Tag Archives: digital performer

homerecording

VST effects and VST instruments

You’ll find a big number of VST and AU plugins (instruments and effects) on the web. While it is good to have so many to choose from, it’s difficult to work out which are worth downloading.

bluecat plugins

bluecat plugins

To save you a lot of time, effort and disappointment, I’ve come up with this list of some of the best free VST (and AU) plug-ins.

I’ve tested and used them by myself a lot and I like them.

Free effect Plugins (mac & win):

Tip: Check out the website of Stillwell & Schwa for best quality effects and instruments:

stillwell and schwa plugins

stilllogo

Written with sound quality and ease of use a priority, all their plugins are 64-bit internal processing. If your host is VST 2.4 capable, they’ll accept and pass on 64-bit double-precision audio streams. If you have a host that is only 32-bit capable, they’ll still give you as much precision as possible. Groundbreaking audio technology.

This bunch of Plugins are still my personal favorites! Go check them out, you can try them for free as long as you like!

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homerecording

What hardware do I need?

To make your own music or beats you need a PC, some speakers, and a sound card (which will work as a D/A-A/D converter and translate your digital signal into something you can hear out of your speakers).

wave

We asume you have the PC already. So let us focus on the speakers.

Don’t listen to all the freaks out there claiming you NEED some special monitor speakers made for producing music. You have some nice system to listen to your music at home? USE IT! Connect it to your pc and start! Later when we talk about mixing and mastering we will discuss the differences in speaker systems more.

In case you want to spend money on that now, check that list: Thomann Nahfeld Monitore

To connect speakers to your pc you need a sound card. You can use your built in sound card but I recommend to buy a good one like E-MU or M-AUDIO at oned point.

sound-card-connectors

Remember that for example Creative Sound Cards are build for gamers and not made for music production. You can use them but you might experience problems with latency, number of out-/inputs or low sample rate at one point.

For now, just connect your speakers to the line out/speaker/headphone out (should be the green one) at your inbuilt sound card. As long as you not encounter any problems stay with that setup! Too many people get sucked in by the ‘buy more – get better’ way of producing music. That is definitely wrong! I know many very good producers making money with their art just using standard built in sound cards.

 

Most home recording studios are using usb sound cards to get better samplerates, latency values and more inputs/outputs. Connected easily via usb these little boxes offer nice volume/mono/headphones control and as many outputs and inputs as one may need. For recording purposes they come with much better latency times than standard inbuilt sound cards. Latency is the short time difference your system need to translate your voice or guitar or keyboard/piano to a digital wave form in your software. So if you start wondering: “Why does the sound comes too late?? I play it correct!!” you have latency issues and might need a better sound card. Again you can check for usb sound interfaces at Thomann.

 

emu usb interface

emu usb interface

 

 

 

 

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homerecording

How to make your own beats?

You like music? You want to make your own beats? Want to build a small home production studio?

If you not sure how to start, let me help you.

home studio example

We need a few things now. I keep it ‘free’ as far as possible, you can choose to change anything as you like.

First you will need a PC (I guess you have one as you are reading this here). Won’t be free if you can’t find one from a friend or family but you can get them cheap nowadays. You might prefer mac over microsoft so let me say it doesn’t matter at all. Both systems are great for making your own music.

Next is a software for producing music. There are a lot. FL Studio, Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase and more are all up to date top programs with high prices for beginners. I would go with FLS (FLStudio) cause it is the perfect allrounder with a lot of sounds included, has a great free lifetime update plan and the programmers are fast and reliable. That is why I recommend Reaper aswel. A very professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) you can download and use for free and if you like it you can pay for it after 60 days…. but you don’t need to. It can do much more than most of the competition and they have a nice price and marketing attitude.

REAPER

REAPER

With Reaper, you are able to record and edit your creations, build beats, mix & master your finished tracks and much more.

But we need more. If you want to work with electronic music or hip hop beats (and not record your own instruments only), you might need some instruments or samples. For the instruments, we have to get one or more virtual software instruments (VSTi). This can be a sampler, a synthesizer, a mix from both or anything else. Check the following examples and install them if you like.

I will post a more comprehensive list of free VSTIs in the next days.

Reaper comes with one basic build in Sampler. If you have a sample library already, you can use this one or just work by dragging samples in the arrangement window of Reaper. You don’t need VSTi to make music, but I recommend to get at least a few. In case you have enough money to spend or interested in some more: Here are some of the big names: Kontakt, Sampletank, Yellowtools, E-MU etc.

With all that downloaded and installed we have already build the basement for our home music production. Next post I will talk more about the hardware (like monitor speakers, soundcard and/or midi interface) specifications we need in our music making PC.

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