Hey, guys, how you doing? Today I want to share with you my 10 most essential free vst plugins
for music producers in 2022. Whether you are a new producer or you've been doing it a while all
of these plugins will be a great addition to your collection. I'm going to be covering some
instrument devices and I'm also going to be covering some effects devices too, including
synths, samplers, saturators, limiters and more. Besides, I'm also going to show you how i use them
and how you can use them to create a track from scratch. So, without further ado, let's hop into
the DAW and have a look at these top 10 free vst plugins. So, the first plugin is actually an array
of different instruments from native instruments it's called complete start and if you are just
starting out this is fantastic if you've got no synths if you've got no other instruments
and let's just have a look what's included you get seven free synthesizers you get nine
sampled instruments and you also get some effects thrown in as well so let's have a look at this and
where we might use it so i've got a drum beat at the moment that i programmed in and if you
want the samples i've used in this you can check out the edm tips creative suite below this video
and what we're going to do is add a bass line using one of these complete start
sounds and i'm going to use the trk01 bass that is from complete start
nice fm bass sound there so a pretty simple interface loads
of interesting presets to scroll through and try out
that's pretty cool
i like this one best though and that's just one of the instruments that you get free with this
complete start bundle okay on to the next free vst plugin that is from spitfire audio and it's called
spitfire labs and this is a fantastic plug-in for realistic sounding instruments but also some
more interesting experimental types this on the website shows you all of the free packs that you
can get and there are loads of interesting effects you can get in there loads of interesting sounds
there are also some normal sounds which i really like the sound of
such as the strings and the piano in particular
very cool so let's just add some strings into this track you can see i've programmed them in
in midi and i'm going to open up spitfire audio labs and then from the drop down you can choose
whichever ones you've got installed i'm going to use strings here and let's have a listen to it
turn off the compressor
you can control the reverb as well and you can control the release
of the strings too but they're really nice really lush sounding strings
and in the mix with the reverb and the compressor it sounds like this really lush
so definitely worth checking out spitfire apps next is vital this is kind of like a competitor
to serum but it's completely free so if you're wanting to create some interesting wave table
synths then this is a really really cool synth loads of presets included if you get the edm tips
creative toolkit we've also got some vital presets included in that so let's just have a look at how
we might use that if we go to vital here have a look at the i've just got a sustains note here
so in this instance i'm just using an interesting preset and you can see you've
got loads of lfo controls loads of envelope controls just like in serum but again as i
said it's free you've got all these effects as well so this is a really really powerful
synth definitely recommend it i think i've made a brass sound as well so if we go down to that
made a brassy bass sound yeah i love vital it's a fantastic synth
so if we just throw some effects on that and duck it add that into our track as well
nice okay next we are going to look at the tyrell number six
from yui and these are the guys that make diva which is an incredible synth but you know
it costs money but this one is a completely free synth that you can download now this is
more of an analog based synth than for example the vital it's got classic hardware oscillator
routing and a nice analog feel to it kind of like silent one in some ways but again it's
completely free so let's have a look at what you can do here so what i've done for this
synth is just again scroll through some of the cool presets i've added some stabs to the track
let's scroll through some of the presets so there are some quite interesting old-school
sounds in here but i'm going to go back to the sound that i had picked before
which brings me on to the next free synth i'm going to recommend and this is the last of our
synthesizers this is the surge now this certainly isn't as pretty looking as the others but it's an
incredibly powerful digital synth it's got way more rooting options than the ueteral
but it's going to give you more of a digital sound and give you lots of scope for experimental sound
design so let's just go and load a surgeon and load it into here onto our arpeggio
it's a bit small on this screen because it's high resolution so i'm just going to go into zoom zoom
it up to 150 maybe even a bit bit more 200 so we can see everything and let's just check it out
nice churchy you can see how many controls there are here you've actually got two scenes as well
that you can kind of meld into each other as well as all the effects as well this is a
really really powerful synth and yeah it's not as pretty as some of the others as i said but
it's definitely worth getting because you can do some really interesting sound design in this
nice let's add that in see how it sounds
add some reverb
remember guys these are all completely free these synths next we are going to go on to
the first of the effects plug-ins that i'm going to recommend the free ones
this is an absolute classic the soft tube saturation knob this adds harmonics to a sound
it's going to fatten it up make it pop through the mix a bit more so let's just apply this saturator
to some of our instruments i've grouped the kick and the bass together so i can process
them as one in a kick and bass bus and this is it as it stands let's just add some saturation
fatten it up i'll take the volume down afterwards though so it's easier to compare the effect
so it's just fattening it up a bit and we could do the same with the drums and
the shuffle as well so we go to our drums open up the saturation knob
just subtly flattening it up again with the shuffle add some saturation
so this is before the saturation
so just fattening it up a little bit
nice the next free plugin i recommend is amazing it's from valhalla who make fantastic
reverbs anyway but they've got a couple of free ones that you can download as well and
valhalla's supermassive is one of them this can create some really interesting
creative reverb and delay type effect so if we go back to the stabs that we looked at that i
created with the tyrell n6 earlier a bit boring let's add one of these valhalla supermassives
nice like instant nice instant yes and you can just scroll through the presets
that's cool so with everything
it's sounding pretty nice now for this vital here
i'm just going to add another one of these valhalla supermassives
just to richen the sound up a bit make it more interesting that's cool and now let's go on to
the next free effects plugin that is pancake by cable guys now if you've got shaper box these are
the guys that make shaper box they've absolutely nailed the game when it comes to being able to
modulate sounds after you've created them and the pancake is really working with panning and in the
stereo field as you would expect but you can get some pretty interesting sounds that are just going
to create more interest and movement to your music so if we listen to our arp again our arpeggio
and then just throw on one of these pancakes and then we can just go through some of these
presets and you can hear it panning left and right you can speed it up you can change
the mix so that's not being affected at all let's listen to some of the more extreme ones
so it just adds more interest more movement to that sound
we'll add one to these stamps too
nice next we're going to look at a really useful metering tool this is the julian loudness meter
and when you're mastering and you want to get a comparably loud mix to your reference tracks this
is an incredible tool so let's just get rid of all this stuff we are going to go to the
mastering channel and i've just put one on the end of the chain let's open it up see what's going on
now again it's really useful you can just resize the window but what we're
looking for here is the integrated lofts value predominantly and we're
also looking for the true peak max so at the moment this is what we're doing at -17
and then when you're mastering your track you can throw one of these julian loudness meters
on your reference track and then you can try and get a comparable likeness
like for like with the same genre of music but this takes me on nicely to the last plugin i'm
going to recommend before the bonus and that is this loudmax mastering limiter so one of
the things that i think lets abelson down is the limiter you can't get it that loud
without it kind of distorting so what i've done is i've thrown a limiter on i've bumped it up by
11db and then i've put a utility plug in to then take it down by 5db and i'll show you the reason
why at the moment on our master channel we're hitting about -5 p so if we put a limiter on
and we don't put this utility plug in it's going to be peaking at zero
and we want to hear what effect the limit is actually having so i'm just ducking down that
volume again so this is the ableton limiter at the moment that's with no limiter ableton limiter
now with the loud max i've done plus 11 as well
and then ducked it down and let's just compare the two
so this is the loud max this just clearer
the free transients are coming the transients are coming through
and that's the ableton limiter and it's just kind of crushing it and mashing it a bit
more so in terms of three limiters this loudmax is incredible definitely worth getting so they're
pretty much my 10 plugins now there is a bonus one and the reason it is a bonus free
plugin is because the graphical user interface doesn't really work properly in ableton anymore
you can still access the controls and that is the classic camel crusher i'll put links to all
these below these as well guys so with the camera crusher if you open it up in ableton you can see
it's just a black box you can't really use it you can press this little button here
and then you can access all of the controls within it and this is just a saturator and a
filter and a compressor all in one it's a really really great plug-in so if we add it to our base
you can add some really nasty or nice distortion and a quick bonus tip is if you use the vst
version instead of the au version if you're on a mac you can use the vst merge version on a pc or a
mac then you can actually still access the presets in this drop down menu which you can't do with the
au anyway there you go guys they are my top 10 free vst plugins that i recommend checking out in
2022 now the caveat is just grabbing plugins isn't going to make your music sound better you have to
know exactly how to use them in what order and to what degree and i've actually put together some
free training that's going to show you exactly how to do that it's my radio ready workshop this
workshop has now helped thousands of bedroom music producers just like you get their music
finished and get it to a professional standard whereby it can be released on some of the world's
biggest record labels so if you want to know how to use your plugins properly and get really truly
professional sounding music and check it out below this video if you enjoy this video also
please share it with your friends hit like and subscribe to my channel for more music production
tips each and every week until next time thanks for watching cheers and happy producing you