This is a list of free sample libraries. If you've come across free sample libraries that you found useful, feel free to drop a line so we can add them to the list.
Update (8-24-16): I'm back, but it's gonna be a while until I've caught up with the list. I've yet to crawl through https://musical-artifacts.com/. While I was busy, it seems VSCO 2 CE dropped. Be sure to check that one out. Right now, it's one of the largest freeware libs out there.
Update (5-18-16): Wow! I'm about two thirds through this list so far, and there's some quite amazing stuff in there. You could probably pull off a pretty mean scoring template without spending a single dime, provided you've got the time and patience to audition everything and find out what matches with what.
This is a list of freeware audio plugins, generally ones that can be useful for mixing with orchestra samples. If you've come across freebies that turned out useful, feel free to drop a line so we can expand the list.
Here are a few sites that may come in handy when trying to learn new areas of music theory. Feel free to contribute your own via PM or posting below!
General Theory Lessons on Musictheory.net - General introductory lessons to the principles of music theory Overview of all Scales and Modes (FR, use translate) - Comprehensive overview of how to form pretty much every scale possible under 12-tone Equal Temperament. The Eye that Hears, the Ear that Sees - Very good more advanced overview of harmonic concepts in traditional theory (in both English and French) - it's a bit of a slog in the English translation, but some great points and tons of examples. Euler's Music Theory - For all of you obsessive math nerds out there, the guy even had time to develop his own theory on music!
Orchestration Garritan Interactive Rimsky-Korsakov Principles of Orchestration - A nice read for a rainy day, a mostly-complete orchestration manual with good tips! Rimsky-Korsakov; full text - Full text version of the previous, but with no audio examples or commentary. Good for expanding upon the above link when done. Philharmonia Orchestra Guide to Instruments - General overview of the different kinds of instruments in the orchestra with videos. Indiana (ISU) Guide to Instruments - More structured walkthrough of the various kinds of instruments with recorded examples of many articulations. Vienna Academy: Instrumentology - Another walkthrough of the various kinds of instruments with recorded examples of many articulations and historical contexts. Orchestration Online - Great (perhaps slightly overly-assertive) videos discussing orchestration, composing, books on the previous, time management, and more by professional orchestrator/composer Thomas Goss. deBreve - Anther perhaps slightly overly-assertive take on some orchestration concepts and topics.
Temperaments, Tuning Rollingball's Temperaments Visualized site - Great introduction and overview of many historical temperaments, with links out to other sites about temperaments worth checking out! Evolution of High Pitch and Low Pitch - Useful article for anyone into Pre-1930's brass instruments or brass band music (Civil War, Sousa, etc.). Why 432 is a Myth - The most complete, researched, and fact-driven rebuttal to the 432 hysteria to date. I carry this around instead of pepper-spray.
Acoustics (as an aside) Intro to Musical Acoustics - The Aussies know how it works, so you should too! Acoustics of Bells - Short overview of the history and acoustics of bells (should you want to synthesize some)
As you can see the forum is pretty much empty right now; I have only invited a small number of people to sort of get things started before I go official with it.
So, feel free to post any thoughts and ideas that you may have (or bugs that you encounter for that matter) in this thread. I've tried to come up with a sensible set of subforums but I'm far from sure I have covered all bases, so in case you think of anything that really should be there, do let me know!
I figure it would be nice to have a little discussion. Multi-mic, or the concept of having multiple, mixable mic positions right in the end instrument, is popular and growing. However, some implementations can be more successful than others.
Do you use multi-mic in your own libraries?
How do you approach multi-mic?
What are the factors that make multi-mic implementation successful vs. unsuccessful?
What instruments are most useful to be multi-mic'd?
If in a sub-par recording space, how do you balance avoiding bad room tone vs. mic position diversity?
Scoring Central is meant to be a friendly, welcoming place for all people interested in virtual orchestration. In order to provide a pleasant forum experience for as many people as possible some things will not be tolerated. Things such as (but not limited to) racism, sexism, LGBT-phobia, pornographic content, threatening behavior, trolling, slandering, rudeness and excessive foul language.
Any violations of the above will lead to a warning. Third violation gets you banned.
In addition, this is a noncommercial advertizing-free zone. If you are a sample or plugin developer and want to post something about a new commercial release of yours that might be of interest to the community, post it in the Sample & Software News subforum. Posting it elsewhere will give you a warning, and repeatedly bringing your product(s) up in unrelated threads will be regarded as spam, and spammers get banned.
So in short: behave, be civil, use your common sense and treat others like you want to be treated yourself.
Thanks!
ADDENDUM
The sharing of warez and other copyrighted material is strictly forbidden here on Scoring Central. No exceptions. The three strikes rule described above applies here as well.
Sharing freebies is fine as long as you make sure that the license allows redistribution. In case of free copyrighted matrial (like basically all freebies released by commercial developers), you may not redistribute it unless unless the copyright holder has explicitly stated that redistribution is allowed.
If you're going to share some copyrighted free samples/plugins/etc here, be prepared to present some hard black-on-white facts that the copyright holder allows redistribution.
Scoring Central is a forum for all virtual orchestration enthusiasts; hobbyists, amateurs, semi-professionals and professionals alike. Here you can discuss everything from composing and music theory to sample libraries, plugins, DAW's, audio interfaces, sampling, mixing and lots more. You are also welcome to post your own tracks in the User Music subforum.
Please don't forget to read the Code of Conduct sticky thread!
