I decided some time ago that my next album was only going to be constructed from Creative Commons or Public Domain samples and synthesis, with the occasional live part from myself or someone else. In other words: no commercial sample libraries. No samples that aren’t freely redistributable.

Without going into the specifics of why (it’s because I want to be able to distribute the complete multitracks without any hassles… oh) this has left me with something of a deficit in my music-box. There are a lot of things you can’t fake with synths.

So far I’ve found the rather great Yamaha piano samples from OLPC (with a very handy soundfont) and there are some interesting ones over on freesound like this Toy Glockenspiel, but beyond that I don’t really have much of anything or any idea of where to look. Thus: this post. Know of any good (or bad) CC-licensed lossless multisamples floating around anywhere?

Two sources I can think of - iBeat, audiocookbook

what kind of sounds are you looking for? (see instrument to the left…)

Essentially what I said — “stuff that’s hard to synthesize.” Stringed instruments are particularly difficult, so are guitars, (especially acoustic guitars) horns and woodwinds. High quality, lots of notes preferred.

iBeats is quite a good site but not exactly what I had in mind.