S950 Magic Vol 2: Late Night Soul is what I am working on. The next couple of blog posts will show my process from soulful sample making, my personal sample making workflow, running them through the S950, then bringing them back into FL Studio to be mixed for soul sample processing and then out for you to purchase. This pack's theme is Late Night Soul so if you want those laid back, chill, late night soul samples that are 100% all original and easy to clear then this pack will be for you! If you want S950 Magic Vol. 1 you can purchase it here.

I began the sample by loading up MPC 3 and go to the Korg Kronos expansion. This has a ton of great sounds that I have been experimenting with. I chose a piano and went to work. I knew that I needed a dark sample since the last sample was smooth. You can check out that video and post here.

Basically it started out as a arpeggiated Fmin chord. Something dark, almost trap like but it will make since once you see what I do with it.

I added some sprinkles on the top just playing with some of the melody. You need a little bit of that when you play keys so it doesn't get repetitive and boring.

At about 2:30 in the video I wanted to lower the key of the sample. So I moved all of it down to C# which turns the chord into a C#maj chord. When you are making samples sometimes you need to adjust the pitch so that when it's sped up it can match your original pitch. Beside it made the whole mood darker which was what I was going for in this soul sample.

I put the pattern in the playlist then right clicked and selected Consolidate track. You can only have on instance of MPC 3 running in FL Studio. This gives me the ability to render what I just did then reuse MPC 3 for another instrument. Before doing that I made sure to load up a sampler and cut and pasted the midi so I don't lose it.

For soul samples, you must have strings! It's as important as the chords in the sample. So I loaded up Soundpaint and chose the sustain strings. Basically all I am doing is following the root chord which is C#maj. We are not making anything crazy here. The crazy string part is what comes right after this.

This is the secret sauce. This is the whole reason I bought this Soundpaint plugin was for these Disco Run strings. I love putting these at the end bar to make things climax. I put the note on G# which is the last note in the chord and it sounds epic, dark, soulful and beautiful all at the same time.

I knew I needed one more type of string. Something that would hit on the downbeats. Since there won't be much of a rhythm section in this sample the marcato string from Soundpaint was required. If you listen to some of those old disco records you can hear these all the way through them. So basically I just followed the root note for most of the 8 bars and on the final bar I made it climax to compliment the disco runs. Absolutely beautiful!

One of the things I love about the Akai S950 is how it crunches and exaggerates the bass. I knew I needed that for this sample so I went for Sampletank and went for the Motown Bass. This is my favorite bass preset inside of Sampletank and I use it damn near every time I make a sample.

I started with a basic 1 and 4 pattern from C# to G# but I wasn't done. I knew I needed a turn around after that so I made this arpeggiated section on the 3rd and 7th bar that just goes up. It really made it that dark grimy feel I was going for.

I knew I needed to compliment the strings with something else on the top. An organ is one of my first choices. Soul music really comes from gospel, jazz and of course blues. If you listen to those old songs for example Willie Hutch's classic Hospital Theme from Foxy Brown you will see what I mean. This song has been sampled so many times. Biggie's classic "Ready to Die" and Mobb Deep's "Drop a Gem on Em". Long story short - it's a classic soul sample instrument.

I went through some of the organs in MPC 3 and didn't hear what I needed so I loaded up the trusted Omnisphere and chose the Boombox organ from there. It's the best organ patch I have and it always works wonders.

All I did was make a simple pattern following the C#maj scale. Nothing crazy here. Just beefing up the strings.

Since the rhythm section is pretty much the bass I loaded up a guitar from Sampletank to give me some bounce. Nothing major here just alternating the notes from G# to A. Just to give the sample some more groove.

One of the most interesting sounding instruments is the sitar. You can hear it a lot in the Stylistics and Blue Magic's music. It's great to hear on a turn around so that's what I did here. Just a basic pluck at C# followed by a climax at the end. It doesn't play the entire sample but it really makes everything come together in a nice, unique way.

If you want my theory on arranging samples go ahead and check the near the end of this post.

The real secret is how do you make your samples sound like an actual 70s record? It's really easy actually. First load up a Parametric EQ on the master bus. Roll off everything below 20hz and everything above 10khz. Then I use the Abbey Road Vinyl from Waves. I made my own preset but basically there are 3 knobs on the top right. Noise, Crackle and Clicks. I usually just leave the crackle but sometimes I use the other features.

The best of the effect happens on the bottom left of the plugin. The Wow and Flutter knobs. Mess with these to make your sample sound like a warped record. You can adjust the depth knob all the way up and mess with rate to hear what your doing. Once the rate is right you can lower the depth to make it sound natural.

If you enjoyed watching this sample come together, every melody inside S950 Magic Vol. 1 is created using the exact workflow shown above. No recycled loops. No clearance worries. Just authentic 12-bit soul textures ready to chop.

If you would like some ultra dope, 100% original soul samples and drums ran through an actual Akai S950 then I urge you to buy the S950 Magic Vol. 1 sample pack.

Inside you'll find warm soulful chords, dusty soul progressions, vintage brass textures, and gritty one-shots processed through an authentic Akai S950 to recreate the texture of classic 90s boom bap records.

✅ 5 Original Soul Samples

✅ 16 S950 Drum One-Shots

✅ Royalty-Free

✅ Instant Download