99Sounds and PatchArena have released Bass City, a free collection of vintage synthesizer samples designed for use in different kinds of electronic music such as old school electronica, italo disco, house, dub techno, etc.
For this project, I was lucky enough to join forces with Chad Beckwith from PatchArena, who has done a fantastic job at sampling his Yamaha TX81Z and Korg EX-800 hardware synthesizers. I’ve been following PatchArena releases for quite a while (SFZ Flukelele is a recent example of their brilliant work) and being able to work together with them on a project such as this one was a huge honor for me.
The main idea for this project was to create a rich library of electronic bass sounds, by sampling some of the classic FM and analogue bass patches from hardware synthesizers which we had at our disposal. Chad has provided some lovely FM bass sounds for the library, including an improved version the legendary Lately Bass patch from the Yamaha TX81Z module. He has also provided a nice set of analogue bass patches which were recorded from the Korg EX-800 hardware synthesizer.
I jumped in with a bunch of bass patches which I’ve sampled from my trusty old Yamaha Poly-800 synthesizer (which is also featured in the old BPB Mini Analogue Collection pack). The Yamaha Poly-800 is a rather limited synthesizer, however I love the fact that it’s capable of producing some incredibly warm bass sounds. It has this lovely vintage lo-fi character which works great for tunes inspired by old italo disco tunes and the recent chillwave movement.
All included samples are provided in 24-bit WAV format, however we’ve also prepared a set of SFZ and Kontakt 5 patches so that you could fire up these samples in your DAW right away. Inside the pack you’ll find 26 multi-sampled bass patches, adding up to 399 audio samples in total. The custom Kontakt 5 interface features filter and amplitude envelope controls on the front panel. If you load the SFZ patches in sforzando, you’ll also be able to control the filter from the instrument panel thanks to some clever SFZ scripting by Chad.
If you use these sounds in a track, please feel free to send me the SoundCloud link and I’ll include in on the download page on 99Sounds. This library was truly a labor of love and we’d love to hear how these sounds work in your music!
Audio Demo
Check out the Bass City audio demo:
Download
Bass City is available for free download via 99Sounds (336 MB download size, RAR archive, contains 399 audio samples in 24-bit WAV format, 26 SFZ & NKI patches for use in Kontakt 5 and other compatible samplers).
