Aretha Franklin - Freeway Of Love | Bass Synth Patch Remake

Remaking the bass synth from the 1985 song "Freeway Of Love" by Aretha Franklin can be an exciting challenge for any synthesizer enthusiast. Here’s how you can create the "Freeway Of Love" bass patch and play this iconic sound on most hardware or software subtractive synthesizers (Serum, Vital, Pigments, Prophet, Korg, Moog, etc). We've included the preset download directly for your convenience, but we strongly recommend you use our programming tutorial to recreate it yourself.

Original Audio

The synth bass on Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love” opens in the intro and locks the main groove throughout the verses and chorus. It’s a punchy synth bass with a modulated resonant filter that gives a vocal-like “meeow” character. The part is credited to Randy Jackson on synth bass. The production adds stereo width and smear consistent with chorus/modulation and layered tracking in the final mix.

Our Remake of The Bass Synth sound

This audio clip is how close we've matched the original tone of the bass synth from the song "Freeway Of Love" by Aretha Franklin, giving you a reference point as you design your own synthesizer preset. Play it as often as you need to familiarize yourself with the nuances of the sound.

Synth Patch Programming Recipe

Getting Started

• Start by initializing your synthesizer to a plain saw with no filter, modulation or effects. For soft synths use the "init"/"default" preset or the the button to reset all parameters to their default factory values.
• No two synths are exactly alike, so treat the values below as approximate, and use your ear.
• Percentage values (e.g. 50%) represent the relative position of a knob or slider within its full range. The full range of each parameter may differ from synth to synth, so use your ear.

Note: the patch settings may slightly differ in the Syntorial challenge.

Explore More

• Freeway of Love (Wikipedia)
• Aretha Franklin – Who’s Zoomin’ Who? (Discogs release credits)
• Mix Magazine, April 1988 (Narada Michael Walden interview / production coverage)
• Aretha Franklin’s ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?’ Brought the Grand Diva into the Eighties (PopMatters)
• Who’s Zoomin’ Who? personnel and credits (BeppeCantarelli)

Preset Downloads

Don't want to learn synth programming now? Use our synth preset as your starting point and tweak it from there. Register an account with Audible Genius and download the presets for free for the following synths:

• Primer, our free synthesizer VST