comfort of your own living room!

There will not be nearly as many songs in this episode as there usually are due to how long some of these are.  So, to get back to things, here are a few more of them.

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 - I. Allegro con brio (7:54)
Minuet in G (2:23)
Fur Elise (2:50)

That was Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67, First Movement performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra followed by Minuet in G performed by Peter J.  And finally we had Fur Elise, also performed by Peter J.  All of them are by Ludwig van Beethoven and are available from musopen.org under a Public Domain license.

Today's app-of-the-day is Linux MultiMedia Studio, which contrary to its name is also available for Microsoft Windows and from what I can tell BSD as well.  It's a music-making program, and supports piano roll style sequencer editing as well as loop-based editing.  It comes with a few loops, but it's also compatible with many commercially-available loop libraries as well as many free ones.  They have a bunch of demos on their site if you want to hear what it's capable of.  I've only used this program a little to try it out, but it seemed like a very capable program.  As powerful or moreso than commercial loop-based editing software I've bought, though with that power comes a slight drop in simplicity, in my opinion.  Couple it with some sounds and loops from freesound.org and a bit of creativity, and you could easily put together a cool song in an hour.  All in all, definitely worth trying out.  You can download it from their website at lmms.sourceforge.net.  Now get out there and make
some cool music!

Now for a short noncommercial break from one of our non-sponsors.  And to be perfectly honest, this is mainly due to my fandom of the original Sherlock Holmes stories.  The pre-Moriarty ones are really, really great.  After the noncommercial, we'll have some more music.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Liberty Bell (3:41)
Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 (9:04)

That was The Liberty Bell by John Phillip Sousa and performed by the United States Marine Band.  After that was Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt which was performed by the National Military Band.  Both are available from musopen.org and are licensed under a Public Domain license.

So, that's all for today.  I fully intend to do another cartoon music episode in the future - I do have more music lined up for it.  Remember - piracy of commercial music only proves your dependence on that model and justifies further censorship and restriction.  So don't pirate it - replace it with something better.

This episode was made using Xubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux, Audacity, and gedit for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Public Domain license, thanks to all of the music being available under Public Domain licenses from musopen.org.  I would much rather distribute these episodes under more permissive licenses and will be doing so when I can.  At any rate, feel free to give it to your friends, or if you didn't like it, your enemies.  Listen in next time for some xylophone and marimba music!  See 'ya!

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