cool free shit

  • izotope has been one of my favorites for almost a decade now. here’s their free shit.

    • remember back in 2016-2017 when most of my music had “that one part where the instrumental cuts to a (toy) piano solo with a record player effect on it”? here you go, baby.

  • freakshow industries has general audio-warping plugins that make me feel fucking awful /pos. paying for them is recommended by ultimately optional.

  • ewan bristow makes plugins that also make me feel awful /pos. most of them are free, although the paid ones don’t go above $15. you’ll need plugdata for these btw.

  • maim is a distortion plugin that specifically works with MP3 compression artifacts. their drive knob is way too powerful for being just one knob.

  • unplugred has a plugin that pisses on your track.

  • fresh air sprinkles some glitter on your tracks. be careful with it, though; add too much glitter and you’ll start finding that shit in places you don’t even know about yet.

  • labs has a bunch of free instruments that are cool. there’s free stuff and there’s stuff you can only get through a subscription. if you want just the free stuff, click “start free trial” and look for the tiiiiiiiiny white text at the bottom of the page that says “continue without subscribing.”

  • here’s that one screaming chicken toy (kontakt). click “こちら” to download.

  • [gasps] piano

  • here’s music theory basics in half an hour. if you wanna go more in-depth with fundamentals, here’s a free online course.

cool not so free shit

  • and here’s izotope’s not free shit, although it does include the free shit if you scroll down enough.

    • i heavily recommend ozone - ($49, $199 or $399 for different quantities of stuff-included). it’s an all-in-one general mixing/mastering plugin, which basically means it has a bunch of the basics in one window. it also lets you use individual basics on their own. very nice.

  • arcade is unfortunately a subscription service ($10/month), but i think it’s worth it for the massive library of samplers it gives you. sharing this one feels a bit vulnerable; almost intimate. it reveals how lazy i’ve gotten with songwriting in recent years. p-please, be gentle…

  • here’s the didgeridoo i used in honey i’m home. ($39 - kontakt)

  • here’s some church bells. carillon, specifically. (€48.28 - kontakt)

    • if you’ve never heard carillon before, please listen. it’s basically a piano if a piano was church bells. one of my favorite instruments.

  • here’s a fucked up piano. ($99.95)

  • dada life is good. sausage fattener ($39) is one of my “i use this in literally every master” plugins. i can’t link the plugin individually.

  • you’ve heard excessive use of glitch2 (€49.95) in my music post-2018.

  • have you ever wanted to pay an exorbitant amount of money just to make your music sound worse? boy, do i have the plugin just for you. (€477.95)

    • this is what i used for the VHS audio effect on in iolite.

  • soothe2 ($199) casts calm emotions on your track.

  • if you have kontakt, any of their session guitarist/bassist ones are good for when you’re too lazy to write your own pattern and don’t particularly care what it sounds like.

(prices are in USD unless specified otherwise)