It’s been a rough year for everyone. Fortunately, producers have never run out of new free plugins to try and to keep us creating. This month, we have heard of quite a few exceptional ones. Here are five fresh plugins to spice up your projects.
Pendulate by Eventide
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Newfangled Audio’s latest free plugin is Pendulate, a unique monosynth that uses a novel oscillator technology. With a design that is supposedly based on the physics of a double pendulum, Pendulate doesn’t just capitalize on mere gimmicky. It delivers a powerful ensemble of sounds that one doesn’t usually find in a free plugin.
Best Features & Specs
Pendulum is powered by a so-called ‘chaotic oscillator.’ This oscillator has three parameters: chaos amount, chaos shape, and animate. This oscillator has two subs to further thicken the sound.
The pendulum mechanism implies that these parameters work in unison. This relationship is shown in a double pendulum visualization. This is an interesting feature that deviates from straightforward tone-generating- oscillator designs. On top of that, there is a wavefolder and a low pass gate to further shape the tone.
Bottom-line
There are already a lot of things we can say about Pendulate’s oscillator design, but what makes Pendulate special is the quality and variety of the sounds it can create. It can produce everything from aggressive basses, moody pads, to multi-layered arpeggios.
Tuxedo by Reflekt Audio
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Realistic-sounding piano plugins are rather hard to come by considering how difficult it is to sample pianos or to replicate them with pure synthesis. This is why free piano plugins such as Tuxedo by Reflekt Audio will always be welcome.
Best Features & Specs
Tuxedo calls itself a ‘grand hall piano.’ This tells us this plugin’s piano sound may sound more reverb-y than expected. Surprisingly though, the quality of the sound is really impressive. Moreover, the reverb level can be manipulated according to your taste. If used with a great reverb such as Mutant which we featured in our list of the best VST plugins of the year, Tuxedo’s can sound massive.
Tuxedo has a simple interface that makes it easy to plop into a channel without overloading your machine. Given how resource-hungry some piano plugins can be, this simplicity is a huge plus point.
Bottom-line
Tuxedo is straight-forward and simple, but it doesn’t compromise in terms of sound quality. Its piano samples are a lot better than many of the other free piano plugins out there. If you are in search of a decent piano plugin, this may be among the best free VSTs you can get your hands on.
Inspire by Soundpiece
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Soundpiece’s Inspire does exactly what its name implies: it is made to inspire producers in composing. Finding yourself out of ideas? Inspire may lend you a hand.
Best Features & Specs
Inspire has several features, all for composition purposes. You can make it to generate original chord progressions and melodies, change up your rhythm, and even extend a song by producing a variation of an already written part.
Inspire works primarily through a form of AI. It takes a look at your composition (if you’ve already written a few parts) and suggests possible paths to develop your ideas.
Bottom-line
Composition can be a pain especially if you are not well-versed in music theory. Inspire is made precisely for people who need some help on this side of music production.
Healing Lite by Quiet Music
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Healing Lite is made up of timbres and instruments which are usually used for sound baths and spiritual/healingsessions. This includes eight pads from medium and large Tibetan singing bowls and two-layered rainsticks and Tibetan tingsha. These unique sounds have been impressively sampled and easy to control.
Best Features & Specs
What strikes us the most regarding Healing Lite is the quality of samples. They really sound excellent and detailed. If you use it something Celemony Melodyne’s Harmonizer which is part of our list of the best mixing plugins, Healing Lite can be phenomenal.
Singing bowls are particularly hard to sample because they have rich harmonics which can be quite difficult to translate digitally. Healing Lite managed to capture these subtleties through mere gain control, making the plugin incredibly easy to use.
Bottom-line
Despite its apparent simplicity, Healing Lite is complex sound-wise. It allows users to have some level of control over these usually unwieldy sounds. It’s also intuitive and easy to use. It is one of the best free plugins on these kinds of instruments.
Speedrum Lite by Apisonic Labs
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Speedrum Lite by Apisonic Labs is a drum/percussion sampler that allows users to easily create percussion patterns. It has a large collection of high-quality drum and percussion samples as well as 2-16 stereo outputs.
Best Features & Specs
Speedrum Lite’s best feature is definitely its sample collection. The quality of the samples on this plugin can rival the best hardware percussion samplers out there.
Aside from the basic parameter controls such as Attach-Hold-Decay, Speedrum also has Low and High Pass filters. The drag and drop functionality sample loading also makes it easy to use your own samples.
Bottom-line
If you need a great-sounding drum sampler, Speedrum Lite’s collection is more than enough to satisfy your production’s needs. The plugin has a large enough collection to merit being named as one of the best new free VSTs of the year.
