Freebies, freebies, freebies. Before you start buying the most expensive sample libraries check out my list of free sample libraries first. I hope you find the instrument you need here.
I subdivided the list into categories of instruments: Guitar, bass, orchestral instruments, keys and piano, drum and percussion, synths, other instruments (think of world instruments, tiny instruments, weird instruments and everything else), sample player and instrument collections (on some websites there are just too many sample instruments to categorize them).
Also consider:
- “®” stands for registration required
- “@” stands for email address required
- “κ” stands for instrument compatible with Kontakt player
Feel free to add missing instruments or report broken links in the comment section below!!
Free Guitar Samples
| Pettinhouse Guitars | κ | Pettinhouse, the place to find your guitar samples: Acoustic guitar, warm jazz guitar, classical guitar … |
| Power Guitar | κ | Wavesfactory’s Power Guitar |
| Trash Guitar | Power chords, palm muted power chords, single strings palm muted … | |
| Flamestudios | Great collection of guitars and bass guitars: FS Fender Telecaster, FS Seagull Steelstring, Gibson Les Paul (SFZ) |
Free Bass Guitar Samples
| Pettinhouse Bass | κ | And more of Pettinhouse: Direct Bass |
| Flamestudios | Great collection of guitars and bass guitars: FS Washburn Acoustic Bass Guitar and FS Ibanez Electric Bass Guitar (SFZ) |
Free Orchestral Samples
| Tuba | κ | Pretty awesome sounding tuba samples. A present from the Philharmonia Orchestra. |
| Philharmonia Orchestra Sample Library | The Philharmonia Orchestra offers a wide ranged sample library for free! Almost an entire orchestra!!! Only restriction: They give them away as loose samples. You have to create the instrument for Kontakt or other samplers yourself. | |
| Cello for Kontakt | κ | Pocketblakus solo cello for Kontakt |
| Sonita Symphony | Complete SoundFont orchestra 440MB of size | |
| Linux Sampler Project | piano, violin, cello and at the very end the open orchestra | |
| BedroomProducer | κ | Collection of free Kontakt instruments: Cinema Strings, Warm Pentode Brass and other non orchestral instruments |
| Intimate Strings Lite | ®κ | Nice sounding string instrument with several expressions |
Free Keys and Piano Samples
| Soni Musicae | κ | Soni Musicae specialized on harpsichords, organ and piano samples. Check out their freebies. |
| Armore Grand Piano | κ | Great sounding piano for ballads and more |
| Precisionsound | κ | Precisionsound is awesome! It offers organs, toy pianos and more toy pianos |
| Rock-Si-Chord | κ | From Soniccouture |
| Magnus Chord Organ | κ | A 1970′s reed organ |
| Tape Loop Organ | κ | Sounds interesting. Check out the description for more information |
| KVR Audio | Piano One – the VST piano | |
| Retrosampling | κ | Some electric pianos and other piano instruments free to download on retrosampling.se |
| Supertone Babypiano | VST for Windows with samples of a baby piano (toy piano) | |
| UVI | Analogic Piano 09 (electric piano) | |
| Hugo Kant | κ | Another Toy Piano |
Free Drum and Percussion Samples
| Mildon Studio Marching Army | For Windows XP, Vista and 7. Also check out their free Bongos | |
| Waves Alchemy Drum Tools Teaser | ® | Drum sample packs for electronic productions |
| Free Sidsonic Libraries | κ | X-mas special. 1 GB full of surprises. |
| Pettinhouse Drums | κ | And even more from Pettinhouse: Several Vynil Electronic Drumkits |
| Obscure analogue drumbox | 26 WAV loops | |
| Meditation Bells | One last time Precisionsound gift | |
| Wavealchemy | ®κ | Wavealchemy gives away several different sample banks like: Club Kicks, FX’s, 606 Drums, 808 Tape, Wired Electronics |
| Tongue Drum | κ | Asian idiophone that sounds like TH’s Whale Drum. |
| Drum Sample Library | If someone is patient enough to download all these samples. You are welcome | |
| Acoustic Drumkit | κ | NSA Custom Series Drumkit by Dean aka “Nekro” |
| Perculiar Percussion | Wooden Door, Wooden Railing, Metal Lid, Trowel … like their samples like their name: Sample Oddity | |
| MASSIVE Drumcomputer Library | 282 Drum Sets / 24.331 WAV Samples / 2.87 GB | |
| Worlds Percussion | ® | Check out this site! Plenty of free stuff (not only drums) |
| Jackie FX Bank | 81 free fx sounds | |
| Big Mono | κ | Free acoustic drumkit |
| Bits and Beats | ® | Kero’s Bits and Beats |
| Jackie FX Bank | 81 free fx sounds | |
| Big Mono | κ | Free acoustic drumkit |
| Total Composure | ®κ | African Slit Drum |
| XLN Audio | ® | Addictive Drums demo version |
| 3amnoise | 6 Drum Kits and FX hits | |
| Audiowarrier | κ | Djembe for Kontakt |
Free Synths and FX Samples
| Hollow Sun Kontakt Samples | κ | Check out those free sample libraries. Hollow Sun is giving away 11 different treasures from PolyMoog Strings to the Novachord |
| Electronic Loops/Samples/FX’s | ® | Hip-hop, Dubstep, RnB; Soundsondemand.com |
| Modularsamples | κ | Pretty interesting page with allot of free stuff |
| Protone Elements | κ | Dirty 808, Analog LoFi Bass, Virus Hypersaw, Synthetic Guitars, … |
| Nord Modular Samples | ®κ | Free Nord Sounds; A collection of great Clavia Nord Modular G2 multisamples from Wavescape Studio |
| Free Arp Odyssey For Kontakt | κ | Vintage analog synthesizer from 1972 |
| Retrosampling | κ | Oscillator pak – sampler synth elements v1.0 (VST instrument that uses waveforms for experimental synth sounds) |
| BedroomProducer | κ | Vintage synthesizer and samplers |
| Fairlight CMI IIx | κ | Fairlight CMI IIx for Kontakt. Fairlight is the mother of all samplers |
| Noizefield | κ | GameBoy and Nintendo samples |
| Durk Kooistra | Extreme Bass FX Samples |
Other Instruments
| Ocarina | κ | Nice sounding Ocarina with articulation keyswitches. Comes with versions for Halion, Kontakt, Esx24 and Soundfond8 |
| Bolder Sounds | ®κ | Unbelievable! They give away 23 Instruments for free: Bavarian Zither, Buffalo Accordion, Electric Sitar, Harmonica, Mini Sax, Thumb Piano and many others. Check it out! |
| Sonivox | κ | Free soundfont samples from flutes to synths a colorful collection |
| Tonehammer Bees | κ | Tonehammer is no more but these bees seem to be still online (direct download) |
| Votox | κ | 4 selected demo instruments |
| Music Maker | κ | I love toy instruments |
| Kong Audio | Get the china feel! | |
| Cinematica | κ | Check out these massive sample library containing several instruments like Xylophone, Metallophone, Electric Guitar, Piano, Organ, Bass, Steel Drum |
| Digitalsoundfactory | ®κ | Don’t know exactly what you can get here but it sounds promising |
| Tekit-Audio | κ | Soprano recorder! Everyone needs a recorder in his instrument library! |
| Solo Guitaret | κ | Nine Volt Audios Guitaret. Strange instrument but pretty interesting as well |
| Embertone | ®κ | Four free instruments: Atmoraffe, Kitchen Sounds, Jug Drum, Intimate Strings |
| Brendanjhogan | κ | Some Kontakt instruments with strange names: FlyinaBottle, CardboardTube, WarpedKalimba |
| Rekkerd | κ | 9 World Instruments for Kontakt |
Free Sample Player and Instrument Collections
| Kontakt 5 Player + 50 Instruments | @κ | Native Instruments gives away the Kontakt 5 Player for free + 50 of their instruments |
| Cakewalk SFZ Player | Simple and free high quality sfz player with additional effects (Windows) | |
| Paax | Paax is a powerful VST sampler. It is free but has many features and effects you also find with professional samplers | |
| Prodyon | Prodyon Soundfont Player | |
| SampleTank | ® | Virtual instrument and sound workstation with several sample libraries |
| Alchemy Player + Instruments | 1GB sample library with 200 sounds | |
| Beat Zampler | Sfz Sample Player | |
| Free Sound Samples | Huuuuge sample library! 8 GB and over 8000 samples of all kind! | |
| SFZero | Simple Soundfont Player for mac |
I try to keep this list of free sample libraries up to date as best as I can. You can help me by reporting broken links and adding new instruments to it via the comments.
Comments
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This is intense… shizzle fo sho! Hey erny!
[...] The Most Complete List of Free Sample Libraries – A Kings Mercury [...]
this is a great list. Here’s a few more awesome secret gems often used by pros:
G-town sampling project torrent – one of the best percusion sounds ever recorded in a church in switzerland
Herbertos torrents for kontackt fantasya, dreamland, the ocean one
Very nice list Dario, need to find out to check these intruments
Thanks! Great list. The giga samples here might also be worth checking: http://www.linuxsampler.org/instruments.html
It includes a concert grand and some London Philharmonia instruments.
Thanks for the great reply! I will add your link to the list.
If you have been playing piano for that long you have the advtanage of knowing what the notes should sound like. I agree with the other answer in that they are two different instruments. You will enjoy the guitar because its a different beast and really get the fundamentals like proper fingering and just practice and you will enjoy it.
Acoustic drum, http://www.wnpsounds.com ! Hot hot hot !