How To Make Your Own Sample Packs

Andrew Southworth
Jan 23, 2019
8 min read

SO, you want to get into the world of creating your own sample packs to sell or give away? In this post i'm going to share the most important tips i've learned to make your life easier. In particular you're going to learn about the types of sound sources you can legally distribute, file organization and naming standards, workflow tips for Logic Pro and Ableton Live, audio file settings, the types of packs people make, and much more. Sample pack development can be tedious and take a lot of hours, but it can also be a lot of fun and earn you some money at the same time (or in the case of free products, help grown your brand and image as an artist).

What Can I Legally Sample and Sell?

This question can be kind of hairy, but there are some rules of thumb you can use to avoid getting into hot water. Basically you can only distribute samples that you yourself created, but what does this mean? Well, the simplest way I can think of explaining it is this, 'If the device you're sampling uses pre-recorded audio files to create it sounds, you CAN'T legally sample it and sell it in a sample pack'.

This can get much more confusing once you start to talk about loop-based packs and soundscapes, since at some point the sample you're creating goes from a raw sound into a composition-like creation. For example, is it legal to sell a loop comprised of a chord progression and melody using a sample based instrument? Whats the difference between a composition you're selling and a loop? What if the loop is 1 minute long and includes 3 different layers of instruments? If loops are illegal to sell, is it illegal to sell loops for video game developers or stock music libraries?

If you have a particular instrument that uses its own samples that you would like to sample, make sure you read through their EULA (end user license agreement) to see what the terms are. Sometimes they say you can't use the sounds for any reason other than for compositions, and sometimes they say they must be combined with X amount of sounds - if you don't want to get into the nitty gritty of this just avoid using any sample-based instruments for your sample packs! Most definitely, don't modify the sounds from someone else's sample pack and try to re-sell it.

Alternatively here are some examples of sounds you CAN legally sample and sell / distribute in your sample pack:

Acoustic based instruments like drums, guitar, piano, bass
Your Voice
Synthesizers - as long as they are not sample based
Misc sources like cars, birds, metal beams
A bag of potato chips

For more examples of this just look online at what stores are selling.

Types of Sample Packs

There are several categories of sample packs that crop up over and over again, and you might be capable of developing all of them or only some of them. In general pretty much everything falls into these categories:

One-Shots - like drum hits, or single world vocals (example)
Loops - looped melodies or grooves (example)
Patterns - similar to a loop, but it won't actually loop seamlessly
Multi-Samples - for the purpose of loading into a sampler (example)
Soundscapes - to use as a background element or as an ambience (example)
Construction Kits - loops for each layer of a track, bass, guitar, synths, drums, etc. Usually contains multiple tracks with several sections for each.

Most sample packs will actually include elements from several of these categories. You might be a drum pack that includes both one-shots and loops. You might record a bunch of guitar loops, but some don't really loop so you call them patterns. You might record a minute of ambient soundscapes and sell a soundscape pack. Just let the individual pack be your guide to what you include, and keep your customer in mind.

Audio File Settings - Sample Rate, Bit Depth

Your end-customer will dictate what sample rate and bit depth you use. For example, in the music world you'll likely want to use 48 kHz, but 44.1 kHz is fine. In the film world you'll likely want to use 96 kHz. In every case you'll want to use 24 bit depth. The reason for different sample rates between the film and audio world is largely to do with the types of audio each world uses. They are two separate industries that have developed their own standards, and if you want to appeal to one or the other you'll want to conform to the standard.

On one hand you could just use 96 kHz for everything. The problem with this however is that the file sizes get bigger, and people will have to convert the audio files on their end. If you sell to musicians primarily then you can bet that on average most musicians record at 48 kHz.

As a last note, pretty much everyone uses .wav files. So in summary

For music customers - 48 kHz, 24 bit .wav files
For video customers - 96 kHz, 24 bit .wav files

In most applications i'd recommend normalizing your samples before exporting as well so that they're all at a uniform volume. Typically I do this on a sample by sample basis, but you may have cases where you want the volume relationship between layers to stay the same as inside your DAW. Just keep your customer in mind.

File Organization, Naming Conventions for Sample Packs

As far as file organization and naming conventions go for sample packs, you can really do whatever you want. You can even change it up from pack to pack as you learn, and depending on the needs of the specific pack. The only thing I recommend is to try to be as consistent as possible inside of the same pack. For example, typically i'll name my files inside of a sample pack in the following way:

company_product_category_BPM_key_description.wav

That example was a generalization, as it can change from case to case. Here are some examples for several different cases I might use.

GeneraStudios_BigDrumPack_Kick_C_Boomy808.wav
GeneraStudios_GuitarLoops_Clean_120BPM_Am_SadPhrygianMelody.wav
GeneraStudios_InsaneImpacts_GrainyImpact1.wav

Sometimes you'll buy a pack and everything is just labeled as 'kick1, kick2, kick3', and you might love that pack! But just think of how much better it would be if you knew where you bought the pack, what note the kick was, and a description of what it sounds like just from the name.

As far as file organization is concerned, try to separate things as logically as possible. Perhaps for a drum kit you want to organize your files by kit, or maybe you want all the separate drums in their own folders. The needs will depend on the pack and also your style.

Best Sample Workflow for Logic Pro

Logic Pro in my opinion is the best DAW for developing sample packs and Kontakt libraries. The inclusion of tools such as batch exporting of audio files with intelligent naming, batch adding crossfades and 'Slice at Transient Markers' allows you to save literally hours of time. There are definitely certain things in Ableton Live that are much easier than Logic, but just looking at the raw tedious act of sample chopping, naming, and exporting Logic Pro is the clear winner.

Let me describe my process very briefly in the case of a one-shot based percussion sample pack from a microphone source:

Record audio in one long take (or several)
Right click and select 'Slice at Transient Markers'
Drag the end of each region to near the area it should end (leave a little extra)
Double click on each region to expose the magnified editor, if required drag the start point of the region
Once you done this to all regions, go to the beginning and click play. As the samples play, click Shift-N and rename each region.
Once completed, highlight all samples and click 'more' in the region toolbar on the left side of the screen, add a 1-3ms fade-in to avoid any pops.
You may also add your fade-out here too, but I prefer to do that on a sample by sample basis
Highlight all samples, right click and select Export as Audio Files. Here you can set intelligent naming parameters that uses the names you entered in the regions. This will allow you to re-export samples later if you decide to change the name of your pack, or run your samples through some effects and create them as a second version of those samples.

In terms of what I name my regions, typically I save that for tempo, key, and description naming information. This way on the batch export process controls the company, pack name, and category naming portion of your sample names. If you want to add 4 VSTs onto your track and add automation to everything, you can simple re-batch-export the samples and change the category name to 'Processed' - maintaining all of the region based naming specific to the raw sound. Otherwise you'd be renaming all of them manually!

Now of course not everyone uses Logic Pro in the sample pack development world. In fact i'm quite sure that Cymatics uses Ableton Live and FL Studio. I can't comment on FL Studio as i've never used it, but there is a workflow that works very nice in Ableton Live. It lacks almost all of the features I described here for Logic Pro, but it makes up a lot of those features in the easy of sound design it offers.

Best Sample Workflow in Ableton Live

While Ableton Live doesn't offer fancy batch audio exporting and naming, or auto-slicing at transients like Logic (trust me, the Logic one is much better than the one in Live's Simpler), you can export samples to an audio file simply by highlighting a clip and pressing CMD-J (consolidate). The issue with this is there is no intelligent naming system, so you spend a lot of time naming individual files in your folder. You can offset the naming features by purchasing a 3rd party batch tool.

The biggest gains of Ableton Live for sample packs however is the ability to morph samples, and to export tracks as loops (so they have the proper fades). Logic Pro has been my main DAW for about a decade, and i've only been using Live for a couple months at the time i'm writing this, but for detailed sound design of samples Live knocks it out of the park. Here is my process for the development of a sample pack that is vocal sound FX based:

Record the audio onto a track
Parse through the track and slice it using CMD-E
Let the track play, as it plays stay ahead of the playhead and adjust all your start-points, end-points, and fades.
If you don't need to edit anything, or add plugins, you can go through and CMD-J each clip individually to export it to your samples folder in your project folder (will be under the Processed-Consolidate section).
Copy the files to another folder, and start renaming them one by one, or use a 3rd party tool. This is by far the most tedious part of the process, but as I mentioned there are many options available online if you Google 'batch audio exporting and naming'. Most of them cost money, but I remember seeing some freebies. Don't include the .asd files!

Assuming that you're applying automation to the samples, you'll want to do that before you consolidate the clips with CMD-J. I would recommend that before you consolidate you duplicate your track so you have the original as a backup. Sometimes its also best to just export your raw untouched recording as well.

As I mentioned the real power of Live for sample pack development is in its sound design capability. Since you can use warp modes to change the tempo and pitch of audio, and you can easily automate the pitch of audio. Technically you can do all of this in Logic Pro, but its not nearly as fluid as Ableton Live.

If you want to make a loop based sample pack or construction kit sample pack in Ableton Live, this is what i'd recommend doing:

Write your sections and layers in session view, since its made for this type of writing
Record each full pattern (all layers) to the arrangement
Separate sections with a bar or so of silence in between
Highlight each section at a time, and click the export audio button. Select to export individual tracks, and select render as loop.
This will export each track as its own loop-able file. Rename each file

This particular workflow is very similar to the workflow in Maschine, so if you use Maschine by Native Instruments you can do the exact same thing (except its even easier).