I don’t go crate digging for free instruments quite as often as I used to, but I still use them from time to time. Some of these are Kontakt instruments, some are VSTs, and some are soundfonts.
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- Get Kontakt Player! Seriously! Soundfonts and VSTis are going out of style, so you’ll miss out on many high-quality free instruments without it. Many free Kontakt instruments have a “full version only” disclaimer, but this isn’t exactly true: Kontakt Player will load third-party instruments just fine for 15 minutes, at which point you just have to reload the VST.
- If you find a free instrument you like, don’t wait to download it. If you eventually find a replacement for that instrument but still like the free version, don’t delete it. F2P instruments have a tendency to disappear overnight, and not even the Wayback Machine can scrounge up a lost 300MB download.
- Sometimes instruments based on free samples from the internet (such as many bigcat instruments) are licensed under CC BY-SA or something similar. Obviously no one’s going to come after you if you fail to credit the author of the samples in one of your instruments(?), but it’s good to be aware of the license in any case. Of course, if you’re already roaming the wild west of those anonymously sourced internet soundfonts and samples that are only de facto in the public domain, it’s already too late for you anyway.
Get inspired by the best virtual instruments, new VSTs, and award-winning sample libraries. From Hollywood composers to bedroom producers, musicians around the world use these virtual instruments to push the envelope of music production. And the best is that they’re all VST instruments — but also support AU and AAX in nearly any DAW. Nils’ K1v Is a Free VST Instrument ROMpler Plugin by Nils Schneider Producer Feed - Jul 15, 2020 Nils Schneider released Nils' K1v, a free VST instrument ROMpler that emulates a famous Japanese. Newest Free Plugins 3.3k Best Free Plugins 2.9k Best Free Instrument Plugins 1.3k Free Synth Plugins 457 Best Free Effect Plugins 1.6k Best Free Guitar Effect Plugins 51 Free Reverb Plugins 104 Free EQ Plugins 136 Free Plugins Host 100 Free Kontakt Instruments & Libraries 204 Best Free. Electronik Sound Lab – Haunted Guitar Lite size 261 MB / 263 MB / 275 MB Haunted Guitar Lite is a multi-sampled Fender Stratocaster Plus Deluxe electric guitar rompler.
Instruments
Piano
- Pianobook library
- Launched by Spitfire co-founder Christian Henson, this collaborative project features a variety of free home-sampled pianos as well as their stories.
- City Piano
- City Piano is a great bread-and-butter piano based on public domain samples.
- Pop Piano Free
- I own several commercial piano libraries, but still frequently come back to Sonic Cat’s Pop Piano when I need keys for bright, upbeat tunes.
- Upright Felt Piano
- Everyone needs a felt piano in their life. Email address required.
Solo Strings
- pocketBlakus Cello
- After creating pocketBlakus, Blake Robinson eventually collaborated with Embertone on a more robust commercial cello library, the Blakus Cello. However, even for owners of the full version, the original free instrument is well worth downloading for its Swiss army knife spiccato patch.
- MiniErHu
- The erhu is a lovely instrument. You owe it to yourself to have one, mini or otherwise.
Guitar
- Shreddage 3 Stratus FREE
- The nice thing about Shreddage 3 over its predecessor is that the guitars come with an effects rack built-in and a lot of presets that make it easy to get up and running with a virtual guitar setup without the need to use your own plugin signal chain. The free version of Shreddage 3 Stratus only includes a few articulations, but is otherwise fully functional.
- Spicy Guitar
- This is actually a physically modeled guitar synth. It’s lightweight and suitable for understated guitar chords.
- Cryptar
- Atom Hub’s Cryptar is an awesome eclectic guitar library. Its affected haunting sound is great for ethereal melodies, though maybe not so great for chords and fast strumming.
- Valiha
- I understand the Valiha is not a guitar in the traditional sense, but I’m white and don’t know any better.
- ChineeGuZheng Classic
- Okay, admittedly also not a guitar. I just wanted to avoid making a subheading called “ethnic instruments,” yknow?
Woodwinds
- Ivory Wind
- Unfortunately, recorder and kazoo libraries take themselves more seriously than people of our generation would like, so you’re out of luck if you’re looking for a shittyflute. Still, when used properly, the recorder is not actually a terrible instrument! Download this now, because I’m one of the suckers who paid $10 to subsidize it :T
- Peruvian Ocarina
- What it says on the tin.
- Wooflute
- This is a bamboo flute with legato and staccato notes, as well as flutter tongue and accented notes, which you don’t often see in free instruments.
Synth
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- P8
- Along with Synth1, P8 is a popular choice for freeware composers looking for a supersaw sound.
- Phutura
- Available as a Reaktor ensemble (Phutura 2) or a VST plugin, Phutura is an Alpha Juno emulation with the best free hoover sound on the market.
- Rave Generator 2
- Rave Generator has all the 90s stabs you didn’t even know you needed.
Drums
- Grooove BPB
- This feature-limited version of the drum player by brunsandspork is perfect for creating simple drum kits. The BPB edition also comes with five bread and butter kits to start.
- Cinematic Synthetic Drums
- Impact Soundworks offers this collection of epic electronic drums for free. Checkout required.
- Percussion Elements
- This limited cinematic drum library taste pack from Splash Sound features various hits on bass drums, “ethnic” drums, and tops from four different mic perspectives. Checkout required.
Vocals
- Alter/Ego
- Plogue’s answer to Vocaloid has two free banks to download, Marie Ork and Bones.
Just for fun
- Orch Hit VSTi Demo Version
- There are a lot of good sounds in here, but number 27 will be your staple for adding that extra punch to your tracks.
- Super Spook Keys
- Add some sci-fi spookiness to your tracks with this virtual theremin.
- Stylophone
- What, you don’t know what a stylophone is? Neither does spellcheck apparently. It kind of sounds like an Otamatone.
- Haunted Music Box
- It’s a music box with some reverse patches and other spookery.
- Death Piano LE
- Same as the above, only it’s a piano.
Orchestra
- Versilian Studio Chamber Orchestra Community Edition
- VSCO has apparently devoured Sonatina and other alternative libraries to create the ultimate Frankenstein library made purely of public domain orchestral samples.
- Versilian Community Sample Library
- Available as .sfz or as Kontakt instruments from bigcat, the VCSL aims to expand on the collection of samples and instruments already offered by VSCO CE.
Effects
Reverb
- Reverberate LE
- If you’re not willing to hemorrhage money, LiquidSonics’ free version of Reverberate should be right up your alley.
Just for fun
- CensorCut
- Censor your inappropriate rap songs!
- Radio FX
- Add up to 8 wav files and tune between them using the big knob.
Utilities
- Mutant v3 (Windows)
- A Japanese freeware utility by Crypton Future Media to organize your sound effects, loops, and samples in a local database. Add folders, then play and tag your files right from the browser. The program shows waveforms and meta fields like key, BPM, filetype, genre, instrument, etc.
Resources
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- Bedroom Producers Blog
- BPB, and similarly Rekkerd.org, are great resources for staying on top of soundware giveaways, freebies, and sales.
- VST 4 FREE
- This site is home to the old, the abandoned, and the super obscure among VSTs.
- Spitfire LABS
- Spitfire releases free experimental instruments every month. Personally, I wasn’t able to get the LABS plugin to work the first time I tried (probably Mixcraft’s fault ahem), but I own a lot of the donationware LABS Kontakt instruments before they made the switch to the new format, and they’re totally awesome.
- Noiiz Instruments
- Samplephonics has expanded their offering of virtual instruments since launching their new subscription-based platform, Noiiz. With a free account, you can download one (1) of their instruments listed here. Note: Do not waste your download on the Leeds Town Hall Organ. You can still get it as a Kontakt instrument on their old site. Your other option of course is to make 40 dummy accounts and download one instrument on each, but don’t tell them I told you to do that. 🔫👀
- bigcat instruments
- A treasure trove of Kontakt intruments, soundfonts, and VSTs made from public domain or Creative Commons-licensed samples.
- VI-CONTROL’s free instrument thread
- Subforums like this one and the sample library threads on Scoring Central sometimes have homemade instruments or samples by music hobbyists.
- Newgrounds(!)
- Newgrounds’ audio forum is home to many young composers who enjoy throwing collections of orchestral soundfonts at each other.
- Sampleswap
- Though the site makes no guarantee as to their license, you can find some really interesting samples and loops here. I found a trumpet riff I recognized from some Neopets flash game music once, and yknow that was just a magical moment.
- Looperman
- This is a great resource for well-made music loops and acapellas, perfect if you need some inspiration or are missing a certain kind of instrument or style from your tracks.
I recently bought a digital piano. It was mainly to learn piano, but also as a controller to use with Omnisphere. I really did think it would be as simple as installing the discs, connecting the keyboard by USB to my PC and then synthesizing away.I thought I didn't need anything else and that I could get to grips with DAWs at a later date, but clearly I was wrong! So my question is: what is the simplest — ie. most idiot-proof — way of getting sound from Omnisphere on my PC that won't require too much technical ability and know-how?
This is Spectrasonic's Omnisphere running as a stand-alone soft synth inside Herman Seib's excellent Savihost utility. Savihost is one of the simplest VST hosts, as well as being a valuable test tool.
Via SOS web site
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SOS contributor Martin Walker replies: To use a plug-in like Omnisphere without a DAW, you require a host application capable of loading VST instruments. Examples of suitable 'full-featured' hosts include Ableton Live, Cubase, GarageBand, Logic and Reaper. Developers do get occasional complaints from users if they don't provide a standalone version of their software instruments as well as the plug-in version, but there's really no need for them to take the time, trouble and expense of creating their own stand-alone application when so many simple host utilities are also already available to let you run any VST instrument in stand-alone mode.
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Mac users can download VST Lord (http://arne.knup.de/?page_id=32) for OS X use, while PC users have several choices, including the free Cantabile Lite (www.cantabilesoftware.com), Tobybear's donationware Minihost (www.tobybear.de/p_minihost.html), and Herman Seib's Savihost (www.hermannseib.com/english/Savihost.htm).
Savihost is probably the simplest to use of all of those listed above. It was created for the sole purpose of automatically loading only one VSTi, is extremely quick to load, is light on system resources, is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions to suit whichever format of soft synth you're using, and also supports ASIO drivers for low latency during performance. You just unzip the Savihost file into the same folder as the DLL file for your VST instrument (in this case Omnisphere.dll), then rename the file Savihost.exe to the name of your instrument (so, in this case, Omnisphere.exe).
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Finally, double-click on this renamed file and your instrument will appear in all its glory. Just use Savihost's Devices menu to choose your MIDI input device and audio output device and you can start playing it. Even if you don't have a keyboard controller on hand, you can download a different version of Savihost including its own software version that you can play with your mouse.
I've used Savihost myself on quite a few occasions over the years, and not only for playing soft synths as stand-alone applications. It's also a very useful tool if you have any problems running a particular soft synth in a DAW, since you can use it to check that the synth is installed and running correctly without all the extra paraphernalia associated with sequencers, editors and so on. As before, just drop the Savihost file into the same folder as the problem synth DLL, rename it and then double-click on it. If the synth works properly in Savihost, any problem is most likely to be with your DAW. The other advantage of the renaming process is that you can have several instances of Savihost in one 'vstplugins' folder, each launching a different stand-alone synth.