Sound effects

How it works

1. Pick a page, or describe it here. Each page above is the same generator, set up for one use with its own ideas. Or start from an idea under the box.
2. Pick the shape. Up to 30 seconds: shorter for a single hit, longer for an ambience.
3. Get your sound. Play it, download it as an MP3 or a WAV.

Describe what you'd hear

A sound effect comes out right when the description says what happens, where, and what it's made of. "A door" is vague. "Three slow knocks on a heavy wooden door in a quiet hallway" tells the generator the material, the count, the pace and the room. Leave music out of it and you get a sound effect, not a song; there's nothing to switch.

• The thing: boots, glass, a sword, wind, a crowd.
• The surface or place: on wet stone, in a cave, across a tiled floor.
• The feel: heavy, soft, distant, close, quick.

Single hits and long beds

Pick the length for the job. Ten seconds is plenty for a door, a coin or a click, and you can trim it to the hit. Thirty seconds suits an ambience: rain, a market, wind through a canyon, a ship's cabin at sea. Each page here is set up for one kind of sound, with ideas that fit it.

For games, videos and apps

Games need sets of sounds that match: footsteps on every floor type, pickups, hits, menu clicks. Videos need whooshes for transitions and a room tone under the edit. Apps need short, soft notification sounds. Describe one, then change one word at a time for the rest of the set, so they sound like they come from the same place.

Every sound is one stereo take, up to 30 seconds, as an MP3 or a WAV, and royalty-free for commercial use.