Function Loops has released Festival Season 2015, a completely free (royalty free for use in commercial projects) collection of audio samples and loops designed for use in EDM and trance production.
The pack contains four different construction kits. Each of the four construction kits is comprised of a set of audio loops, one shot samples and MIDI sequences. Some of the kits also include synth presets for Spire and Sylenth, as well as rendered SFX hits and long female vocal phrases. The included female vocals are really good and they’re provided in several different flavors – mixed, dry and wet.
The rest of the content is also quite usable and mostly suitable for use in trance, house and various modern EDM styles. I wasn’t really blown away by the drum one shots and loops, but some of the synth loops are really nice, as well as some of the SFX hits. The MIDI sequences will definitely be interesting to producers who like experimenting with pre-made melodies and turning them into something new.
On the negative side, the size of the download (and the actual sound library when extracted) is unnecessarily large. There’s some good stuff inside, but the majority of the included loops is unreasonably long. Quite a few of the percussive loops go well past the one minute mark, even though they could easily be cut down to a single bar. I’m guessing that reason for such long loops is the fact that the pack is organized as a collection of construction kits (which means that when you layer all of the included loops together, you will pretty much get a finished song), but I’d certainly prefer a smaller and more compact download instead. It goes without saying that quality is always more important than quantity.
But if you’re a trance or EDM producer looking for some interesting royalty free sounds to add to your library, this shouldn’t prevent you from downloading the Festival Season 2015 pack and checking it out. As I’ve already mentioned, there’s some fine stuff to be found inside the pack and all included content is 100% royalty free. The highlights of the pack for me are the free female vocals, the SFX hits and some of the bass loops which are really good.
Video Demo
Check out the Festival Season 2015 demo video:
https://youtu.be/9IKPZ8e-iiY
Download
Festival Season 2015 is available for free download via Function Loops (596 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 135 audio samples and loops in 24-bit WAV format, MIDI sequences, instrument patches).
