free samples

Hollow Sun has released PolyMoog Strings FreePack, a set of samples of the Strings 1 and 2 presets taken from a PolyMoog Keyboard by Joeri Peeters.

According to Peeters:

This FreePack is very detailed with long samples every minor third across the keyboard range. Each one is impeccably looped and is as good a representation of this classic keyboard as you are likely to find anywhere.

The PolyMoog Keyboard was a preset-only version of the bigger PolyMoog. The PolyMoog was not a huge success in the market, partly because of its hefty price tage (around £5,000) but the fact that it wasn’t actually truly polyphonic with just one filter to service all voices much like the ARP Omni and Omni II. It was also extremely unreliable and many of them spent more time in service centres than they did in studios!

The PolyMoog Keyboard was a scaled down version of its bigger sibling featuring a mere 14 presets (6 more than the original PolyMoog!) and limited editability. The most notable presets were the fabled Vox Humana sound and the two string sounds on offer here. It was more reasonably priced at £2,000. Of course, the PolyMoog Keyboard shot to fame in the hands of Gary Numan who used one extensively in his music.

The PolyMoog Strings FreePack is available as a free download in Kontakt 3, Akai S5/6000 and Fusion formats.

via Rekkerd

The One Laptop Per Child project has made a collection of free audio samples available for download:

This huge and continuously expanding collection of new and original samples have been donated to Dr. Richard Boulanger @ cSounds.com specifically to support the OLPC developers, students and XO users. They are free and will be available under a CC-BY license for downloading and use in your music and activities. Each of the 6500+ samples is 16-bit, WAV, Mono, normalized to -3dB, and provided at 3 sample rates – 44.1K, 22.5K and 16K.

The contents include:

• Selections from The Berklee College of Music Sampling Archive (1999-2007)
• OLPC Samples from 31 Music Synthesis Alumni from Berklee
• Sounds from 2 Music Synthesis Faculty at Berklee
• Samples From the Worldwide Community of Csound Developers, Teachers and Users
• Dr.B.’s Selected Samples
• The Original Samples, Percussion Sounds and Drumkits from TamTam
• The Open Path Music Custom Sample Library for OLPC

More on One Laptop Per Child music.

Blipdrums is a new web-based business specializing in unique electronic drum samples for musicians, sound designers and soundtrack creators.

“Blipdrums is dedicated to creating the best electronic percussion samples,” explains Bliphead and company founder Saul Stokes. Stokes creates Blipdrum’s sample using a mixture of software and hardware, combined with his own handmade analog modular music systems.

“We create new and unique electronic percussion samples from the ground up using a mixture of one-of-a-kind hand built modular analog synthesizers combined with the latest software synths and effects.” explains Stokes. “Because of this, our drum sounds are totally one-of-a-kind.”

Blipdrums sells their samples in bite-size chunks of 10 samples, organized by drum type, priced at $1.49 per set. A “Buy all” discount is also available.

The site uses a Paypal-based shopping cart. When you place an order, the site sends you a web link via email for downloading your samples.

I arranged with Saul to make a set of free drum samples (.zip) available to Synthtopia readers, so you can try their work risk-free. You can also preview all their samples at the Blipdrums site.

Check out their stuff and let me know what you think in the comments!