Giant List of FREE SAMPLES

Back when I started making music, I quickly realized that trying to make sample-based music without a significant sample library is really hard. While there are thousands of sample libraries for sale, the problem with starting out is that, by definition, you suck, you're probably in high school, and your allowance is likely going towards other, more important things, and not your silly musical experiments.

Over the years, I've been frustrated with how difficult it is to find good free samples. It turns out that there's some really great royalty-free stuff out there, if you can find it. This post is a categorized list of every single sample pack and soundfont I have that is royalty-free, and of reasonable quality in an effort to give beginner musicians a much better foundation to build their music off of. Some of these are soundfonts compressed with sfArk - just drag the file on to sfArkXTc.exe to generate a self-extracting executable that will create the sf2 file when run. Others are compressed using sfpack.exe. A few use the SFZ format (usually when the soundfont in question would take up too much RAM), which can be read by the free sForzando VSTi.

Instrumental

000_Florestan_Piano
198-StratocasterVS
MIS Stereo Piano [ SoundFont | Directwave ]
MIS Orchestra Samples [Requires Directwave]
SGM-V2.01
Nylon Guitar 1
Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra SF2 (original SFZ)
HQ Orchestra Samples

Percussion 1 Percussion 2 Strings 1 Strings 2 Strings 3 Brass/Woodwinds Choir/SFX Bank 1 Bank 2 Bank 3

Vowel Ensemble
070 Bassoon Ethan Nando
Roland Sound Canvas
Tubular Bells
Maestro Concert Piano (SFZ)

Percussion

SAMPLES - 5000 DRUMHITS
1400 Samples Drum Kit
mhak kicks
drums_industrial
drums_ken_ardency
RolandOrchestralRythm
JD Rockset 5
Ellade Drums
The Freq's Glitch Hop Sample Pack

VSTi

While not samples, these are free VSTi plugins, compatible with most modern DAWs.
Bitcrusher
Tube Screamer
Rez v2.0
Reaktor 5 (free version)
Reaktor 5 Factory Selection
Mikro Prism [Requires Reaktor]
dmiHammer
Jug Drum (free version) [Requires Kontact]
Dryer Drum [Requires Kontact]

The SimulAnalog Guitar Suite is very nice, but is for non-commercial use only.

What are these samples capable of? You know you can't ask me that without getting a bunch of disgusting self-promoting links for a programmer's pathetic music making attempts, right? Oh well, if you insist:




More songs like these can be found in their respective albums:
Solar Noise - EP
Aurora Theory

These samples are extremely versatile, so don't mistake my own laughable attempts at using them for some imaginary limitations. There are thousands of samples in these packs, so get creative!