I read with interest these blogs concerning the use of music and voice-over on virtual tours:

Music or Not and To Add or Not to Add.

I like to add music to our virtual tours, and I was really happy when Real Tour Vision expanded the list clips to choose from. I don't like all of them, but at least now there are more possibilities. I wish we could adjust the volume, though.

Recently, one of our clients asked if we could put classical music on one of her tours. I told her that we had some that sounded classical, and I would attach one of those to the tour. She didn't like the one I used - nor any of the others that were close. She wanted "real" classical music and she could provide the music she wanted. I pointed out that what she had was copyrighted material and I couldn't put it on the tour.

I went to my trusty computer (relatively trusty; but that's another blog) and started surfing the internet. There are plenty of companies that provided music clips and loops, but they were very expensive.

I finally found Opuzz.com. Their loop library includes classical clips; but it also has loops from many other categories such as pop, rock, jazz, electronica, world music and many others. The music is sold on a royalty-free, "buyout basis". This means you only need to pay once and use the loop as many times as you like. Their loops are 15 seconds in length and 5MB or less. The music is available as MP3 or WAV.

I really wanted to use the William Tell Overture. Visualizing the clients galloping through the tour with the Lone Ranger made me laugh until I cried. But I figured the agent and the seller would have coronaries. I discarded the idea of the Minute Waltz for the same reason.

I finally decided to try out Canon - almost everybody likes that. I found that I could download one version for $4.99, or three slightly different versions for $9.99. Ordering and downloading the files was very, very easy. You can also order CDs with sets of loops, making it cheaper.

Best of all, downloading the file to Real Tour Vision and putting it onto the tour was also very, very easy. The directions walk you right through the process. You can hear the loop on this tour of St James Place in Munster, Indiana.

Now Mike is ready to try doing voice-over. Has anyone done that yet?

Debbie Higgins
Old Fashioned Service ~ 21st Century Technology
Four Seasons Virtual Tours