We step back in time to CM65 and re-present the entire contents of the Sound Tools sample CD that came with that issue.
If you missed it the first time round, you're in for a treat, and if you didn't, take this as the perfect opportunity to reacquaint yourself with a truly excellent range of musical possibilities.
The collection begins with 8 tempo-specific folders, ranging from 75 to 170bpm, containing guitar chops and stabs, and a host of drum tracks to go with them.
These are ably followed by a set of esoteric instrument samples (including the excellent Appalachian Mountain Dulcimer), tons of acoustic and electric sounds, eight synth multisample sets and a set of chords, harmonics and plucked sounds.
Cyclick Samples and The Groove Criminals bring you 7 fully-stocked trance construction kits, ranging in tempo from 135 to 140bpm.
The first 4 kits (by Cyclick) feature arpeggiations, basslines, pads, leads and drum breaks. The file names include the instrument, kit number, tempo, key and sequence number. Samples with the same sequence number (except beats) have been designed specifically to work together, although you should of course feel free to mix and match.
Many of the samples have an extra few beats or a bar left on the end to allow for reverb and delay tails, although the beats and basslines have been trimmed to loop seamlessly. Many of the instruments are also presented in multisamples, comprising (in the case of the melodic ones,) four notes per octave at minor third (a tone and a half) intervals. Using these multis, you can design your own parts.
The 3 Groove Criminal kits (kits 5,6 and 7) come with demo loops and mixes built using the samples therein. Each kit offers basslines, breaks, synth lines and power pads, made using the Criminals' extensive collection of soft synths. Trance-ational!
A huge repository of loops and single hits from all of CM's regular sample providers.
Between them RJAD, The Groove Criminals and Andy Ebling have come up with more than 1,000 top quality 24-bit samples, ranging from detailed arpeggiations, thumping breaks and rolling basslines (complete with their constituent notes, should you want to roll your own), to pads, pianos and soaring leads.
A particularly good stating point for any trance number is the batch of SH-101 and TB-303 riffs, pitched alongside a range of effects and synth loops.
Kicking off this massive collection of trance-inspired sounds, The Electronic Garden have put together 20 detailed, multisampled synths, mapped out in WAV, HALion, Kontakt, NN-XT and DS-404 formats.
Drawing on TEG's huge arsenal of classic hardware and software synthesizers, the patches feature the Korg legacy Collection, a massive synthesizers.com custom modular system, the Roland Jupiter-4 and prophet-600, the Waldorf Microwave XTk and the Moog Rogue.
Many of the patches make use of tempo-based effects and all of them are clocked at a trace-esque 140bpm.
Copy the entire folder onto your hard drive; otherwise you'll probably experience problems on playback.