Seussical Sound Effects

headphones-spin.gif Here are sound effects you can use in Seussical the Musical. This is a free download. I have provided the files in .wav format so they are ready to burn. The Seussical FX are a single download as a compressed folder.

These are the same effects I used while conducting Seussical the Musical in 2006. It covers effects for the Act II Overture, last scene egg breaking, bird chirping after the egg hatches, Horton’s frustrated elephant call, wild animal grunts for “Monkey Around”, Thunder for opening of Act II, explosion from Jojo’s military scene. I used the water splash sound for when the Cat in the Hat sneezes on the Who’s in “How Lucky You Are”. It was a pretty funny addition.

If you find these sound effects useful or if there’s any problems with them, please drop a note on this post and let me know. Of course I’d love to hear about your Seussical production and how these sound effects worked for you. This sound effects download is free, if you feel like putting a link on your site to mine that would be much appreciated.

Seussical FX Pack Includes:

  1. bang-wonk
  2. bird-chirp
  3. bugle-cartoon
  4. dog-bark
  5. elephant-single-call
  6. explosion
  7. eggshell-crack
  8. grunt1
  9. grunt2
  10. horn-ahooga
  11. horn-comedy
  12. slide-whistle
  13. thunder
  14. water-splash

7,676 kb download in compressed file. All sound fx are in .wav format ready to be burned to CD. On a fast internet connection this free download should only take a couple seconds.

DOWNLOAD SEUSSICAL SOUND EFFECTS

Click on link above and save this compressed folder to your computer. Once downloaded, right click on the compressed folder and select “extract” to uncompress the folder contents.

Drop a note and let me know how these worked for you. ROCK ON SEUSSICAL!

TECH NOTES:
I ran the sound fx live from a virtual keyboard on a laptop. It allowed me to time the fx exactly where I wanted them. You could also have a sound tech run the effects, but they might need a couple cd players with fast transports (For instance, in the Overture to Act II if you want three distinct “wonk” sounds, this would require fast juggling between the CD players).

I added the slide whistle in a lot more than the score called for – had a great effect especially in the circus scenes.

Update May 2009
“VIRTUAL KEYBOARD” – Had a question as to what that is. I used the software Kontakt to map these sound effects to a keyboard, then triggered the sounds live from a midi keyboard connected to my laptop. This gives easy triggering for keyboardists that can time the sounds to the action, or trigger the sound effects to the exact beat needed in the scores (like in the Entracte to Act II). Kontakt costs several hundred dollars and has a little learning curve to get into. If you’re used to using music software, you should be able to figure out how to drag the sounds to the software, with only a few *minro* headaches (translation: it’s not super dooper easy for a first time user).

33 thoughts on “Seussical Sound Effects”

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  5. I used the Horn Ahooga during the Entracte (Overture) to Act II. There’s a spot where the band breaks on the back beat for a couple measures – I used a horn, slide whistle, etc. on the backbeat breaks for a comedy effect.

  6. Thank you so very much!
    I had nearly had a heart attack trying to find an egg cracking sound. Goodness!

    I am a student that is working on production and now I can finally say I finished finding all the sound effects.

    Thank you so much! Such a great help

  7. The sounds are great. Can you explain “virtual keyboard”? I’ve got a laptop with Windows Media Player, and noticed how difficult the timing will be.
    Thanks.

  8. Thanks a lot this site was very useful to me to get the sound of falling rain.It was of great help to me.
    ===============================================================
    Arnold

  9. Thank you so very much!!!! You just made my day! When I got the list of sound effects, I nearly had a heart attack. I can now tell my TD that I have found all the ques.

    Thank you so much!!

  11. Thanks for doing this – I usually have to download individual files for sounds effects, but this was a great time-saver!

  14. Glad they are working out for you guys.

    Lowell – I added information to my post about using a “virtual keyboard” with the sound effects. I used the software Kontakt.

  16. Thanks alot for these! I wish other production companies put their resources online for other theatre professionals to be able to use as reference.

    Thanks again

  17. WAHOOOO!

    Egg sound effects! I had made most of my own for our production, but then i found this. It really helps round out my sound design. =]

  19. On the first page I found, it says you had a “Yopp” SFX. I was wondering what your sound was? What did you use to achieve it? I am not happy with what I am getting.

    Thanks!

  20. Thanks a bunch man, the show is in like two days and they popped the SFX task on me this late. Saved me a lot of time

  21. Thanks for the head start. Will be searching for fx files for our production very soon.

    For some of the folks that have inquired about playback it’s well worth a look to check out some of the versions of “Cue Player”

    Dave Baxter at BaxelData.com has created a playback system that has absolutely incredible features and abilities. Dave is a theater guy himself, and the program has darn near everything you could ever ask even in the free version. If you look at his free version, I guarantee you will want to pay the few buck to get one of the licensed versions. Easy to set up and runs with just a tap of the space bar at the appropriate time. It runs multiple cues and other tasks with amazing ease and precision. Multiple simultaneous cues are a breeze, and everything advances to the next cue on its own…or not if thats what you want. One of my first experiences with it was playback of some cartoon style punch sound FX during a production of Beauty and the Beast. Even using high end CD and MD players it was nearly impossible to get these FX to time out so that the FX seemed correct in time. (even the high end players have a few milliseconds of delay and thats enough to make the FX sound wrong. In few minutes with Cue Player and it was all resolved and the timing was easy and reliable!! One small hint is all you need. Look at your .wav files in an editor and take off any leading silence. That done, your playback timing becomes deadly simple and accurate. Tell Dave that DarthFader sent you his way. He’s a great guy and is constantly improving his product in response to input from the real world!

  22. This is great! I am SMing this show and we lost our sound designer, with nothing for the cast to rehearse with! Once we get a new designer I’ll tell them about this, but until then it will be great to have these for the cast to get used to the cues!

  23. Thanks, I’ve done most sound effects for our show already but some great effects here that I don’t have, I very much appreciate you sharing them! 🙂

  25. Thank you so much for sharing your work. These are very high quality effects and you’ve made my job of collecting them much easier!

  26. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I am doing this show on Saturday at a summer camp and have had a lot of trouble finding a good egg cracking sound!!! This feels like GOLD!!!

  27. Are these still available–I do hope so!!! says “original item can’t be found…”

  31. Thanks you so so much! My high school is about a month away from our opening show and I’m in charge of sound effects and I was having a heart attack trying to find some of these! Thanks!

  32. A huge thanks for this!!!! Doing the music and effects for our school show and grateful for such actions.

  33. Hello,

    Thanks for sharing the sound! I am wondering if you know what the “Spike Jones” effect suppose
    to sound like?

    Thank you

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