FreePats

The FreePats project

FreePats is a project for the creation of a free and open collection of digital instruments for music production. We enjoy building sounds banks, meeting people with similar interests, recording and processing sound samples and making them available for everyone.

Sound banks are made by recording individual notes of an instrument, with different dynamics and articulations. Those recordings are the basic pieces of a sound bank, usually called samples of an instrument.

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. Please use the Wiki for notes and documentation, and feel free to contribute or get involved via the mailing list or write an email to freepats@zenvoid.org.

Does FreePats use content from other places?

FreePats includes both, content created by its members and contributors, and content from other free sample libraries, as long as it's based on original recordings and published under a suitable free license:

• 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, unless there is explicit permission from the manufacturer of the original instrument.

Those conditions mean that we are very picky about the origin and permission of our content. Under those requirements, many popular sample libraries are not considered free.