Introduction
“Birds call lazily from the trees as the stream carries you gently along its course, the warm water filling you with a deep sense of calm as you submit to the serenity of the moment – introducing our latest aural bath of a sound pack, the restorative Spring – New Age Ambient Loops!”
Spring – New Age Ambient Loops is a 402Mb collection of royalty-free music loops, MIDI files and synth tail samples bringing together the deep synth pads and rustling textures of Ambient, with the soft instrumental melodies and acoustic layers of New Age to deliver a truly relaxing musical experience for your next track.
It is available in Wav format from Mode Audio (£14 regular price).
Overview
Spring – New Age Ambient Loops contains 234 files comprising of 22 ambience, noise texture and field recording loops; 12 bass loops; 20 instrumental loops; 18 pad loops; 10 rhythm and percussion loops; 23 synth loops; 73 midi loops and 56 tail samples. All of the loops are labelled by key and tempo which range between 80 and 112bpm.
The ambience, noise texture and field recording loops comprise a range of birds, wind and water recordings. The noise textures have rhythmic properties and subtle movement. The ambiences comprise a range of piano, keys, guitar and strings which have a warm, saturated sound.
The basses are typically synth bass sounds, subtle and atmospheric with some plucks in there too.
Instrument loops have a great laid back ambient vibe with a wide range of instruments including organ, piano, glockenspiel, harp and vibraphone.
There’s a range of warm, gentle pads with gentle movement.
Rhythms comprise a range of noise and percussive rhythms, effective but quite subtle leaving lots of space for other sounds.
I really like the synth loops, a great range of melodies, riffs and chords with warmth and ambience.
Tail samples are an addition we’ve seen in other Mode Audio packs. On the face of it they allow you to apply a natural reverb tail to sample loops which is really useful in itself. However, they are also excellent sound sources in their own right that can be manipulated and mangled to add interesting elements to your tracks or could even be used as a starting point for new tracks.
The Midi loops folder is a very welcome addition. Typically 4 bar loops, these can be used with your own sounds or edited to create subtle or stark contrast and variations.
Verdict
This is an excellent value sample pack which contains a variety of sample loops with a warm, slightly saturated sound and a great laid back vibe. It’s great to see field recordings included in this pack, that’s not something that you typically see and I really like how the other samples complement the field recordings. The samples layer together really well but would equally layer with other Mode Audio sample packs. I really like how they have an ambient laid back vibe but can easily be processed to have an edgier or glitchy sound too. They would also be an excellent addition for any projects requiring an ambient or laid back vibe.
I’ve created the album embedded at the top of the post using the sample pack. It’s an ambient / downtempo album at heart with layered textures, reverb drenched synths / instruments, rhythmic grooves and a hint of glitch.
I’ve used a variety of VSTs including Polygon 2 (Glitchmachines); Amalgame (Inear Display); H3000 Factory, Physion, Tverb, Blackhole, Undulator, SP2016 Reverb, Ultrachannel, Instant Phaser MkII, H949 Dual Harmoniser (Eventide); Shaperbox 3 (Cableguys); Type A, Frostbite 2 (AudioThing); Driftmaker, Clusters, Rust (Puremagnetik); Supermassive, FreqEcho (Valhalla).
Arranged, mixed and mastered in Reaper.
