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Sound Server

Sound Server quick start

Sound Server searches many free and paid sample sites at once and tells you, for every sound, whether you can use it in a track you release. Results cover drums (kicks, snares, claps, hats, percussion, breaks), 808s and bass, vocals and a cappellas, FX (risers, impacts, sweeps, zaps), foley, ambience and instrument one-shots, with BPM, key and length where known and a preview you can play.

The public server at https://sound.shep.bot is a free, non-commercial service and needs no account or API key. It never re-hosts sounds: previews and downloads come from the source sites.

Pick how you want to use it

You want to… Use Start here
Browse, audition and download samples yourself The web search /search
Get a matching drum kit for a style, tempo and key The kit builder /kit
Let Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot or another agent find sounds The MCP server at https://sound.shep.bot/mcp Coding agents & MCP
Call it from a script, a DAW extension or a backend The REST API REST API guide
Explore every endpoint and try requests The interactive reference API reference

Connect your agent (30 seconds)

For Claude Code, run this once:

claude mcp add --transport http sounds https://sound.shep.bot/mcp

Then ask for what you need:

Find three punchy kicks and a dark 808 in F minor that I can use in a released track.
Put them in ./samples and tell me any credit lines I need.

Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI and the Claude apps take the same URL. See Coding agents & MCP for each one.

Or call the API

# Kicks cleared for a commercial release
curl "https://sound.shep.bot/v1/search?q=punchy+kick&category=drums.kick&form=one-shot&commercial=true&limit=5"

# Details, files and the credit line for one result
curl "https://sound.shep.bot/v1/samples/freesound:2086"

# Download it as a zip with the audio, ATTRIBUTION.md and credits.json
# (without bundle=true a single file redirects straight to the source)
curl -L -o kick.zip "https://sound.shep.bot/v1/samples/freesound:2086/download?bundle=true"

What a search returns

Every search returns two lists:

  • results: samples merged from all sources and ranked by how well they match. Each has an id like freesound:2086, a category (drums.kick, fx.riser…), a form (one-shot, loop…), bpm, key and durationSec when known, a previewUrl, a license with a verdict, an attribution line when credit is required, and downloadable.
  • providers: one status line per source (ok, error, timeout, skipped or link). Sites that don’t allow automated search (Splice, Looperman and others) come back as link with a searchUrl that runs the same search on their site.

A slow or broken source never fails the search. Queries understand music words: “808 in F minor” filters by key, “vocal chop 140 bpm” by tempo, “loop” or “one shot” by form.

Licences, in one line each

  • Commercial use OK (yes): release it, no credit needed.
  • Commercial use OK with credit (yes-with-credit): release it and credit the author with the attribution line.
  • Restricted, Needs paid clearance, Unclear (restricted, clearance-required, check-terms): read the terms first.
  • Non-commercial only (no): practice and personal projects, not releases.

commercial=true keeps only the first two. The full explanation is in Sample licences explained.

For AI agents reading this

Machine-readable entry points:

Coding agents & MCP →

AI agent? This page is also available as markdown.