i've never made a reggae style song before but in this video i'm going to show you my first
attempt at it and i'm only using free vst plugins including two free vst instruments from afroplug
and those are the afroplugin drum vst and afro keyz lite instrument plus i'm using a bunch of
other free vst effects and some free sounds i'm zane welcome to audio tech tv where it's my goal
to help you conquer the tech so you can unleash your creative beast by providing easy to follow
audio tech tips tutorials and reviews now i've included links down in the description to all
of the free plugins that i'm using in this video so you can grab them for yourself if you want to
and this video is not sponsored it's just something i wanted to do now let's jump into
the project so you can see what i've got going on as you can see this is a pretty simple project i
haven't gotten too crazy with it yet i have four instances here of the afro keyz plugin
and then three instances of the afroplugin drum vst plus i have this vocal track here where i got
the vocals from loopcloud 6 for free and i'll get more into that a little bit later
and then there's a backing vocal track i'll get into plus this reverb track here which i have a
bunch of the instruments sent into there including the vocals so i'm just going to play it back so
you can have a listen to what it sounds like and then we'll get into the different parts of it
all right now let's walk through the instruments that i'm using i have the free version of
afro keyz lite here and the free version includes six different instrument presets so you can see i
have six here if you were to get the paid version i think you get 40 instrument presets with that
and it's only 14 bucks so it might be worth it for you if this is the type of music that you're going
to be making and this first instance here is the dancehall kalimba preset
so i'm just going to solo it so you can hear what it sounds like and i'll play it here because this
is the main part and then it changes a little bit at this part so you can hear the change
all right so that's very basic as you can hear now we'll go to the second instance of afro keyz lite
and i have the afrobeats marimba preset in there and this is what this one sounds like
again pretty basic and we'll move on to the third instance right here and this is the rnb
synth and this one i'm using kind of as my base instrument so let's hear what this sounds like
all right it gives a nice bass sound and we'll move on to the next instance which is this one
here and it only comes in during this kind of chorus part here and this is what it sounds like
just like a horn type of sound it's the reggaeton pad preset and that's it for the afro keys light
instrument now before i get into the afroplugin drum vst i just want to ask if you're enjoying
this video so far and getting some value out of it can you please give it a thumbs up maybe even
subscribe to the channel it really helps me out and i appreciate it so much now let's get back
into the project all right so the first instance of the afro plug-in drum vst
is my main drum beat and you can see i'm using the lo-fi preset but there are a
bunch of other presets in here that i can use and i do use those on the other instances so
let's just listen to what the main drum beat sounds like it's got a nice beat to it nice
flow to it i really like the sound of that and you can see on here i also have a pultec style eq
and this kind of just gives it a little added thump then i have this buster compressor which
is a bus compressor and it kind of just controls everything gives me a little more
control over everything once it's got that thump in there and like i said all of the
plugins that i'm using are absolutely free and they're linked down in the description so now
let's move on to the second instance of the afro plug drum vst for this i have this zouk compas
preset i'm sure i'm pronouncing that incorrectly but let's just listen to what that sounds like
you can hear i have it just going off at the
end of each section it's just a simple little ticking sound
that's it and then for the third instance of the afroplugin drum vst i'm using the afro
beats preset and this is just to reinforce the kick drum so i'll show you what the
midi pattern looks like on this one you can see it's just the kick drum nothing else in there
i just wanted to make it thump a little more so i also added the cymatics diablo light plugin at the
end
and that's it for all of the instruments in this song now let's look at the vocals that i got here
and we'll just solo those and we'll listen to them like over here we'll just give it a lesson here
and i got this vocal part from loopcloud if you don't have loopcloud yet you can start your
first month for free and they give you a bunch of points so you can use those points and grab a ton
of samples during that month and they're yours to keep forever they're royalty free so you can
use them in whatever projects you want and plus there's already some other free loops and samples
on there that you can download at any time so even if you don't continue with your membership you can
still continue using the program and continue to get free downloads from there so i'll show you
how i did this in there i just went to genres and then i went to reggae over here and i chose dub
and then i went to instruments and i went over to vocal and i wanted a male vocal so i'll clicked on
that and you can see we have dub and male vocal as two tags that we're searching for here now i
also wanted to kind of limit it to the bpm that i was using for my song so if i go over here and
bring this down i put it to maximum of 90 bpm and you can see all of the results that i got in here
and it might be this one even i'm not sure i'll just play it ready for the future not like them
no that's not it but it's another good one and you can just listen to whatever one you want
you preview them in here if you like them you can click buy and even if it's a free one it will say
zero points there or free and you can buy it and then you can drag it into your project it's that
easy you just drag it from here into the project and that's how i got the vocal for this track
and you'll also notice on the vocal i have the tdr nova effect on here it's a free eq effect and i'm
just rolling off some of the low end so it's not muddying up the mix at all and then i'm raising
some of the highs to give it some nice airiness and after that i have the colin which is i think
an la-3a style compressor it's a free compressor it sounds decent on here i'll play it with
and without a doubt just kind of flattens it out a little bit and gives it a little more control
and also play this with and without the tdr nova zone of the best quality at the top and see we
you can really hear that airiness that it brings into there you might be able to notice the base
that's rolled off but that's going to show up a little more in the overall mix now after the
main vocal i have this backing vocal part here and it's the same thing in both backing box one
and two i just have one hard panned left and the other one hard panned right and all it is
is just this little piece from the main vocal that i snipped out and put it throughout the
song just add a little more interest so this is what it sounds like it's that little huh
so it's just a little huh adds some interest to the song that's about it and you can see i also
have tdr nova on the backing vocals again rolling off some of the low end and bring up the airiness
now let's get into the reverb that i have going on here you can see i have the vocals the drums
the bass keys i have the second instance of afro keyz going in there and i have tdr nova on there
just again getting rid of some of the bassiness and also some of the highs i don't really want
this muddying up the mix so i just took out some frequencies to get it to sit a little better in
the mix i just want that effect in there and then i have tal dub 3 which is a delay style effect
and i have the devil spring reverb from lost in 70s i just put it to the dub classic 2 preset and
i adjusted some of these things in here and let's listen to what it sounds like just on the vocals
of this session my song in a category
it just adds that sort of classic reggae spring reverb sound and having all of
these other instruments kind of fed into it kind of puts everything into the same
space so you can hear with the drum i'll just solo the drum
and the reverb it's pretty subtle but it does put it in the same space
it just kind of adds another little sound in there that puts it in the same space with
the other things and then i have one more thing going on in this song it is the buster compressor
it's down on the master track here and this just kind of glues everything together
and it kind of brings that vocal a little more forward
but also keeping the bassy sounds intact so let's just listen to what this sounds like
now if you want 30 more free vst plugins click up here
or click down here to see what youtube recommends if you like this video please
give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this thank
you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon