Getting (free) royalty-free music you can use

Sure there is a ton of free music on the web, but what if you want some music you can use as part of a presentation that you are sharing? You either need to compose and perform your own music or come up with some royalty-free music. A Google search for such music will return quite a few sites, but most of them have an up-front fee.
For free, royalty-free music (though sometimes there is a one-time fee or donation suggested and sometimes it is only free for educational or non-profit, and in most cases attribution is still required), may I recommend:

• incompetech
• Opsound
• Magnatune
• mixter

Want to create your own music even though you are not a musician? Try MS Music Producer (downloadable from the link, but follow directions). This is an old Microsoft orphaned program I played around with back in the 90s, but it's not bad. You pick your own style, personality, instruments (and you can move the instruments for separation and prominence), set tempo and key, pick the 'shape,' indicate if you want an intro/ending or if it should be looping, and set the length of the piece. Hit compose, and it creates a song on the spot. Don't like it? Just hit compose again or change instruments or personality. You save your creations as MIDI files.It won't be confused with professional music, but here's a 30-second example I made. If you just want some background music, it'll do.

For more info, check this fuller listing of resources I have.

Now, how did I get off on this subject? I was looking for some music by Vector (long disbanded but still worth listening) which featured the guitarist Jimmy Abegg. What I stumbled upon was some music by Marty and Bob Abegg. For biblical studies sorts, does one of those names ring a bell? Yes, this is the same Martin G. Abegg who is one of the authors ofthe Dead Sea Scrolls Bible and of The Dead Sea Scrolls - A New Translation. See, biblical studies can be cool after all!

Bible, Hymns, and Movies

Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) just announced:

For the past several months here at the CCEL, we've been working on a new database of hymns and worship music. Do you want to search for a hymn text or tune? Find a hymnal that has it? Perhaps you are a worship leader and you would like to find a hymn on a certain Bible text or a setting of a tune in a different key.

These are some of the kinds of uses we support in the Hymnary. Jointly sponsored by the CCEL and the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, the Hymnary currently has 14,225 hymns indexed, of which 2,986 have the full text of the hymn, and 4,977 media files including MIDIs, mp3s, notation files, and sheet music.

Click on the Bible text link, and you will see how nicely it works. I regard hymns to be a form of biblical interpretation, so they are often worth checking.

Similarly, it won’t include every movie you’ve liked, but WingClips is a great way to find video clips related to particular themes. According to the site:

You can view inspirational movie clips from many of your favorite films. These WingClips™ can also be downloaded to use in your church, school or other non-profit organization for FREE.