When it comes to working with sampled acoustic drums, the advantages of using commercial software like EZdrummer, Addictive Drums, or BFD2 are more than obvious. But not everyone can afford these, as they all come with quite a big price tag.
Luckily, though, there are many free alternatives available online. I selected only the best free sample packs for this list, choosing only the ones that come with mappings in SFZ format (among others, of course). If you don’t own a commercial sampler like Battery or Halion, I recommend using the free Shortcircuit 1 sampler, as it supports the SFZ format and also offers multiple outputs (or check out BPB’s list of the best free sampler VSTi plugins).
- Big Mono by Analogue Drums – A rich sounding drum kit recorded through a vintage Neve desk, available for free. How cool is that?! These samples sound really amazing and the only (potential) drawback is that they come with a lot of room reverb which is there to stay. But check out that fatso kick! Native support for Kontakt and Battery, custom SFZ mappings by Peter L Jones can be downloaded here.
- G&S Custom Drum Kit by Salvador Peláez – My favorite drum sample pack. I love jamming with these! They sound just the way I like it and the available mappings feel very natural. These drums sit really well in the mix too. The original download location is no longer available, but we can still get these, and all the custom mappings, thanks to autodafe.net.
- Salamander Drumkit by RytmenPinne! – A great sampled acoustic drum kit in SFZ format. No compression or EQ, just a set of quality samples ready to be played and mixed to your preference.
- Free Jazz Funk Drum by Orange Tree Samples – Completely different than the previous three links, these samples come from a rare jazz/funk kit. And I somehow always come up with great beats when playing with these. They were created with special attention dedicated to expressive playing, with varying velocities, so get your shuffle on and make some funky beats. Mappings in SFZ format are available here (made by PL Jones).
- Vintage Funk Drum Samples by drumsamples.ca – Perhaps the best free acoustic drum pack for Ableton users. Features a set of samples from a vintage Pearl drum kit, formatted into an Ableton Live drum rack. You’ll find two more awesome free kits on the same site. Registration is required, but well worth it! Thanks to BPB reader stldrms for suggesting this kit in the comments section.
- 12 Piece Pearl Master Custom Drum Kit by 1313 – 1313 is a blog mostly known for offering high quality impulse responses of various expensive pieces of gear. But besides that, there are many other goodies on that website, including these great samples of a custom Pearl acoustic drum kit with Zildjian cymbals. A set of SFZ mappings made by SWTrex can be downloaded here.
- Basement Drums by Sounds Outside The Lines – A dirty sounding acoustic drum kit sample set in EXS24 format. Recorded with a pair of Shure SM57s and an Apogee Duet, the kit sounds great and catches all those sweet imperfections for a more realistic sound.
- Free EXS24 Drumkit and Samples by Sam Greene – A Sonor Force 3001 sampled and available in EXS24 instrument format, released under a Creative Commons licence.
- Dry Studio Kit SL Sample Set by Smart Loops – Unreleased samples which were created during the same recording sessions as the commercial Dry Studio Kit. It’s a fairly compact library, containing 3MB of samples. They’re not breathtaking, but I use them from time to time. To get these, you must subscribe to the Smart Loops mailing list by clicking here.
- The Open Source Drum Kit by Real Music Media – A huge 600 MB pack containing more than 700 samples. I still haven’t had the time to test the mappings for this kit, but the individual samples sound very good.
- NSA Custom Series Drumkit by Dean aka ‘Nekro’ – Whooping 777 samples grouped into separate folders for cymbals, hi-hat, kick, snare, and tom sounds. This 132Mb pack doesn’t contain any patches, but that shouldn’t stop you from testing them in your favorite sampler.
- Big Daddy Drums by Bulldawg Sound Design – Several acoustic drum kit multi-samples available in16bit/44.1khz AIFF, ReFill, and EXS24 formats.
- DrumTaste Free by AcousticsampleS – A Rick Marotta Signature drum set with Paiste cymbals. It weighs around 80Mb and comes with Kontakt, EXS and SFZ mappings with 6 velocity layers and 2-cycle round robins.
- 1965 Ludwig Super Classic by Plutonic Lab – An awesome free vintage Ludwig drum set for Kontakt 4, made by Plutonic Lab. Uses some Kontakt scripts, but you’ll be able to load it in Kontakt Player, too.
- Brush Kit by Soniccouture – A full brushed drum kit, with some great articulations, available for Kontakt, Reason, and Battery.
- Free Drum Kit by Tchakpoum – A free drum kit available for Shortcircuit, Groove Agent One, Drummagog, Battery 3 and Kontakt 4.
- Ruffrider and Easyrider by Michael Kingston – Two very useful packs. While Ruffrider is a very raw sounding kit, the Easyrider samples are less edgy and sound more natural. Both are very good though. I like using these two for creating custom breaks. Available in all major formats, including SFZ.
- Jazz Kit by Gigfiles – A free Jazz drum kit with patches available in all popular formats, including Kontakt, SFZ, EXS-24, Halion, SF2, etc.
- Drum Samples Meta! by Ultimate Metal Forum – A collection of links to lots of free custom-made acoustic drum samples posted by Ultimate Metal Forum members.
- Tape Kit Mini by Impact Soundworks – A free 150MB version of the large Groove Bias drum sample library, available in Kontakt format.
- Slingerland Drum Kit by Indie Drums – A set of 23 acoustic drum kit samples in 24-bit WAV format. Features a nice Ludwig Black Beauty snare drum and Sabian cymbals.
- Culture Collection by The Lower Rhythm – A collection of 158 free drum samples recorded from 3 different acoustic drum kits.
- Free Drums by Pipelineaudio – An old set of free acoustic drum samples by Pipelineaudio, revamped in a KVR Forum thread with permission of the author.
Bonus Feature #1 – Acoustic Snare Samples:
There are a couple of free acoustic snare sample packs available online. These can work come handy as layering tools.
- The Real Snare Drum by Real Music Media – Mapped multi-samples of a vintage 1972 Slingerland Sound King snare drum.
- Tiny Snare by AcousticsampleS – 150 untreated samples of a 12″ snare in EXS24 and Kontakt formats. Recorded using a Neumann KM184 pair.
- The Cracken by Signals Audio – A set of raw Sonor Chrome metal snare samples for Kontakt, Drumagog, and Trigger (24-bit WAVs included).
- Free HQ Snare & Kick Samples by Supersonic Samples – A series of acoustic drum kick and snare samples, recorded from three different kits using various high quality pres and industry standard mics.
- Free Acoustic Snare Samples by Anemic Studios – A free set of Vinnie Paul (Snakeskin) 14×8 acoustic snare samples in WAV format.
- Free Acoustic Snare Samples by Sylvain Raulin – A set of free acoustic snare samples processed with some high-end audio gear.
- Erkan’s Cymbal Pack by Erkan Dogantimur – A set of 615 free cymbal samples recorded by Erkan Dogantimur from Ultimate Metal Forums.
Bonus Feature #2 – Free acoustic drum VSTi plugins:
In case all of these samples aren’t enough, here’s a short list of freeware acoustic drum VSTi plugins until I make a bpb Freeware Studio entry about ‘em.
- Addictive Drums Demo by XLN Audio – Demo version of Addictive Drums. It includes one kit without toms, but the samples are really good.
- DrumCore Free by Sonoma Wireworks – A lite version of DrumCore, comes with two kits.
- MDrummer Small by MeldaProduction – Contains several drum sets and rhythms taken from its larger brother MDrummer 3.
- My Drumset VSTi by Bluenoise plugins – Bjarte Ludvigsen (aka Bluenoise Plugins) has recently re-released this amazing free acoustic drum module in VSTi plugin format. A must-have freebie!
That’s it for the second episode of Free Sample Shootout, enjoy the samples, comment, subscribe, and support BPB by sharing this on your favorite social network or forums! Also, check out all the other Free Sample Shootouts by clicking here!
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# FREE Sample Pack #2: Casio SA-10 SoundFont, Drum Samples And Loops
# FREE Sample Pack #3: Yamaha DD-8
# Heavy Charity Artillery – Ballistic Drum Sampler!
i am loving your blog. no need for drum samples (up to my ears in them), but just the fact that you bother doing these lists is awesome. thanks.
Excellent list indeed.
thanks for the kind words guys. :]
thanks for the great list.
I already use the jazz funk kit myself.
good one.
Really cool blog! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for da samples!
Awesome work here – been reading, exploring and downloading all night…respect :)
cool, thanks! ;]
ive had this kit for a year now, its pretty epic. say what you want about it but i rekocn with good tuning, tweaking, etc this kit gives those pro drum kits a run for there money
pro drum kits Iv brought samples before this list is awesome in comparison. real samples…some really nice sounds well allot of nice sounds waooo, what a fantastic list.
Great site, I have quite literaly just found it via Rekkerd.org at 6 in the morning (i do not sleep much!). I have Bookmarked for future exploring, resources and reading material. I really appreciate the work it must take to do this gratis and can feel the passion. It is this sort of community vibe which i love and the straight up information with a very fairly judged and non-biased opinion plus links is just executed very well
All the best and look forward to keeping up with your blog as and when i can in the future :D
Cheers
Dean/Nekro
thanks. :]
i will need to add loads more stuff here in order to make this blog a truly great resource. but even the way it is now, i think it’s a fun read. mostly because of my perfect engRish. ;]
enjoy your stay and thanks for yor awesome free drum samples!
Anytime bpb/Its a pleasure to give something back to a great community (KVR, Rekkerd, Here and all the other places). Off to check out the Mic’d Speaker Cabinet IRs roundup :D
Dean aka Nekro
Thanks for the kind words about Big Mono. Great list of resources, some I hadn’t seen before. I’ve let our users know about this post too.
hey, thank you very much for the note, and thanks for Big Mono! :]
wow thanx for the shoutouts daug! specially i liked the Jazz Funk drum kit.
hello,
In your list you miss my free samples drum kit avalaible and in my website Tchackpoum :(
For Short Circuit, Groove Agent One (Cubase user), Drummagog, Battery 3 and Kontakt 4.
not anymore! ;]
Wow! Thank you so much for listing all of these great resources! It’s very kind and respectful of you to put them up on this blog. It’s much appreciated. :)
Yeah, just another huge thanks! Wonderful collection that will be hugely useful. ;)
Cool.Now I finally found a producers dream : great drum samples.
Waiting for more !!
Mydrumset plugins are no longer available from official website.
Hi there,
I downloaded the 65 Ludwig kit for Kontakt but cant get Kontakt to see the folder…can anyone help? I am new to Kontakt and may be putting the files / folders in the wrong place…not sure.
Can anyone help?
Thanks.
just extract the archive and load the NKI file in Kontakt. if it still doesn’t work, report here, i’ll try to help.
Hello BPB,
Thanks for the reply.
Im afraid it still hasnt worked for me so can you give me a step by step guide as Im clueless with Kontakt. Once the file is extracted where does it need to go?
Hope you can help.
Thanks
ok, try this:
1) open the Plutonic 65 Ludwig Super Classic folder
2) minimize that window, then start Kontakt
3) from the first window, drag & drop Plutonic 65 Ludwig Super Classic.nki to your Kontakt GUI
does that work?
Hi BPB,
Sorry still no joy with this method either though I can see that it has recognised the samples but there is no interface from which to work or manipulate the sounds…
Any ideas.
Thanks again
what happens when you drop the NKI file onto the Kontakt interface?
When you say NKI file do you mean the folder itself or is there a file within the folder? The version of Kontakt I am using in Kontakt 4 player…could this be the reason why it wont work?
http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/kontakt-5-player/
it should work in Kontakt Player, but only for 20 minutes. after that you will have to restart Kontakt Player to play the library again. it’s the limitation of Kontakt Player.
to answer your first question – inside the folder, find the file named Plutonic 65 Ludwig Super Classic.nki and drop it on the Kontakt Player interface. it should show the loaded instrument right away.
Hello again,
I checked the folder and thrre was no NKI file so I downloaded and re extracted and a NKI file appeared with the new extract. Tried to load it into Kontakt 4 and it said I needed to upgrade to a newer version. So, I reckon it will work once I have updated my version of Kontakt…I’ll let you know.
ok, good luck! :]
feel free to post here if you still have issues.
For the Plutonic 65 Ludwig Super Classic, it need a password to extract the rar file.
Nothing on the site is mentioned to find it, or i didn’t see it. So there it is :
http://www.plutoniclab.com
To add to your list, there’s 3 good drum kit samples in 24 bit WAV and Ableton asd format at:
http://www.drumsamples.ca/
You need to create a free account to download them, though.
thanks so much for the link, i’ve never heard of these before!
i’ll check out the samples and add them to the list.
cheers!
Many thanks for this post. The Plutonic kit is great and the Erkan´s Cymbals greater. But now I´m very interested in the 1313 Pearl Master and can´t find it in that (new for me) ex-
cellent site. Maybe you can help with this. Many thanks again
in advance.
Rudolph.
ok, i found the new working link:
http://rhythminmind.net/STN/?p=14
enjoy!
I don´t even know your name, but many thanks for your prompt reply. The drums in the photographs are impressive. Downloading now. We´re in contact.
Rudolph.
no problem, have fun! name’s Tomislav, btw. :)
Hey!, Thanks so much!!. Awesome work and post.
Greetings from Argentina.
cheers!
“anymore” and “alot” are not real words… but the drum kits are fantastic!
btw many of the sfzs liked to from here do NOT work as general midi drums without some editing… but MAN do they sound good once you’re done editing!!! :-)
i’ve fixed most of the typos now (hopefully), thanks for the heads-up. english is not my first language, so misspellings do slip by.
enjoy the samples! :)
Thank you sooooo much! (hug)
Can i use these samples in Beat Craft?
thanks! from the Philippines
hmm, i think it’s possible. as far as i know, Beatcraft can import any WAV file. simply extract some of the sample packs above and load the samples in Beatcraft.
Man I would to thank you for these samples they are great to have. Now my beats are more complete with these new sounds music is sounding alot better all ready.
Fantastic! Just downloaded G&S samples – utterly brilliant. Can’t thank you enough for making these available.
Awesome list ! Thank you
This is a tremendous list, thank you! Also, http://freesound.org has a lot of free drum samples too. All you need to do is make a free account to download them.
AWSOME WORK!. Is there a chance to find and upload the Tommy Zai hihats set. I heard it was pretty good. It was posted briefly in the KVR forums couple years ago.
Thanks for your time! Good job. Greetings from Barcelona.
Essential list!! Well done.
I’d suggest the demo version of MT Powerdrum Kit. I love the MIDI grooves that come with it plus the built-in composer to arrange them.
Thank you for this excellent resource!