Free Music Samples and Loops
The following links will open doors to a wealth of loops, drum hits, acoustic, electric and just plain weird audio samples. Most are available in WAV format, but many are made available as MP3s and other formats. MusicBootCamp.com is not affiliated with these sites and accepts no liability for use of their content whatsoever. We have done our best to recommend sites that, to our knowledge, offer original content, but we can’t be certain about it. Have fun!
To report a broken link or suggest a new page, click here. Suggested sites MUST contain either free one-shot drums or full keyboard instruments. Loop-only sites are not included in this list.
Enjoy. Most or all of these sites offer free samples or entire libraries for free download.
- Pettinhouse (great vinyl drum hits and instruments)
- SoundSnap (fantastic collection of FX)
- iBeat (shots and loops)
- CCMixter (browse lots of sounds)
- Freesound Project (great site; free account required)
- Rhythm Lab (sounds of all kinds; free account required)
- JFTL (circuit bends aka mutant audio gear emissions)
- Free Samples n’ Loops (small collection with some useful hits/loops)
- Sample Arena (evolving user-submitted links, some are fantastic)
- Audio Skull (nice kicks among various other drums)
- BAP (good drum and instrument kits)
- Sample Swap (awesome collection of drums…, registration required)
- SampleSense (difficult to navigate, registration required, lots of stuff)
- Smart Loops (nice drums and loops; free account required)
- Loopasonic (various drum, bass, guitar and other loops)
- Platinum Loops (all manor of instrument samples, drum hits loops)
- Blue Distortion (vintage analog and modern digital banks, drums, FX)
- DJ Puzzle (dj scratches and loops)
- Peace Love Productions (free membership access to 20 loops a month)
- KVR Audio (drums galore and tons of softsynth banks)
- Samplenet (incredible!everything)
- Sound Central (another site with everything)
- Sound Zone (drums, bass, ethnic, lots more)
- Synth Zone (more links)
- Artificial Intelligence (bass, percs, fx)
- Daily Wav (film and TV quotes)
- Web Places (fx, animals, etc.)
- KB6.de (classic drum machines)
- Mighty Wight (drums and a few others)
Emagic EXS24 Instruments.
The samples in these EXS24 kits can be imported into most other software-based samplers. Some PC users may lack the software to edit AIF and SD2 file types, but Audacity (a free audio editor) should be able to deal with these. Many of these kits use only WAV samples and are therefore easy to use with most PC applications. Mac users will have no problem regardless of the format.
- Reactor
- Revolver Music
- Echo Chamber
- Ontology
- Petrosil (click on EXS24 Stuff)
- Rubber Chicken
Soundfonts.
Soundfonts can be converted into useable kits for most modern software-based samplers. Soundfont drum kits convert pretty easily, but pitched instruments with modulation data may not translate as well. It really depends on what tool you use to convert soundfonts, some are better and maintaining modulation and filter data than others, while other tools do an excellent job of annihilating the intended sound (but in a good way).
Mac Soundfont Plugin Synths | PC Soundfont Plugin Synths
- Soundfonts.it (click on the Sounds link)
- HammerSound.net (click on the Sounds link)
- Johannes.fr (various instruments)
- Guray Dere (various instrument banks and drums)
- Sonic Implants (Small free banks with nice sounding samples)
sfArk Soundfont decompression utilities for files compressed in the type 1 and type 2 formats. You’ll need this for some downloads. Mac users may need VirtualPC to run the type 1 converter or install exe files from companies like Sonic Implants.
Suggest another resource! We’ll review it and include it if we feel it adds value.