FreePats

The FreePats project

FreePats is a project for creation of a free and open collection of digital instruments for music production. We would like to collect sound samples that can be used to build sound banks for free software synthesizers.

In the same spirit as free software, sound samples in the FreePats project are distributed under free licenses. Any uploaded content must be original, its origin and authors must be known and it must be published under a suitable license.

Reference documentation and standard MIDI files are also wanted as well as any HOWTO or general information about sound synthesis, patches, samples or the applications to use them. Please use the Wiki for notes and documentation, and feel free to contribute or get involved via the mailing list.

Why recording all musical instruments from scratch?

Because it's fun. We enjoy building digital instrument libraries, meeting people with similar interests, recording and processing sound samples and making them available for everyone.

Why not using content from other places?

We would want to use content from other free sample libraries, but the problem is that there are very few free instrument libraries in the whole Internet. It all depends on the definition of free:

• Sound samples should be compatible with the Open Source definition and Debian Free Software Guidelines. This ensures compatibility with most GNU/Linux distributions.

• The license must permit to distribute musical works under any license choosen by the author. This is an additional permission, needed due to the nature of sound samples.

• Content taken from unknown or dubious sources is not allowed.

• Sound samples directly or indirectly recorded from other sample-based instruments are not allowed.

Note that under those requirements, many popular sample libraries are not free. That's why we are working to create new and original content, really free for everybody.