The Synth Sounds Of Donna Summer's “I Feel Love”

The music that Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte composed for Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" would go on to have a lasting impact far from late-'70s disco floors. Originally appearing on Summer's 1977 album I Remember Yesterday, it helped usher in a new era of electronic-based production in dance music.

The song was originally created largely on a Moog modular synth rig—its pulsating bassline propelling the track forward as Summer's vocals lilt above it.

In this latest episode of our The Synth Sounds Of… series, William Kurk recreates the Moog bassline with a similar patch in Synthesizers.com modular rig, played via MIDI with the Arturia KeyLab Controller. However, the part really comes alive after the rig's signal is run through the Eventide EuroDDL Delay module.

An oft-overlook part, the synth string section is "the salad dressing" of the ensemble—a flange-y orchestral sound, with an open envelope filter that gives it a wider, longer release. William plays it with a Prophet-6, though, like much of the rest of the original backing track, was created with a Moog synth.

Together, these parts created an arrangement that was sparse, fluid, and propulsive—a formula that would transform decades of dance music in its wake. Be sure to watch the full video above for a full exploration of these iconic synth sounds. Below, you can download our Ableton Live 10, Logic Pro X, and Pro Tools sessions to play and tweak with these sounds yourself.

For our audio demo track below, we recreated the "I Feel Love" synth sounds with the Arturia Modular V, ARP2600 V, Clavinet V, Jup-8V, Mini V3, and Matrix 12 V, as well as the Roland Cloud Jupiter-8 from the Roland Cloud Instrument Suite. You can download free presets for all of these virtual instruments below too. (You can try the Roland Cloud Suite for free for 30-days with a Reverb Exclusive trial offer.)

Download Reverb Exclusive Project Sessions
Use the Provided Audio Files in These Sessions
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