Does your ghost need more “Oooooo?” Does your zombie need a foot scraping against a dirty floor? Do you need some ambient sounds to cover up the screams of the damned? Sample Focus has what you need for free.
The interface is simple: you look for a sound – baby, drumbeat, crickets – and download it. You’ve got normal sounds like this one and then weird sounds like this one. All of the samples are coded by keywords and musical key, allowing you to mix and match samples at will.
Daniel Trostli, a former web engineer at iOS app maker Crossfader, created the product in his spare time and its completely self-funded. He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University. While there are other sample sites out there, Trostli wanted to create the simplest and best categorized.
“We enforce quality controls in terms of both audio quality and the quality of the metadata,” he said. “This tremendously increases our organization vs others making it easier to browse and search. You can quickly see Similar and Complimentary sounds right under the fold of each sample’s page.”
“The genesis of the project was really to scratch my own itch. I’ve been producing dance music on and off for the last 10 years, and I could never quickly find the sound I was looking for. I wanted a high quality and highly organized collaborative sound library. When I couldn’t find one, I built it,” he said.
Ultimately Trostli wants to create a language to talk about sounds. When engineers and musicians get together it takes a long time to figure out what they are both looking for. “Brassy” or “ambient” are easy to imagine but how do you find something “hissy” or “like an 808 but broken.” Further he wants to allow any musician access to the library instantly from any software program, something he plans on adding plugins for when he raises more funding.
The service currently has hundreds of samples so whether you need the Amen break, a bass drop, or a surface-to-air missile taking off he’s got you covered.