Archives for November 2016

Disillusioned with a lack of suitable plug-ins, developer Alex Hilton started to build his own. A1 TriggerGate is a rhythmic gate audio processor that can be used to get the effects heard in dubstep, house and electronic music. There’s a variable onboard step sequencer, where each beat consists of four steps, or three in triplet mode, and each step has a volume fader. There are integrated effects, too: low-pass filter, drive/distortion and echo/delay to keep things interesting. These don’t have tons of controls, but sound great. Although highly programmable, the effect also has a randomizer for punching in new settings.

Key Takeaways:

• The main draw of Cableguys PanCake is the ability to pan according to modulations sync’d with your audio, so put a beat loop through it and it can, for example, pan left and right in time with beats, creating a more musical movement than you might otherwise achieve.
• Krush offers the most instant, smile-on-your face fun when booting it up for the first time, not to mention having yet another clean and modern GUI.
• The Virus is a virtual analogue that has been used across many dance genres, including a lot of trance, and this will give you that hard-edged phasing and movement that a lot of the sounds in that genre use.

“If you’re going to try any of this year’s roundup, give this a go – we dare you try it and not smile. It’s among the best freeware effects for this reason.”

http://www.musictech.net/2016/10/best-freeware-effects-part-2/

‘If something seems too good to be true, it probably is’, goes the saying, but when it comes to free VST/AU plugins for your PC or Mac, there really isn’t much of a catch. OK, some of the many freeware instruments, effects and other tools on offer might not be of what you’d call ‘commercial quality’, but if you restrict yourself to the good stuff, then you’ll find that it really is the case that you can legitimately download some truly excellent plugins for nothing.

Key Takeaways:

• there’s a lot of variation to be had from one solitary piano type, along with preset locations to save your results.
• There are useful volume, pan and release controls per channel and an overall Dynamic dial. If it sounds simple, it is, which is part of its charm (and indeed a lot of Alan’s other VSTs
• It is a very specific plug-in and at 190MB, quite a large download – but it does encourage you to play and experiment with a little top-end percussion, an oft-undervalued way of lifting a song.

“The upright piano is a great little freebie – an emulation of the kind of upright piano you might have at home – and very good it is, too.”

http://www.musictech.net/2016/10/best-freeware-real-instruments/