Sounds of the Forest – Free SFX Pack to Download

Get royalty-free WAV sound effects of leaves rustling, trees blowing, birdsong and other forest and woodland ambience

The sound of the forest is a highly sought-after asset amongst a large variety of sound designers, as it’s a fairly commonplace environment present in lots of media, from The Blair Witch Project and The Wicker Man to I’m a Celebrity and George of the Jungle.

If you’re a fellow sound designer, it’s not at all unlikely that you’ll be in need of some forest noises at some point in the near future. And we have just the solution! In this article, you can download some free forest sounds, and discover how to generate your own royalty-free forest sounds for absolutely free using Krotos Studio.

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This pack of forest SFX are all high-quality WAV format, running at 24 bit and 48kHz for use in professional audio projects. Grab them now by verifying your information, and we’ll send you a link for download.

But Wait! You can make your own forest ambiences for free!

‍Krotos Studio is a powerful sound design tool for filmmakers and sound designers. You can think of it as a Foley studio in your computer, enabling you to design and perform original sound effects and then export them into your project, tailored to fit. What’s more, one of the presets in the free version of Krotos Studio is the Forest preset in the Ambience category – perfect for designing the sound of the forest.

How to create a realistic forest sound environment in Krotos Studio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTegahlHJz8

Krotos Studio is an accessible sound design tool aimed to provide a wide-range of SFX assets to designers, including ambient forest sounds.

Let’s take a quick look at how to use Krotos Studio to create your very own free forest sounds.

Step 1: Open Krotos Studio

Krotos Studio can be opened from within your preferred audio or video editing software, or run independently.

First, open up an instance of Krotos Sounds and head over to the Forest preset under the Ambiences category.

Step 2: Adjust your settings

You’ll notice two XY controls you can interact with to alter the mix between the four different sound assets in the preset (the Forest preset consists of: Birds, Wind, Stream, and Animals).

When ready, you can start recording (enable/disable by the Start/Stop button) and make changes to the XY controls as you see fit.

Remember, you’re recording an original audio file, so any changes you make will be recorded live. This is a unique function to Krotos Studio and allows you to make alterations to your sound design across time. This is beneficial if trying to match your audio with visual changes that might occur on screen.

Step 3: Export your custom SFX

Once happy with your sound recording (you can take as many tries as you wish), drag and drop the file into your media editing software for use in your production.

And it’s as easy as that! You now have your very own custom free forest sounds file that you can use individually, or layered with other SFX assets.

The free version of Krotos Studio comes with 14 presets (one of which is the Forest preset), with adjustable parameters to help you create custom ambience audio files for use in your productions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ntAqWMoJg&list=PLLnwGpmc9_V_1k7K_qcxLGwwUACM-TquC&index=17

The upgraded version of Krotos Studio will give you indefinite access to 200+ SFX presets including many more unique ambient environments. Check out the Marshland preset in the video above.

Does geographical location matter when designing a forest soundscape?

You can get away with combining just about any ambient forest sounds with any woodland video media, however, for the more serious directors and sound designers out there, you might want to make sure your sounds are accurate to the actual geographical location shown on screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RHHUFqRR-U

Olivier Girardot does an excellent job with his forest sound design in the above video, where he walks us through his process.

To ensure your sound design matches the environment presented in your accompanying media, you must consider questions like: What animals are native to this specific location? Is there a nearby stream of water? What’s the weather like on screen? Is the footage shown indicative of a dense forest, or is the space more open?

If you manage to answer questions like these, you’ll be able to put together a sound palette more representative of the actual space shown in the video. For example, you wouldn’t want to include rain and intense wind sounds in a scene where the weather is hot and calm. You can also try to use animal noises that are only true to the location on screen.

Alternatively, you might be purposefully trying to depict a scene that is untrue to the real-world location where the footage was filmed. For example, you might be trying to communicate a fictional landscape, or trying to portray the on-screen place as somewhere else entirely. In which case, using animal sounds that are not naturally present might be a better option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3bGlGWF6vc

Check out Anna from Nocturnal’s quick Sound Design re-creation of one the scenes from the Lord of The Rings trilogy above.

How can you communicate different moods in your ambient forest sound design?

Sometimes, the accompanying visual media we’re designing sound for could be of a specific mood or genre, and we’ll need to adapt our approach to match.

For example, it won’t make sense for your audio to reflect a calming, tranquill ambient forest if you’re designing sound for a forest horror scene set at night time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBqwjODHMC8

Specific, mood-related pieces can be some of the most fun to take part in, and allow us to truly delve into our creative side. For example, a horror design, such as the one mentioned above might need to include owls hooting, and crickets chirping.

And perhaps you might have a Michael Myers type of character present in your scene. In which case, adding a walking in forest sound effect could be a good call. The music you choose to add will also have a dramatic impact over what emotions the scene stirs up in the audience.

Subscribers of Krotos Studio get many different cinematic and ambient presets that can help you communicate different genres and invoke different emotional responses in your audience. The Zombie Dystopia preset (shown below) is one of our favorites for horror ambience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULO0wbyQa98&list=PLLnwGpmc9_V_1k7K_qcxLGwwUACM-TquC&index=26

FAQs

Why are forest sounds relaxing?

To be in the forest is to be with Mother Nature. Providing there’s no angry predators on the prowl, being in a natural environment is known to calm our nervous systems and induce a state of tranquility.

Our brains can pick up a great deal of information just through sound alone. Because humans have evolved over thousands of years surrounded by the sound of the forest, our subconscious brain autonomously detects the stillness of the forest (providing no threats are present) – telling our nervous system there’s no immediate danger, alleviating us from our fight-or-flight response.

What elements make up a forest or woodland soundscape?

There’s a wide range of noises present in forest sound environments, but amongst the most common would be streams of water, light breeze/wind sounds, rustling leaves, and various animal noises, such as squirrels, birds, and plenty of other wild-roaming creatures.

Collating a library of such sounds is a great idea for those working with forest sounds more frequently. Then, you always have a collection of sounds to fall back on and add to your media editing timeline at your leisure. Combining traditional SFX files with a professional cinematic sound design application like Krotos Studio can hugely boost your productivity, and provide more options overall.