My Top TEN Favorite Plugins!

[Music] [Laughter] yeah that's just crazy it has been way too long guys nathan larson back at you with another video for those of you guys who make music at home whether you're an artist composer producer songwriter if you write and record your own music at home this is the channel for you and if that sounds anything like you at all you should subscribe to the channel right now and click the bell for notifications life has been crazy in the middle of trying to move hence why i've not put out a video recently but in this video i am going to be talking about the 10 plug-ins that i use the most now this is from a producer's standpoint i'm not going to be going over plug-ins for mixing this is more as a producer for those of you guys have been watching my videos for any period of time you know that i really preach that if you're a producer be a producer if you're a mixer be a mixer not saying you can't do both but i really try to focus on producing so i'm not talking about leveling and gain staging all that stuff because that is a mixing thing what i'm going to focus on is the effects plug-ins that you can be using as a producer so things that i would actually be printing down and sending to my mixing engineer so then they can actually take everything from there cool we're going to start with some of the most basic things and work our way up into my absolute favorite plugin which will be the last one so you're gonna have to stick around till the entire video to get that so number one not a huge shock probably it's a channel eq and in logic i really really like using let's go ahead and unmute or unhide this one here so i can show you what i'm talking about if you click on the eq button right there it's going to automatically pull up the channel eq that's built into logic this thing is awesome and i think it gets it's it's really underrated you don't need to go out and spend a ton of money on a plug-in like this when you literally already have it so since you already have it you might want to spend your money on other plugins that are a little more you know unique so the primary reason that i use the channel eq as a producer is really a couple things one i do use this as a tonal shaping tool so if i'm using uh different sounds and i want to really radically alter the actual tonal character of that sound i will use the channel eq for it i don't typically use the channel eq for additive eq in other words boosting eqs typically i'm going to use a different eq for that which i'll talk to you about in a second so i use this primarily for subtractive eq so i'm going to be using this for taking away highs taking away lows a lot of times i use it for cut offs and for shelves i will also use it to get rid of bad frequencies now you're probably saying wait a minute nathan that's a mixing thing well sort of there's always a little bit of overlap in mixing and producing as a producer you want to send your mixing engineer the best sounding stuff as possible so in many cases if i know hey this vocal is sounding really muddy in this area i'm going to go ahead and scoop it out so i use the channel eq to do all of that so just as an example i have just a literally a stock synth and alchemy that i pulled up like this [Music] okay so that's super bright one of the things i might do obviously this is for a hypothetical song would go in here to the shelf and pull down some of these highs to make the sound more like that so you can compare this obviously a really big difference however it was only a very small change i mean it's not actually a small change it's a pretty big change but pretty simple thing to do is one thing i did i have now actually altered that sound of course you can get the same exact effect by going into the plug-in itself into like alchemy or whatever to go ahead and shape that using the cutoff or using the eqs that are built in there but this is oftentimes what i go to first so that's number one the channel eq that brings us to number two and that is flex pitch um i know you're thinking flex pitch is not really a plug-in that you drop in i get that however it is a plug-in i'm gonna pull up a vocal here and i have an entire tutorial on flex pitch i'll link that in the corner here and in the description down below if you want to watch that however basically the main thing is using some sort of vocal pitch correction is the main thing i'm talking about so whether that's melodyne i also have waves tune but flex pitch to be completely honest with you is the one i use it used to be really glitchy many years ago actually back when i made that tutorial video however it's gotten a lot better i don't know if that's with some of the updates in the last couple years but it's a lot better so you can literally just open up your audio here click on the flex turn on flex go into flex pitch and boom there we go and then we can go in and start just manipulating the crap out of this and obviously you can go in and just right click or basically control click settle to perfect pitch oh the times that i have tried to say the words i need so obviously that's pretty bad so you can obviously move things around you can change the vibrato you can change the fine pitch you don't have to make it all perfect anyway if you want a more in-depth tutorial you can just check out my tutorial the main thing is is that vocal correction pitch correction if you're wanting your productions to actually sound professional it's absolutely a must so if you're using logic use flex pitch if you're not using logic if your daw has something built in go ahead and use that otherwise you are going to need to buy a third-party vocal pitch correction like melodyne or waves tune not a huge fan of waves tune sounds good but it's just a major pain in the butt to use number three i know i mentioned channel eq already as an eq but the next one that i would use a lot as an eq if you go into the effects rack effect rack in sound toys is sciq s i eq is it psyche or sieq honestly i don't know i've got it pulled up here and it's a very very very simple eq you have a low you have your mid and then you have your high and then a drive it's super simple however i love the character that sciq adds into i'm actually going to throw this on my vocal here to show you i use it on vocals a lot i use it on drums if i need my drums just to pop a little bit more and again all this stuff is a stuff that i would actually be doing in the producing phase um to shape some of the tones so here's the vocal oh the times that i have tried to so there's no reverb i have just a preset that i use on this uh that consists of a couple compressors uh channel eq is doing a little bit of a scoop based on this microphone so check out what happens when i boost the highs here i actually really love the high and the low that's where i use the most say the words i need to say to you so adds a nice bit of brightness um i use this on again drums to boost the low i use it on on bass to boost the low this drive feature is also really nice oh the times that i have tried to just adds a nice level of character to it so i do use this plug-in a lot again i'm not going to go in and just show you a ton of examples of everything i want this to be fast and quick and dirty to the point but sciq is awesome honestly i think just effect rack by soundtoys is probably one of the better effects plug-in bundles you can get i use it a lot i love it that's not the only one i'm talking about with that one and that brings us to number four and that is my all-time favorite reverb and that is ql spaces by east west so ql space is by east west i i seriously love this reverb i also use uh chroma verb actually quite a bit i used to never use the logic stuff and uh honestly chroma chromoverb is not bad um my go-to uh preset in quantum leap uh the uh quantum leap east west wow i can't speak east west ql spaces is if you go on the instrument specific tour go to vocal natural the vocal plates for this reverb is just absolutely phenomenal i love it i'm gonna put it just directly on here typically i would create a bus and use it on a bus but this is just so you can get an idea of how this sounds oh the times that i have tried to just sounds so good just like literally just like that there you go and of course you can eq the uh reverb if you have it on a bus as well i use this all the time i do a lot of cinematic pop music so i love the halls and things like that for strings and brass and everything else like that anyway ql spaces is amazing absolutely amazing i love it number five number five this one is a fun one it's from baby audio um actually this is one that baby audio sent me many months ago and we're like hey you should try it out and i was like i can't guarantee that i'm going to say anything about it but i i love it i'm not sponsored by them but again but they did send it to me so you can go down here audio units go to baby audio parallel aggressor so i've got these drums here so that's just using drum lab i love drum lab it's awesome let's just slap parallel aggressor on here now the beautiful thing about this plug-in just so you guys know what it is in the first place it's for parallel compression but the beautiful thing is that it actually does it all within one plug-in so it actually creates the duplicates within the plugin itself you don't have to use buses or any of that it just does it right within the plug-in and it's it's really really cool so you've got several different controls you actually have three different levels so you have in the middle your dry level right so that's just the dry signal you have the spank and the heat and then down here you can change the styles you can do extra punch you can do extra smack you can add a filter and other things like that but this thing is awesome it sounds really good on vocals if you want like a really fat dirty vocal but on drums it's it's really good here just listen to this i'm gonna solo just the dry level and you can actually listen to what they sound like soloed out so here just dry now i'm going to go ahead and unsolo some things just have it as the preset without it with it so you can really hear in the low end you can really hear in the kick in particular but i'm just going to go and crank up this stuff i'm going to turn spank and heat to 100 just to really exaggerate so obviously you probably wouldn't want to like that or you could turn the level down and then turn it all the way [Music] up this is this is crazy you can do like extra punch here let's see what that sounds like so that's way more than you would need for sure um but one way or the other this there's a lot of fun you can do with this you can use it on vocals i've used it on vocals i've used it on drums bass anyway super dope plug-in it's pretty affordable too parallel aggressor by baby audio okay and that brings us to number what number mine and that brings us to number six so this one is another soundtoys plug-in and that is little radiator now there's just radiator and then there's also little radiator i have both and uh for some reason i just i kind of prefer a little radiator actually all right so go to sound toys little reader little radiator i like it primarily because it just has two knobs heat and then mix and it's super super simple and it packs a legit punch um the full-size one is just it's bigger it has like treble bass and an input output mix i think that's pretty much it but again i like the little radiator because you can just have two knobs i use this again typically on a bus but i use it on drums a lot you can use it on vocals guitar i mean really anything that you want to add a little bit of heat to basically it's a tube preamp so this is what that off with it on just on the preset so again adds like a lot of the just the punch to it this is uh set to 100 mix let's put it right down the center [Music] let's turn the heat up [Music] so you can probably hear why this is really good for buses if you haven't if you haven't used buses you're not familiar with buses i have an entire video on that you can check it out here or in the description down below as well main thing is this is really just great for adding some more character to the sounds for me when i started using plugins like this to add character it really started making my stuff not sound so stocky and a lot more unique in like individualized like oh yeah that's got some color to it so i like plugins like these that add just that nice little bit of tonal character to it for a punch so that one is little radiator by sound toys all right that brings us to number seven i'm gonna be using drums again because i love this plug-in on drums it's really for drums probably not only for drums and that's a native instruments plug-in called transient master i i freaking love this thing it's just amazing another very simple simple plug-in it's got three buttons here um or three dials that you can use and really what this is for is controlling the attack or the transient and the sustain or the tail of any sound that comes in okay so with this you can either reduce or increase sustain in the same thing reduce or increase attack these are really the two buttons you're going to be using the most and i use it again on drums a lot i use this on snares a lot i use it on claps a lot but you can use it on your entire drum track i'll do it excuse me i'll do on the entire drum track here but typically i do not use it on the entire drum track i'll use it as individual pieces so again this is without off and then i'll turn the sustain way up here to like say 60 [Music] so this works um very similarly to a compressor but it's just a little bit easier format and there's less to do okay and then if i crank the sustain down it's gonna like sound really short so if you want like a really tight sounding kit like that you can get that accomplished here the attack is basically in a way where is it positioned where does it feel like it's coming from so if i turn the attack way down it feels like it's coming from the distance a little bit if i turn the attack up it's gonna feel like it's like whoa like right in front of your face okay the sustain is typically what i use the most so if i really want a nice splashy snare that's typically what i'm gonna be going for um is using transient master if i want my snaps to really kind of have a little bit of a sustain to it or claps things like that i go straight to transient master i love this thing it's a power horse all right that brings us to number eight number eight is another soundtoys one let's just face it soundtoys is pretty dope i'm gonna go into effect rack again and soundtoys has this one right here it's famous i think i think it's kind of hard to do one of these videos without talking about this particular plugin because i think it's like super famous and that is decapitator uh it's dope that's it all right cool moving on no it's a really cool plug-in um it's a distortion plug-in from what i understand i just like how they sound anyway but decapitator is awesome you have this drive dial this is gonna be the main one and uh i'll just go ahead and turn it up a little bit to like four let's turn it off again show you again what this sounds like without it and let's turn on and show you what it sounds like with it [Music] so again typically you're going to want to use this as a bus um i use this on vocals too in fact if you want to see how i do like glitchy vocals i did a tutorial on that and i actually used decapitator i believe in that one to accomplish these like really awesome screaming type vocals not like screaming but like just really distorted vocals um this is just an amazing plugin you can use it on virtually anything guitars bass kick snare drums as a whole as a drum buss i'm just mix it in and then uh i use it on vocals sometimes like i said i do cinematic pop a lot so sometimes if i just want to have a vocal that has this nice little bit of punch to it i'll use this one sounds just stinking dope so there are some other things you can do you can turn this punish dial on and it basically does what you think it just punishes it [Music] [Laughter] yeah that's just crazy um and of course you can change the output you can change the mix so this is on obviously all the way up on wetness uh you can do different cuts you can change the tone [Music] so that's dark all the way to bright so you can really really radically change the sound you can do cuts um and then you also have a high cut and so like yeah high cut low cut and then you have these different styles here i don't actually understand what it does too much but you can play with that so that's decapitator alright so we are on to number nine we got two more left thanks for hanging with me this long if you like the video you should subscribe down below helps me out a ton totally free for you anyways moving on number nine is a plug-in by output called movement this is one i was super super excited to get and uh yeah it just it does not disappoint it's super super awesome it's really easy to use but also kind of not easy to use i feel like this is one of those plugins that you get and you're just like i don't really understand how it works but it's freaking sweet and uh the presets are all super great and you can just like manipulate the snot out of presets so really what this plug-in is is overall a plug-in for movement duh alright so how this plug-in works essentially is you have these four different rhythm controls they don't all have to be powered on as you can see you can turn them on and off and within these you can actually add effects on top of these and you can change what each individual rhythm does and it's pretty crazy so if you use signal by output which is their pulse engine it's kind of sort of ish based on that but different um so it has this macro uh xy dial where you can just move things around i've just got a piano here so this is like nothing and as we move it up here it's doing more of these rhythm one rhythm two and as we move it over here it's doing rhythm three rhythm four you can also change the output down here as well so this is a preset called plucking around what i like about this is the presets are really easy you can go in and basically filter things out and find presets that you like um i almost always and by almost always i mean i literally always start with the preset and then i just manipulate it because this is this is actually this is one of the harder plug-ins to use in terms of understanding how to create things from scratch it's very difficult actually in my opinion to create things from scratch and i'm way too impatient for it so if you're looking for plug-ins that you can just take and then like get really in the weeds about this is one of them but if you also just kind of like using presets and then going from there this is also one of them if you want to learn how this thing works like in depth have fun with that i personally don't i will just use the presets and then and then find the sounds i like so let's just go to one here let's check out like a plucking and let's do something that's dirty plucking and dirty so let's do dotted eighth looks like probably so that's kind of a simple so if you hold it that looks like you got a little bit more ooh let's let's play around with this one [Music] that's pretty cool but i think this just gives you at least somewhat of a taste you could watch entire tutorials on this one plugin again there's a lot there but i love using this it's definitely one of those plugins that if i'm just like you know what i'm just lacking a little bit inspiration on where to go i will pull this thing up and just be like start playing i'm like yeah i don't know what that means yeah all right that brings us to number 10 the very last one and i think it has to be a little surprised that it's not actually that crazy of a plug-in but i i this has become like the plug-in that i love going to the most and that is a delay plug-in called replica by native instruments so let's go ahead and open up replica uh there's also replica gt which i think i have but uh i just am used to this one now there is a specific mode that i use on this the most so when you pull it up right away it's a pretty simple interface you've got these three different modes you can change the rhythms you can do different types of delays so you can do wide ping pong or normal you've got your mix control your feedback control some saturation low cut high cut and you have these phaser and you also have filters you can use so very very simple in terms of the interface so this is what it sounds like just with a dotted eighth note ping pong on the modern mode [Music] okay so pretty cool right however this is the mode i prefer and that is diffusion so turn that all the way down and this is where this is why i love this plugin so much right here listen to this [Music] ah i love it so much i use this so much that i honestly think it's just like becoming a part of the sound that i've adopted into my own productions i use this all that i use this in literally every single production that i've done recently with this exact mode the diffusion mode it's like a delay but it also has like a reverb element to it it is amazing you can change some of the movement size amounts you can alter some of that stuff even obviously you can change again the delay mode but i know some of you are probably like really just a delay plug-in that's your favorite yes i just i use this on vocals i use this on keyboards i use this on synthetizers i use it on string i use this all over the place and it just sounds absolutely incredible i love it and i don't know there's something about this sound that i get when i use the diffusion mode that gets me extremely excited and it's just super inspirational i'm a very tactile type of producer where i want to play with it i want to feel it i want to experience it and this is one of those plug-ins that i feel like i can just have a ton of fun i also love the dotted eighth note rhythm the most typically if i'm in like a 4-4 i love the offbeat delay that it gives anything beyond that anything longer than that it does start to kind of feel like it collides a little bit with like keyboard parts and vocals and things like that but of course you can also use a bus with some side chain to kind of tamper that down as well but there you go that's number 10. so there you have it those are the top 10 plugins that i use in my productions i would absolutely love to hear what things you would add to the list what things are you using which of these plugins do you already use i would just love to hear your thoughts on it drop a comment down below if you haven't already done so make sure you subscribe for more videos like this i'm going to be making another one where i'm going to actually go through my favorite sample libraries because i actually think sound libraries are where you get a lot more distance if you will in terms of the money that you spend on plugins sample libraries are going to give you more mileage in my opinion than effects plugins like these because if you don't have good sounds these effects really only do so much so i'll be coming out the video on that very soon but in the meantime you should check out the catalog my library of other videos that i have and we'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Nathan James Larsen

Views: 12,380

Keywords: my favorite plugins, best music production plugins, best plugins for music production, music production plugins, top ten plugins, top ten music production plugins, best plugins, native instruments plugins, soundtoys plugins, best plugins 2020, best producer plugins, best production plugins, logic pro x best plugins, best plugins for music producers, music producer plugins, what plugins should i buy, plugins you should buy, my top ten favorite plugins, nathan larsen, plugins

Id: B1RMx_x0Kz8

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020