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Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
Ardour - OSX/Linux Again, I don't have all that much experience with Ardour either, but it's got a clean & intuitive interface, excellent plugin compatibility and awesome functions, such as matrix style plugin patching. Again, sweet deal for nothing...
There are many hundreds, possibly thousands of these plugins available. To save you time I've grouped them into 'suites', by developer. Native Instruments - Komplete Players Windows/OSX Native Instruments are one of the biggest players in the music production industry. Their Komplete range is an amazing (and expensive) set of plugins that pretty much covers the bases in synthesis and sampling . But they also do a little free giveaway in the form of their Komplete Players, which though just a fraction of the paid offering, are still incredible.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
u-He's free giveaways Windows/OSX Triple Cheese, Zoyd, TyrellN6, Zebralette u-HE are one of my favourite developers, and they make some seriously incredible and versatile synths. All of their free synths are worth trying out too, being just as quirky as powerful as their paid offerings (albeit with a little less functionality) Blue Cat's Freeware Plugins Pack Windows/OSX A very non gimmicky and useful set of FX plugins from Blue Cat that includes most of the studio essentials, equalisation, a flanger, spectral analysis, and so on... TAL - Effects Suite Windows/OSX TAL's free FX are very handy, and include some more unusual offerings - such as a bitcrusher and a tube saturator, both of which can make your mixes much harder and edgy. DSK - Synths Windows DSK are beyond ridiculously generous in their (pretty awesome) free plugin offerings. There's way too many to list here, but it runs from traditional Indian instruments to synths that specialise in making spacey pads. Shame there's no OSX offerings... KResearch - Free Series Windows/OSX KResearch's free series are a generous reverb and delay plugin, stripped down and based on the incredible KR-Space, one of their commercial offerings, which combines both reverb and delay. Illformed - 'Old VST Plugins Pack' Windows Which contains a bunch of plugins under the FSU category (I'll let you guess what the acronym stands for) Glitch 1.3, Crusher, Stretch & TapeStop. As of this date the plugins were no longer supported, but they still work, and for adding carnage to your mixes, it's hard to beat them. Soundhack - Freesound Bundle Windows/OSX Soundhack (who teaches computer science) has some FX offerings that are slightly moreesoteric than some of the other free FX you might
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
find. They're presented in that wonderful minimalist UI that you might come to love and treasure. As to what they do exactly? Its easier to try them and find out. Smartelectronix Windows/OSX It's hard to categorise Smartelectronix, being a loose collective of extremely talented and inventive audio programmers. You don't always know what you are going to get from them, and it's not all free, but a lot of the plugins here are worth checking out. They vary in application from the relative straightforwardness of Magnus Ambiance to the speaker blasting insanity of Bram's CrazyIvan. These are 5 of my favourite Smartelectronix developers: http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/ http://mdsp.smartelectronix.com/ http://mda.smartelectronix.com/ http://bram.smartelectronix.com/ http://dmi.smartelectronix.com/hammer.html Michael Norris - Soundmagic Spectral OSX All I can say is that the plugins here, which involve spectral processing of your sounds, can be used to create some of the weirdest, most far out noises you can imagine. Limitless, undirected and demented sonic possibilities.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
FXPansion - ORCA Windows/OSX FXPansion's ORCA is a somewhat stripped down, yet pretty powerful subtractive synth that was released as a showcase for new & experimental audio technology. One worth collecting. YMCK - Magical 8bit Plug Windows/OSX This is, IMHO, the best plugin to create the 8bit/'chip tunes' sound in the style of the Nintendo gameboy. I use it regularly and love it. Sam - CHIP32 Windows/OSX Sam's CHIP shows it's age a bit now, but is capable of creating similar kinds of lo-fi sound to the 8 bit plug we mentioned above. alphakanal - Automat OSX Automat is a pretty straightforward and useful synth. It's workhorse capable of all kinds of sounds, from spacious pads to punchy leads. It's a pretty good 'all rounder'. Linplug - Free Alpha 3 Windows/OSX Linplug's Free Alpha is a stripped down version of the Alpha synth. It also shows its age a little now, but is still capable of some cool noises, especially with pads. IK Multimedia - Sampletank FREE Windows/OSX IK's Sampletank is the smallest of IK's sampler series. Packing 58 free instruments and half a gig of samples, all sampled in the high quality IK is known for, it's worth getting your hands on this one. Camel Audio - Alchemy Player Windows/OSX Camel Audio's Alchemy is an extremely versatile sampler/synth hybrid. The full version is incredible, and the freeware 'player' still comes with over 200 instruments and a gig of samples - I think this one's an essential!
Audio Samples
Here's some places you can find some free samples that are likely in the Creative Commons or Public Domain.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
This is important if you ever intend to release music and don't want to be sued too much. :3 http://www.freesound.org/ http://sampleswap.org/ http://www.looperman.com/ http://free-loops.com/ http://ibeat.org/ http://ccmixter.org/view/media/samples/browse http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples [this is a torrent] http://soundsource.servus.at/
Conclusion
This should be enough to get you started. Hopefully I've landed this guide somewhere in that sweet spot between too little and too much information. What do you think? Contact me if I can be any help and happy music making! -Jack
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
Zero Cost Electronica v1.0 // Jack Oughton http://xijmusic.com// https://www.facebook.com/XijMusic // 2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @Xij
About
Jack Oughton, AKA Xij AKA Koukouvaya is a freelance writer/copywriter, composer/sound designer and digital artist/photographer from South London who has serious problems writing biographical information about himself in the third person. Jack has written for the likes of The Guardian, The Independent and FHM, and currently spends all day sculpting alien sounds using wavetable synthesis. Asides from using and writing about music technology, Jack also arranges workshop series and one off clinics on music production for a variety of different organisations. You can contact Jack for more information
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven