ModeAudio Float Review (Free Samples Inside)

ModeAudio has recently announced the release of Float, an electric guitar loop library for ambient, hip hop, downtempo, chillwave, pop and indie music production. We’re taking a closer at this interesting guitar sound collection and giving away an exclusive set of free samples which was kindly contributed by ModeAudio as a gift to all BPB readers.

Read our detailed review of the Float sound library below and scroll all the way down the page to download your free copy of the exclusive ModeAudio freebie for BPB readers. The contents of the freebie pack are available for direct free download on this page and are completely royalty free.

ModeAudio Float Review

Float is a collection of royalty free guitar riffs for ambient and electronic music production, delivering a chilled out and relaxed vibe throughout its rich audio content. The included audio material is spread across ten different instrumental arrangements with the tempo ranging from 70 to 122 BPM. The loop content is sorted into seven sub folders for easier browsing, providing separate folders for processed and non-processed guitar riffs, drum loops, guitar SFX, etc.

Working with third party audio loops definitely has its downsides, however ModeAudio made sure to minimize the effort needed to make their guitar loops perfectly fit your audio projects. Each guitar loop comes in two alternative versions; a dry version (suitable for post-processing) and a pre-processed version which includes effects like distortion, chorus and reverb in order to achieve a production-ready sound. You can either go with the non-processed guitar loops and use various effects to shape their sound to your liking, or use the pre-processed loops straight out of the box.

The pre-processed loops sound lovely (as you can hear in the official demo track below), with gratuitous use of spacial SFX resulting in a beautiful sense of space and relaxing ambience. Although the somewhat large amounts of rendered reverb and delay effects might be too much for some users, there’s always the option to use the dry loops instead and process them in a completely different way. I’ve also found that the pre-processed loops can be layered underneath the dry ones to great effect, if you want to keep their original vibe while making the reverb and delay effects less obvious to the listener (or simply easier to fit in your mix).

To make things even easier for the user, ModeAudio has included a handy collection of guitar trails which can be used to create a natural sounding decay for the actual loops. Aside from their obvious purpose, the tail samples can be used to great effect as drones and/or guitar one shots, especially if you map them across your MIDI keyboard or MPC style drum pads.

Apart from the guitar loops and sound effects, the library also contains a set of electronic drum loops and basslines. These additional loops complement the main loop content rather well and they’re definitely more than good enough to be used on their own. The drum loops sub folder in particular contains some real gems, providing a solid rhythmic foundation for urban and electronica style tracks.

Last but not least, Float has a separate folder with 42 MIDI sequences covering basslines, drum loops and synthesized loops. These MIDI sequences correspond to the rendered loops which are included in the audio portion of the sound library and they’re quite useful in case you want to create your own variations of the rendered loops using a different set of one shot samples. Speaking of one shots, you’ll find a neat little pack of percussive hits in the ModeAudio freebie pack featured below.

Audio Demo

Check out the Float audio demo:

The Verdict

Float is priced at £18 and it contains 162 Acid WAV loops in total, with 85 additional guitar trail samples and 42 MIDI sequences. The library is available for download in several different flavors, with support for Propellerhead Reason, Ableton Live, Apple Logic and any WAV compatible sampler or digital audio workstation. I would love to see even more different formats in future ModeAudio releases, with support for NI Kontakt and especially the free SFZ format.

The price is absolutely fair considering the quality and versatility of the included content, making Float an interesting product to consider if you’re looking for a collection of guitar sounds for your next chillwave/urban/electronica masterpiece. A small portion of the loops included in the full product can be download for free in our exclusive freebie pack which is available below.

Product page: http://modeaudio.com/product/float

Free Samples

ModeAudio has kindly provided an exclusive freebie pack for all BPB readers, featuring a selection of royalty free sounds from their commercial releases. The freebie pack includes free percussion one shots from the Undercover Found Percussion Samples sound library, guitar loops from Float and a set of NI Massive presets from the Open Spaces sound bank.

Download: ModeAudio – BPB Feb 15 Sampler (26.1 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 34 audio samples and loops in 24-bit WAV format, 8 MIDI sequences, 5 presets in NMSV format for NI Massive)

ModeAudio Float

9.0 Brilliant

Float is a collection of royalty free guitar riffs, leads and strums for ambient and electronic music production, delivering a chilled out and relaxed vibe throughout its rich audio content.

• Content Quality 9
• Library Organization 10
• Format Compatibility 8
• Pricing 9