My Top 10 Free VST Instruments and Effects

Hello again geeks and nerds and musical nerdettes! Since we are already on a roll today with the musical posts about free music production software, I thought it would really help bring things full circle to highlight my Top 10 VST Instruments that I use today.

In no specific order:

dBlue Glitch - Glitch features a pattern-based effects sequencer that takes the incoming audio, breaks it down into user-defined slices, and then applies different effects to each slice. The sounds it generates range from quite subtle to extremely bizarre, depending on how much you tweak the controls. Effects can either be programmed by hand to create specific desired patterns; chosen pseudo-randomly based on each effect’s probability level, with a user-defined seed value that optionally allows the same sequence of “random” effects to be chosen each time; or combined into a mixture of both methods to suite your own tastes.

Check it out here! http://illformed.org/plugins/glitch/

 

Tal Reverb 2 – You will see TAL (Togu Audio Line) products in this list quite heavily, as I use each one listed in almost every track. The whole TAL Reverb collection is great, but if you want that really clean smooth reverb, this is the one to go with. Everything from reggae dancehall reverb to Cistine Chapel reverb is possible with this.

Check it out here! http://kunz.corrupt.ch/products/tal-reverb

 

Ferric TDS – I remember the day this bad boy came out! I read about it at the library on the PC’s there, and it was a mad dash to get home and download a copy for myself! Before I had my sophisticated cassette deck setup, I used this to bring out all of my drums, especially hihats and snares. There is just some type of quality that this tape simulator imparts that is not easily duplicated any other way. It is hard to get this much flavor and quality out of software these days.

Check it out here! http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4063301/FerricTDS_1.5.1.zip

 

Zebralette by U-HE - OK, Zebralette is just one of Zebra2′s oscillators packed into a simple, easy-to-learn framework – but you have everything you need to make some pretty amazing sounds. Sounds that can be directly loaded into Zebra2 later. And should you eventually decide to upgrade to Zebra2, you will already know everything there is to know about the oscillators – which is quite an advantage!

Check it out here! http://www.u-he.com/cms/zebralette/

 

Rez3 - Rez is a seemingly basic synth, but it’s capable of a very wide range of sounds. While Rez has a bunch of cool features, the beating heart of Rez is its filter. It’s made from multiple chained filters acting as a single powerful filter and it’s highly resonant, providing Rez with its distinctive character. Top that off with distortion, a phaser, various oscillator modulations, delay, and a killer programmable arp and step sequencer, and you’ve got a powerhouse of a synth in a very small package.

Check it out here! http://www.ugoaudio.com/plug-ins/rez

 

The Element of surprise – Built for the KVR Developer Challenge 2007 (won 3rd place), The Element of Surprise is a fun little freeware virtual analog polysynth that is designed for one purpose only…to make really cool randomly generated sounds for fast inspiration and experiments in spontaneous song writing.

Check it out here! http://www.ugoaudio.com/plug-ins/the-element-of-surprise

 

field, ambience tool v1.3 - field is a multisample based ambience generator. using original field recordings by twerk, field allows you to generate suitable backing ambience for any track. version 1.1 adds a new interface, more responsive EQ, and small performance enhancements.

Check it out here! http://www.tweakbench.com/field

 

Triforce – This one is for all of you NES heads out there who enjoy that chiptune feel in your tracks! Whether you use a tracker or some type of VST Host, there is no denying that that old nostalgic feeling doesn’t start to creep up on you a little bit and get the hairs on the back of your neck standing up a little bit when you hear this synth. I love it. Also, this guy allows you to download the entire bundle for about 5$ which ain’t bad considering what you are getting.

Check it out here! http://www.tweakbench.com/triforce

 

CamelCrusher - a free ‘colouring’ multi-effect plugin. It offers two characteristically different distortion sounds which can be blended together to create a wide variety of tones and textures. Great for guitars, drums and plenty more. There’s also a warm, smooth analogue-style low-pass filter with buckets of resonance.

Check it out here! http://www.camelaudio.com/camelcrusher.php/

 

Automat (suggested by redditor:  Thrakanon) - A virtual analog Audio Units (AU) synthesizer plugin for applications (Audio Unit hosts) like Garageband, Logic or Live. It features a polyphonic stereo subtractive AltiVec/SSE optimized DSP engine with a flexible modulation patchbay.

Check it out! http://www.alphakanal.de/