Guides
Glossary of sample and licence terms
The words you meet when you look for samples, read a licence or set up a kit, defined in a sentence or two. Each term links to a guide or a collection where it matters, and has its own address (for example /glossary#cc-by) you can link to.
Samples
- Sample
- A recorded sound reused in new music: a single drum hit, a note, a loop, a vocal phrase or a field recording. Producers trigger, chop, pitch and layer samples in a sampler or DAW.Search samples
- One-shotalso hit
- A single sound, such as one kick, one chord or one shout, that plays once when triggered. Drum kits and 808 basslines are built from one-shots.One-shots vs loopsKick one-shots
- Loop
- A recorded pattern, usually one to eight bars long at a fixed tempo, that repeats seamlessly. Loops carry a performance with feel built in and must be matched to the project's BPM and key.Drum loopsFinding samples by BPM and key
- Phrase
- A short performed passage that is not designed to loop, such as a vocal line, a guitar lick or a drum fill.
- Multisamplealso multisampled instrument
- A set of recordings of one instrument at many notes, and often several velocities, mapped across a keyboard so it can be played like the real instrument. Free orchestral and piano libraries are usually multisamples.Piano samples
- Sample packalso sample library, construction kit
- A collection of samples sold or given away together, usually in a zip. A construction kit is a pack whose loops share one tempo and key, so they combine into a track.
- Stem
- One part of a mixed track exported on its own, such as drums, bass or vocals. Remix contests and communities such as ccMixter share stems so others can rebuild a song.
- A cappellaalso acapella, acappella
- A vocal performance without the music, often isolated from a song or recorded for remixing. Free a cappellas come mostly from Creative Commons remix communities.Free a cappellas
- Vocal chop
- A short slice of a vocal, often a single syllable, replayed rhythmically or as a melody from a sampler.Free vocal chops
- Breakbeatalso break, drum break
- A drum solo section of a record, or any looped acoustic drum performance with that feel. Breaks from commercial records are still copyrighted; openly licensed breaks are the safe alternative.Free breakbeats
- Foley
- Everyday sounds performed and recorded to match picture: footsteps, doors, cloth, paper, glass. Named after Jack Foley, a sound-effects artist at Universal Studios.Footstep sounds
- Ambiencealso atmosphere, field recording, soundscape
- A recording of a place rather than an event: rain, a forest, a city street, an empty room. Used to set a scene in film and games and for texture under music.Forest ambience
- Room tone
- The background sound of a space when nobody is speaking. Editors use it to fill gaps in dialogue so cuts are inaudible.Room tone recordings
- Riseralso uplifter
- An effect that climbs in pitch, filter or volume to build tension into a drop or new section. Its opposite, played after the moment, is a downlifter.Free risersDownlifters
- Impactalso hit, boom
- A short, heavy hit used to mark a downbeat or a cut, often with a low boom or sub drop.Free impacts
Music
- 808also TR-808, 808 bass
- The Roland TR-808 analogue drum machine (1980–1983), and by extension its long, tuned bass drum used as the bassline in trap, drill and hip hop.What is an 808?808 samples
- 909also TR-909
- The Roland TR-909 drum machine (1983), with analogue drums and sampled cymbals, whose kick, clap and hats are the foundation of house and techno.TR-909 samples
- BPMalso tempo, beats per minute
- Beats per minute: the tempo of a track or loop. Loops must match the project's BPM, or be time-stretched to it; half and double tempo also fit.Finding samples by BPM and key
- Keyalso musical key, tonality
- The set of notes and the home note (tonic) a piece is built on, such as F minor or A major. Melodic samples sound best in the project's key or its relative key.808s in F minor
- Relative key
- A major and a minor key that share the same notes, such as C major and A minor. A sample in one usually works in a track in the other, so Sound Server matches both.
- Root note
- The pitch a one-shot sounds at when played unchanged. A sampler needs it to play the sample in tune across the keyboard.
- Time-stretchingalso warping
- Changing a sample's length or tempo without changing its pitch. Small changes are transparent; large ones add artefacts.
- Choke group
- A sampler setting where one sound cuts another off, as a closed hi-hat stops an open one on a real kit.
Audio files
- Sample rate
- How many times per second audio is measured, in hertz. 44.1 kHz is the music standard and 48 kHz the video standard.WAV, AIFF, FLAC or MP3?
- Bit depth
- How precisely each measurement is stored, which sets the dynamic range: about 96 dB at 16-bit, far more at 24-bit. 32-bit float files can't clip inside a DAW.
- Losslessalso WAV, AIFF, FLAC
- Formats that keep every detail of the recording: uncompressed WAV and AIFF, and losslessly compressed FLAC. Use them for production.
- Lossyalso MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Opus
- Formats that discard detail to make files smaller, such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Opus. Fine for previews; avoid them in a release.
- Preview
- A lossy, streamable copy of a sample that a site offers for auditioning. Sound Server plays previews from the source; the original file is the one to produce with.
Licences and rights
- Copyright
- The exclusive rights a creator holds in a work, including copying and adapting it. A recorded sample is protected unless its owner licenses it, waives the rights or the term has expired.
- Public domainalso PD
- Works no one owns, usually because copyright expired or never applied. Anyone may use them for anything. Note that a new recording of an old public-domain piece has its own copyright.
- CC0also CC0 1.0, public domain dedication
- Creative Commons Zero: a tool by which a creator waives all rights in a work as far as the law allows. CC0 samples may be used commercially with no credit.CC0 vs CC BY vs royalty-freeReference
- CC BYalso Attribution, CC BY 4.0, CC BY 3.0
- Creative Commons Attribution: any use, commercial included, as long as you credit the creator, name the work, link the licence and indicate changes.How to credit CC BY samplesReference
- NonCommercial (NC)also BY-NC, CC BY-NC
- A Creative Commons condition forbidding use primarily intended for commercial advantage or money. Selling, royalty-paying streams, monetised videos and beat leases are all commercial.What counts as commercial use?Reference
- NoDerivatives (ND)also BY-ND, CC BY-ND
- A Creative Commons condition allowing only unchanged copies. Placing a sample inside a new track makes an adaptation, so ND sounds can't be sampled.Reference
- Sampling+also CC Sampling Plus, NC Sampling+
- A retired Creative Commons licence for sampling: transformation is allowed for any purpose except advertising, while copies of the whole work may only be shared non-commercially. The NC variant forbids commercial use.What is CC Sampling+?Reference
- Royalty-free
- A licence, usually a site's or store's own, that lets you use sounds in your music without paying per use or per sale, while forbidding redistribution of the samples themselves. Royalty-free does not mean free of charge.CC0 vs CC BY vs royalty-free
- Attributionalso credit line, TASL
- The credit a licence requires: the work's title, its author, its source and its licence (TASL), plus a note of changes. Sound Server writes the line for every sample that needs one.How to credit CC BY samples
- Redistribution
- Sharing the sample files themselves, for example in a pack, a repository or a dataset. Most royalty-free licences forbid it even when they allow use in music.
- Sample clearancealso clearing a sample
- Getting permission, usually paid, to use a sample from an existing record: from the owner of the recording (master) and from the owner of the composition (publishing).Sample clearance and Content ID
- Master and publishing rightsalso master, publishing
- The two copyrights in a released song: the sound recording (master), usually owned by a label, and the composition (publishing), owned by songwriters and publishers.
- Interpolationalso replay
- Re-recording part of an existing song instead of sampling the original recording. It needs the publisher's permission but not the master owner's.
- Content IDalso audio fingerprinting
- YouTube's system that matches uploads against reference audio from rights holders. It matches sound, not licences, so a licensed sample can still be claimed and the claim disputed.Sample clearance and Content ID
- Licence verdict
- Sound Server's one-word answer to whether a sample can go into a commercial release: yes, yes-with-credit, restricted, clearance-required, check-terms or no.Sample licences explained
- Uploader-asserted licence
- A licence stated by whoever uploaded a file, not verified by the site. Sound Server never rates such licences better than check-terms, because uploaders may not own what they share.
Tools and formats
- DAWalso digital audio workstation
- Software for recording, arranging and mixing music, such as Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro or Reaper.
- Sampler
- An instrument that plays recordings from MIDI notes, pitching them across the keyboard, looping and layering them. Drum racks are samplers specialised for kits.
- SFZ
- An open, plain-text format that maps audio files to notes, velocities and articulations, read by free samplers such as sfizz. Sound Server writes SFZ maps for drum kits.Build a drum kit from free samplesReference
- General MIDIalso GM, GM drum map
- A standard that assigns instruments to MIDI programs and drums to notes (kick 36, snare 38, clap 39, closed hat 42, open hat 46), so patterns play the right sounds on any compatible kit.
- MIDI
- A protocol and file format for musical events (notes, velocities, controllers) rather than audio. MIDI packs give you parts to play with your own sounds.
- Strudelalso TidalCycles
- A browser-based live-coding environment for music, a JavaScript port of TidalCycles. It loads samples from a sample map and plays patterns written in mini-notation.Kit builderReference
- MCPalso Model Context Protocol
- The Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI assistants to tools and data. Sound Server's MCP server lets agents search samples, check licences and build kits.AI agents and MCPReference
More depth in the guides and in sample licences explained.