The Best FREE Plugins EVER!

i've been on a mission on this channel to keep you updated with the best free plugins for music production but what about the best of the best let's take a look at the best free plugins ever [Music] hi folks i'm mike and i hope you will yes we're going to be looking at the best free plugins ever in my opinion but we're not going to do it in the usual sense of a top five or a top ten they really can't be compared in that way because they're all so different however what i'm going to do is try and demonstrate all of these plugins in one piece of music which i'm going to create through the course of this video not so easy but i got there now there's different types of plugins here in terms of these instrument plugins and there's effects plugins so at the beginning of the video it's mostly going to be about instrument plugins because that's when i'm creating the piece of music then we'll do effects towards the end when we're finishing off with a little bit of a mix let's get started with my favorite free drums we're actually kind of sport for choice for free drum plugins but i think that this one is the very best in terms of versatility this is steven slate drums five you get this player and then you get a free rocket um deluxe too and although it's categorized as a rock kit like i say i think it's really really versatile you can play it rather lightly the velocity is quite good on it so for example with the snare here just playing that from the keyboard there you can feel that i've got a reasonable amount of control there over the velocity and also there's some nice variations of the sounds of the drums if we go to the edit page here for example and i'll just click on a tom here you can see there's some articulations with each drum so this one's got the main tom sound and then you've got the the rim click yes you've got those two variations not a big deal handy but what if we go to something like this snare click on the snare you can see there's a lot of variations on the snare yeah i find that really really handy and the fact you can adjust the volume of each of those articulations by the way they're all of course available on different keys on your keyboard i'm moving along then to something like the hi-hat this is really cool you go to the hi-hat you've got the closed sound and then you've got different um amounts of open sounding hats as well so let's listen to this you can gradually make that open up i find that very very useful especially where when you're transitioning say from a verse through to a chorus and you gradually have the hi-hat opening up can sound really really natural now you also have other controls over things like the velocity curve which you've got over here um attack decays the same release so that you can really you've got an envelope there to change this the sound that can be very very useful indeed and you've also got the ability to mix over here now it's got an in-built mixer which you can see here but you can also output each of these drums and two different channels in the console in your main door i find that really handy when i'm deep in the mixing process i don't really want to go into plugins so you can just adjust the volume of each of the drums from there that's very very handy indeed we do have the ability to remap the drums so if you're used to the drums being on different keys from a different plugin you can remap them there and we've also got some grooves as well i've got the uh the pop straight one loaded up here we'll just listen to that briefly [Music] so in my demo piece of music that i'm making um it sounds like it's a pretty simple drum part [Music] so that's our drum part what would you want to add to drums well bass of course let's have a look at our bass guitar whereas we're kind of sport for choice for drum plugins i don't think that's the case with electric bass guitar in my opinion this one just totally outshines any of the competition this is the ample base p2 light from ample sound it's based on a precision bass guitar and i just love the basic sound if you'll excuse the puns sounds like this i just love those sort of buzzy sounds and things of course there's a bunch of articulations you can do muting and you can do slides and hammers and all that kind of stuff i'm not going to be going through it today because i've covered it in enough videos already i'm just going to be using this basic guitar sound with the drums with a very simple piece sounding like this [Music] you get the idea let's move on to acoustic guitar i'm afraid it's a no-brainer again in terms of the acoustic guitar this is ample sound again with ample guitar m2 light the light version of the martin guitar let's just have a listen [Music] just a really nice sounding acoustic guitar and particularly good with arpeggios like i was doing there of course again like the bass guitar there's lots of variations in sound that you get with these key switches down here and effects and all that kind of good stuff i'm not going to be going through that but i will say that for this particular piece i'm using this feature this is the doubler okay if i just switch that on and you have a listen again to that first chord it's mimicking a technique which we'd often use in recording where we do sort of double up guitars and it gives them a nice wide stereo feel so how does it sound in the piece so far [Music] [Music] you get the idea let's move on to our next instrument which is piano oh by the way if you are finding this video useful could you go ahead and hit the like button for me do it right away so that you don't forget if you're not enjoying this video hit the dislike button twice yeah i know never gets old and if you do like this kind of content make sure you subscribe and ring the bell so that you're notified about my other videos now back to this video there's actually a lot of really good free piano plugins out there and some of you may disagree with me that this is the best one and i think that's just a matter of taste to be honest with you this is my favorite one it's the monastery grand library from melta production and you can use this free library from within the free version of m sound factory from melda production now it's got a rather thick sound to it let's just have a quick listen [Music] which may not be to everyone's taste but that's what i want for this piece of music particularly now if i play it with all of the other instruments so far you're not easily going to hear it because i've got it kind of low in the mix but it's there to sort of um help the acoustic guitar along with a slight variation on the arpeggio let's just have a quick listen to it by itself so that you can clearly hear it and then we'll play it with everything else so very simple as you can hear and with everything else [Music] now we're just going to step away from virtual instruments for a moment because there is an effects plugin which i quickly want to show you now i'm not only using virtual instruments in this piece of music i'm also using some electric guitar and for the amp sim i've chosen amplitube cs now i actually have the full version of amplitube but for this demo i've committed to using only the features which are in cs that's the free version okay now that comes with 41 models of gear including 10 stomp boxes effects and 5 amps with matching cabs now with this sort of cleanish sounding rhythm guitar that i've got loaded up here i'm using this amplitube american tube clean sound i'm using this with this 4x10 open vintage cabinet which you do get with the cs version also this pedal just one of the pedals this overdrive pedal and i've used a couple of effects there as well i've also got an overdriven guitar for the lead part in there as well which has got a slight variation on that sound but first of all let's just have a listen to the two lead up sorry rhythm guitars by themselves i've recorded them for left and right speakers done a bit of doubling let's just have a quick listen to that [Music] so you get the idea there and as i say i've also got some um lead guitar in there as well so let's have a listen to what we've got so far with the rhythm and the lead guitar as well you can hear the rest of that later but you're getting the idea now now that really helps i mean apart from having a lead part there the rhythm guitars just help to sort of thicken things up in the rhythm section that's why i've got them there it's crazy i have to run through this really quickly we don't have enough time but this is absolutely massive this is the bbc symphony orchestra discovery edition from spitfire audio it's a complete orchestra including all of the different string sections here um all of the woodwind section here the brass and all of your other different types of instruments as well and they've all got different articulations with them now the little catch to this is you need to sign up first and then they'll send you the link to get it for free 14 days after sign up if you can't wait that long then you can actually buy i think it's around about 50 bucks or so but it does sound absolutely wonderful especially when you consider that you can get it for free now i'm using it in a really simple way in our piece i'm just using violins cello and the base strings for a sort of a stompy section underneath everything else sounds like this very simple as you can hear and with everything else you can sort of barely hear it but it has a little bit of thickness in there i'm really not doing it justice you could write whole sort of orchestral pieces on this and they can sound great if you're prepared to spend the time with it so definitely get this one if you know what's good for you and you need some strings in your pieces of music or any other orchestral instruments if you need just one free synthesizer then i would say this is definitely this is vital very well known in the synth community and very well regarded there's so much you can do with it if you're into programming since there's lots you can do here as you can probably guess from the interface but if you're not into that and you just want some great sort of presets for a synth things like pads and all kinds of different things in there anyway then this is fantastic now i'm just going to play a very small selection of what's available here okay because there's loads of presets you get with the free version let's just go through five or six of them cinema bells is the first one [Music] you get an idea of the complexity of sound you can get there moving on from there dispersed grit [Music] nice a lovely bass sound there easy mallet hmm could be useful moving on from there solomon or salomon oh yeah moving on from there snow crash it's amazing you get this for free isn't it i mean i'm not using any of these in the actual piece i'm not going to spoil it for you okay i'll leave it till the end of the video when you hear the final demo i've just used it in the intro we'll leave it till then so that's all of the instrumentation what about the effects well i don't use an awful lot of different effects on my productions but in terms of free ones i only use a lot of effects from this one company tokyo dawn records i've got one on the screen here it's one of their compressors called monotok now i've used this on some of the instruments individually especially on some individual drums just to control them a little um but i'm also using it on the master bus as well it's just a straightforward compressor really it's got all the controls you would need it's got threshold here it's got attack release makeup gain ratio um you've also got a high pass filter up here as well and a soft knee control as well and you've got this odd sort of alpha beta sigma control in here which creates some sort of variations in the way the attack and release sort of behave that's a sort of very quick overview of but it's very useful indeed now the next one i want to draw your attention to is called nova this is really really handy this is their eq now um it hasn't got that many bands it's got four there i generally find that's enough for most things unless i'm being particularly surgical it's also got a high and a low pass filter as well but what i really love about this is when you quickly want to do some dynamic eq that's available here as well so i could select a node like this and just click and start use adjusting the threshold what's going to happen there is um you're going to actually start to compress those frequencies as they kind of get a little bit out of control if you like or you can actually expand them as well but if i just play some music just look at that band there you can see it's moving up and down so it's not sort of maintaining um that eq setting at a constant level it's adjusting it depending on the signal that it's getting in that frequency range that's a very quick explanation of dynamic eq but i can promise you as you get further into mixing it can be a very very useful feature indeed it's just incredible that it's available in this free plug-in this is nova from tokyo dawn records moving on to another one by tokyo dawn records we have this one katelnikov now this is another compressor but this is uh sort of specially made for mastering or for sort of buses so i'm actually using this one i believe let me have a quick look i'm using this one on my master bus and i'm using it a little bit on my drums as well my drum bust that is so it's sort of tailored towards that kind of thing but i think you can actually use it um for other compression tasks as well what i really like about i mean it's got loads and loads of features but what i really like about it is it's got a couple of different ways of treating release you can base it upon peak values or on rms values sort of the average signal i find that is really nice for mastering compression and you can sort of use a combination of the two you can find that on many of my other videos look them up now that is the third one what i've got here from tokyo dawn records i think they've actually got some other free plugins as well i'm probably not using here i would suggest head on over to their website check the link for these ones in the description and just download all of them i mean they're beautifully implemented i think they've got great uis but they sound fantastic as well so those are the first three plugins that i'm using what are the next ones now i've been using a lot of transparent plugins so far there's not a lot of color and saturation which has been added you often can add saturation as a byproduct of plugins especially of course things like tape saturation from tape plugins and also compression is very commonly going to add some um some saturation and also sometimes eqs and things like that as well i haven't added anything so far from the plug-ins i've been using so i'm using this plug-in gsat plus now this is fairly new to my collection and i haven't had it in many videos maybe just one because it's a fairly new plugin but i've been very impressed with it so far really easy to use as well you just pop it in the track where you want to use it now that could be individual tracks or as i'm using it on the master bus you could of course use it on other buses as well and then you just switch on saturation here you've got some different modes but most of us are going to use stereo here then you can add odd and even harmonics now i'm keeping it fairly smooth sounding here so i'm just using all odd harmonics and then you can add some different stages there as well it's even got over sampling in there just to refine the sound somewhat there now this is a little byproduct for this the metering is great i really like the metering here and there's lots of options for that metering i could potentially just use this plug-in for meterings without actually add metering without actually adding any saturation but to be quite honest with you if i don't want to use this style of metering the one that i would go to is definitely span from voxengo this is really a bit of a classic to be honest with you many many people use this including me i use a lot for gain staging when i really want some big meters to look at and i want some different ways of monitoring so i may want to um be monitoring a peak or maybe wanting to monitor the sort of average level with sort of different rms type ways of metering lofts etc that kind of thing so use it for that but you may want to keep an eye on certain frequencies as well just play the track and you can see it in action as well as the sort of main uh the sort of default view there that you can see there's a bunch of other different ways of visualizing here um you know depending on what your needs are at the time it's just an overall kind of swiss army knife for metering i love it very much so that is spanned from voxingo now one of the things that i want to do and we're kind of going to be almost talking about only the mastering from now on is a couple of plugins which i use at this stage the first one is for some imaging now this is from uh isotope and this is image two they had a previous version of this but i think around about a year or so ago now they've updated it to version two it's very straightforward to use it's not overly sophisticated or overly precise you have to be a little bit careful with imaging plugins sometimes but most of the time i find it can just add a nice bit of width to our piece of music so i have popped it in the master bus therefore i've got it up rather high at the moment i'd probably use it in a slightly more time way down here of course they do have commercial versions of this plugin which give you control over different frequency bands so this is over the whole spectrum but it is nonetheless quite a handy plug-in to have around now probably the final plug-in that's going to be in your chain well probably your metering is always going to be the final plug-in but the final plug-in which actually changes the sound at all would be a limiter of some kind now this is really new to my collection in terms of a free limiter um this is called unlimited i'm trying to think who made oh sonic anomalies right there at the top i'll put a link for that in the description this is really worth getting hold of great for sort of modern metering and where you're going to care about your loves of course most of the time you'll be looking at around about minus 14 here for our streaming maybe up to -11 for some things so it's you could do lots of different things with this but the basic use of it is to as i say have it in its limiter mode down here you're going to play your song and keep an eye on the metering here you can adjust your threshold you can hear it again louder there and you would be looking at your whole song and just for example i would be using it just to get that lust value right most of the time also you've got this um for controlling um the sort of peak i would often have true peaks switched on and usually i'm looking at around about -1 there so once you've got that set um then nothing's going to go over that um nice interface by the way i have to say i really like this one i haven't covered this in any other videos but um i was looking out for one and this just really fits the bill in terms of the final plug-in that you're going to use to get your music to really healthy levels before you send it out to the world now that's all of the plugins how does everything sound together let's have a listen to the demo [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] i bet there's some of you who disagree with my picks for the best free plugins ever that's okay we can disagree and still be friends let me know about it in the comments down below which plugins did i miss that you find invaluable and can't do without now if you do happen to agree with my picks i want to know from you what's the very best plugin which one could you absolutely not do without love to hear from you about that now do check the links in the description down below for all of the plugins i've mentioned in this video and while you're there check out my link for patreon.com where if this is one dollar per month you can help me help you by making more videos like this i'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Creative Sauce

Views: 24,343

Rating: 4.9682837 out of 5

Keywords: The Best FREE Plugins EVER!, The Best FREE VST Plugins EVER, The Best FREE VST Plugins 2021, The Best FREE Plugins 2021, free plugins, best free plugins, free vst plugins, best free vst, free vst, top free vst, vst plugin free, vst, vst plugin, best free vsts, top 5 plugins, best free vst 2020, best free vst 2021, free vst 2020, free vst 2021, best free plugins 2021, best free plugins 2020, plugins, best free vst plugins, free vsts, best vst plugins, vst plugins, free, 2021

Id: FnF13o1fk5U

Length: 23min 40sec (1420 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/CreativeSauce2B]

Hi folks! What are the best FREE plugins ever, and how did I use them all in ONE piece of music?