Sound Across Slides

See Also:

PowerPoint And Narration
PowerPoint And Sound
Sound Fades in Sony Sound Forge
Music Span - Free Add-in
Loop Sounds Across Looped Presentations

Introduction
PowerPoint 2002 and 2003
PowerPoint on the Macintosh
PowerPoint 97 and 2000
Using Transition Sounds To Loop
Free Sounds

Introduction

Sound can add character to a presentation - it's easy to bring a presentation to life with sound of any kind, be it a background score, a narration or an event sound. Like everything else though, sound in PowerPoint can enrich only if used with relevance and moderation.

Let's look at background scores. Upbeat and dynamic background scores can be great accompaniments to presentations that comprise slideshows, photo albums and portfolios - corporate profiles and demos on the other hand require background scores that are more understated and soft.

Adding a background score to a PowerPoint presentation is easy, although the technique is a little different across various versions.

On this page, you'll find step-by-step instructions for all Powerpoint versions for Windows and Macintosh. We'll also look at transition sounds set to loop. Finally, you'll find links to resources where you can dowload free sounds online.

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PowerPoint 2002 and 2003

PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 follow a similar procedure - let's follow these steps for PowerPoint 2002:

1. Navigate to the first slide of the presentation and choose Insert | Movies And Sounds | Sound From File… or any of the three other sound options. Navigate to your sound track and PowerPoint will ask you if you want the sound to play automatically. Accept the option.
   
   
   
   
2. Right click the sound icon and choose 'Custom Animation' - this will open the Custom Animation task pane. Click the sound file listed within the pane - click again on the down arrow next to the name. In the resultant menu, choose Effect Options.
   
   
   
   
3. This will open the Effects Options dialog box with two tabs - Effects and Timing. In the Effects tab, choose to play the sound from beginning and type 999 in the 'Stop playing after' option.
   
   
   
   
4. In the Timings tab, match your settings with the following screenshot.
   
   
   
   
5. In all versions of PowerPoint, you might see a sound icon on the slide where you inserted the sound - if you don't like the icon on the slide, just drag it to anywhere off the slide - your sound shall still play fine.

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PowerPoint on the Macintosh

1. Navigate to the slide where you want the sound to begin playing, which is usually the first slide of the presentation. Go to Insert | Movies and Sounds | Sound from File, locate the sound file you want to have play, and click "Insert".
   
   
   
   
2. When prompted to have the sound on the slide play automatically, choose "Yes".
   
   
3. Control-click the sound icon, and choose "Custom Animation" from the contextual menu. The "Options" tab of the Custom Animations window should then open, with the inserted sound pre-selected as the object to animate.
   
   
   
   
4. Check "Play using Animation Order", and choose "Continue slide show" for "While Playing". For "Stop Playing", enter "After 999 slides". Check the box to "Hide when not playing" if you do not want the sound icon to appear when you show the presentation. You can toggle the option to "Loop until stopped" if you wish for the sound to repeat if the sound is finished yet the presentation is not.
   
   
5. You can now adjust timing options for the sound. In the Custom Animations window, click the "Order and Timing" tab. If you wish for the sound to play right when you open the slide, choose the "Media" entry under "Animation Order" that matches the one selected in the left pane, and press the Up arrow next to the list until the selected entry is on top. This ensures that the sound animates before any other objects do.
   
   
6. Under "Start Animation", choose "Automatically, 0 seconds after
   previous event". This ensures that the sound begins playing as soon as you open the slide, or as soon as the previous object has finished animating if the Media object is not first in the "Animation Order" list.
   
   
   

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PowerPoint 97 and 2000

1. In PowerPoint 2000 (version 97 works similar), navigate to the first slide of the presentation and choose Insert | Movies and Sounds | Sound From File… and navigate to the sound file you want to use. Of course, you can also choose Sound from Gallery, Play CD Audio Track or Record Sound from the same menu.
   
   
   
   
2. Once you have inserted your sound, PowerPoint 2000 may ask you if you want your sound to play automatically - choose 'Yes'.
   
   
3. You'll find a sound icon within your slide - right click the icon and choose 'Custom Animation' from the resultant popup menu. Within the Custom Animation dialog box, choose the Multimedia Settings tab - and select the radio button that says 'Continue slide show' - also type in a high number within the Stop playing after number box - 999 is the highest number you can type (see screenshot)
   
   
   

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Using Transition Sounds To Loop

You can often use transition sounds to play across slides and loop. This is an option of choice when one needs to incorporate narrations along with a background music score.

Right-click the first slide in Slide Sorter view, choose Transition - and under the Transition Sounds option, choose your WAV file (this trick works only with WAV files, so no MIDI, WMA or MP3 here!) - be sure to select the 'Loop' option. Whenever you need to stop this sound, right-click the respective slide, choose Transition and under Transition Sounds, choose 'Stop Playing Sound'

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Free Sounds

Here is a list of links to free sounds - although all these links provide free sounds for download, some of them do not allow commercial usage. When in doubt, always mail to the concerned contact person mentioned on the site.

Bryan Dongray has an extensive collection of free MIDI files available for download.

Interactive Voices has royalty free music clips and sound effects available for download.

Lockergnome has a nice collection of holiday and Christmas MIDI files.

The Winamp site has some free music.

WAVCentral has tons of sounds in WAV and MP3 format.

My Fave WAVs has a new sound everyday.

Samplenet UK is a treasure trove of free samples.

Download free sound fx from the FlashKit site.

Free sounds in the form of beats, techno and special fx at the Flash Thief site.

The Daily WAV site has speech sound samples added daily.

WAVSounds has thousands of searchable, funny wavs and sounds.

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