Install Pack: VSTs you consider essential - any payware?

[jplanet]

Oooh I dunno those jplanet, and I love prog (Crimson Rules!). Do you have any lynx?

In my sig!

Oh OK Jplanet, what we have there are paywares: an acoustic piano emulator, a mellotron emulator,a minimogue emulator, and an electric piano emulator. I have freewares that will do all of that, however if you are recording you may well be needing and getting a much better quality. For the Mellotron I am using Mellosoftron, which ceratinly has limitations.

Yes, I use these for final tracking on commercial (indie) releases. Prog fans are very fussy about their keyboard sounds! I've tried alternatives, and like many of them, but the ones on my list really inspire me the most...

[dougsyo]

The only freeware synth I use very often any more is Synth1, and that's because of the number of presets I have for it. I use a fair number of free effects, however.

My short list is Kontakt2/3+3rd party, B4 II, Sampletank 2XL+add-ons, ImpOscar, Albino, DimPro, Jamstix2+add-ons and Synth1. If I kept those and my effects (bundled with my host, free and payware), I could probably dump all the rest and not miss much except the money I spent.

Doug

[indigocat]

You are quite right, Tomg, I don't know much, though why be so impolite? However, I have been using synths since 1970, which I learnt from my brother-in-law who studied music under Stockhausen. I remember the introduction of the Moog 12, and I was invited to the releases of the Korg MS-series, to the releases of the first polyphonic synths by Roland, and to the trade fair demos of the first digital synths and what we would now call romplers by Kawai. I was also friends with some of the pioneering electronic composers - the electronic music studio at Victoria University in New Zealand was one of the best in the world at the time. After that I lost contact for a while, just over the last year I have been getting into the softsynths. But I don't pretend to be an expert, or even a musician. I just enjoy making industrial grunge.

However, I was more interested in knowing what people are using to create their music. I'm ceratinly happy that you have reacted to the discussion on Analogue synths, but isn't that a bit of a sideline?

[whyterabbyt]

it doesn't need to make you a million dollars, create a hit track or even impress a single person. it simply needs to be enjoyable while you, YOU, one person is playing the instrument. if another person doesn't feel the same way, that's just fine because that isn't the point.

amen.

[indigocat]

This topic seems to have gone dead, which is a pity.

So, two comments. The first on analogue instruments.

I basically remember the '70s as a time when doctors were allowed to do horrible things to children because, as everyone knows, children don't feel pain. Perhaps it is this that gives me resistance to nostalgia for this or that 'golden age'. However, there were some things about these old analogue machines that are sometimes forgotten:

1) They were very old-fashioned looking. When the Moog 12 came out in 1972, the switches and patchboard basically looked exactly like they were out of a telephone exchange circa 1950. They looked like old Lucas Electrics. When the CS synths came out ten years later, the switches and tabs on them were patterned after home organs of the mid-sixties. They looked already obsolete when they came out.

2) They were and are bloody heavy. I needed help to get the Moog 12 to my car. The CS-50 weighed over 100 pounds and you still need two people to lug the thing. The CS-80 weighed over 240 pounds, and the tube amps of the time took three people to get them on a trolley and two people to move them. My Alesis QS7 is much lighter, but still a real pain to cart around.

3) They were terribly expensive. The Moog 12 when it came out was from memory about $1700. That was four months wages. For that money I could buy a new Kawasaki Z1 900 superbike and still have enough change to get a Yamaha 350 trailbike for the dirt.

I never found out about effects and postproduction, because at that time these were done by a man who sat on the other side of a big piece of glass.

Nowadays for about one week's wages I can get a small form factor dual-core 2.5 g PC (499), an LCD screen (145), FL Studio XXL (299) a second-hand midi keyboard via ebay (75), a perfectly capable small amp ($30), a new Sansai dynamic mike ($7.50) and heaps of freeware VSTs, and still have enough over for food and rent. All of it fits into one backpack and weighs less than 20kg...so being a performing musician is within my reach for the first time in my life. And though I still love King Crimson and the Stones, nowadays I'm more inspired by Portishead, Animal Collective, Emilie Simon, Iron and Wine and TV on the Radio...so I don't see any reason to listen to the old music at all. This is the golden age as far as I'm concerned.

Then with regard to the comment that the most important thing is what suits you and what you have fun playing is best no matter what anyone else thinks, from one standpoint it's very true, but from another, it is not very relevant. It really seems more like an attempt to kill the topic than to contribute to it.

1) I am not making music for myself. I am trying to reach out to others. What matters is what works for them, not me.

2) The experience of playing a VSTi seems to me pretty similar, no matter really what DAW or VSTI you use. From my viewpoint, what I want is the shortest possible distance between the music in my mind and the music that goes to people's ears. On rekkerd someone made the comment that any 12-year old could make tracks using FLstudio...and that person seemed to think this was a BAD thing. Frankly, if I could plug the jack into my neck and have the music come out just as I hear it in my head, that would be ideal.

3) It seems that people have a lot of emotional commitment to their equipment, especially if they have coughed up $$$ for it. Also, what people are using depends on the sort of music they are creating.

4) So, the question still remains: if you had a friend who was doing a fresh install and wanted to make music of a wide variety, what VSTs, free and pay, would you recommend to that person? This question is not abstract or irrelevant at all. On the contrary, it is something we will probably be asked more than once. So here again is my answer so far:

Absynth, Toda Synth 1, all of HG Fortune's freewares, all of DSK's machines, Dante, Muon-Tau Capsule, Ugo Rez, Ugo Texture, Saffron, Green Oak Crystal, the XOXos sound machine,and I may add some more later.

Any essentials I have missed?

-Peace
Indigocat