Ancient Analogue

Our Ultimate Synths Collection continues with 900 dusty WAVs to put the vibes up your tracks

Despite all the mind-blowing things you can achieve in the virtual world of endless plugins, one-click recall and instant editing, it’s still unbelievably tricky to digitally recreate the warm imperfections and dusty nuances of those first analogue synth sounds spearheaded by 70s synth figureheads such as Kraftwerk, Wendy Carlos, Tangerine Dream and Bob Moog himself.

But before you remortgage your house and sell your family members to raise cash for an overpriced analogue synthesiser that should really belong in a museum, go and download this Ancient Analogue sample pack! Whether it’s Moog-like tones, bubbling vintage sequences or drifting oscillators that tantalise your earbuds, you can never have enough analogue samples, so we’ve got two of the best sample smiths in the game to create one-shots and loops for this month’s Ultimate Synths Collection.

Cyclick

Synth-head Robbie Stamp has perfect pitch… although having mastered the skill on the drifting oscillators of Yamaha’s CS-15, he’s generally half an octave out of tune.

“The loops in this pack are set up to play across all seven white-note keys, and in four tempos: 95, 110, 120 and 130bpm. There’s also plenty of hits to see you through a huge night of nostalgic beatmaking and FX auditioning.

“All of these samples have been kept relatively unprocessed, both because they often used little more than tape, reverb and delay in the 60s and 70s, but also to maximise the potential for bending, warping and mutating into whatever context you’d like to use them in. I’d advise plenty of distortion and saturation, heavy filtering, oodles of delay, and very little mercy.”

Groove Criminals

GC’s sound-design guru Oli Bell is no stranger to wiping a layer of grime off a crusty flange. His vintage tastes came in especially handy during the creation of this pack.

“For that classic synth sound, this pack has been all about the analogues. We’ve leant hard on our SH-101, SH-09, Juno-60, Yamaha CS-5, Novation Super Bass Station and the MS-20 Mini.

“As well as some ropey live playing, we used the internal sequencer and arp of the SH-101 to run itself and all the other synths via CV. We also used a Korg SQ-1 and an Arturia Beatstep, mostly in 4 and 8 step modes, for that vintage flavour.

“We also got stuck into the stack of vintage drum machines – the Korg KR55, Doobie Rhythmini, and SoundMaster SR-88.”