Free Roland SH-101 Ableton Instruments

After the success of last month's "What Synth Should I Sample?" poll, I decided to do it again for the 12k milestone on my Facebook page.

This time, you wanted me to sample my beloved vintage Roland SH-101.

There's a ton of web info on this historic synth, so you can read about it here and here.

The Simpler instruments in the file are as follows:

SH101 Saw - Basic single oscillator SH-101 sawtooth.

SH101 Square - Basic single oscillator SH-101 square wave.

SH101 PWM - One of the truly classic SH-101 sounds lies in the character of its pulse width modulation.

SH101 Saw+Sub - Another signature sound from the 101 comes from its sub-oscillator. Here, I blended it with a sawtooth waveform.

SH101 ResSweep - The SH-101 shipped around the same time as the legendary TB-303 - and many producers have used the 101 in similar ways. The resonance on this synth is exceptional, so here's a taste.

SH101 Resonant - This is another example of the SH-101's resonance, generating a whistling tone over a square/pulse wave.

SH101 Noise - Lots of 80s tracks used the SH101's midrange-heavy noise generator for synth drums, so I included a sample of it here.

SH101 Bass - Gotta have some bass too, right?

As with the all of the other Simpler packages on this blog, I left the devices in their default state, with filtering, LFOs and envelopes off, so you can use them as starting points for your own sounds.

That said, I did some quick-n-dirty looping on these patches, which was tricky due to the nature of Simpler and the slight inconsistencies of analog-derived waves. Fortunately, the samples are long enough that many users will be able to switch it off if they choose. 

(For those who create cleaner loops for these presets, please send them my way and I'll update the package accordingly.)

Here's the Ableton Live file containing the presets.

Download:

Francis Preve - SH-101 8-pack 

(compatible with Ableton Live 9.7 and higher)

Note 1: If you like any of these sounds and want to keep them for future tracks, just click the little save button in the upper right corner of the Simpler and add it to your library (it will copy the waves too).

Note 2: If you don't use Ableton and just want the C3 samples, you can download the file and fish the waves out of the "Samples" folder, then use them in your DAW or sampler of choice.

Cheers!