My Favorite Free Plugins For Home Recordings

The hobby that takes up most of my time right now is music creation. I've been a musician for quite a while, but I'd never really learned about the recording aspect of it. However, as times goes on the ability of musicians to make high quality recordings at home increases exponentially. This is great news for hobbyists, and in my ponderings for what type of content I could submit to Steemit I thought this might be a good start!

A little background on me, I'm a singer-songwriter type. I play guitar and drums. That being said if you're looking for suggestions for electronic music I probably won't be very helpful. Most of my favorite plugins are for making recordings of real instruments and vocals sound better. I do have a few virtual instruments I dig though! I also use the world's most unpopular Daw, Mixcraft. Why? It's very straight forward, and super easy if all you want to do is track instruments/vocals. I'm very happy with it. I don't really have any recommendations for a free DAW, so if you've got one feel free to comment. Here's my list!

1.) Vaccum Sound Automatic Double Tracking Plugin Download ADT

Double tracking is the process of creating another very similar, but still different recording of either a vocal or an instrument. This is often used to make vocal tracks sound bigger or guitars wider. The best way to do this of course is to manually double track by making two recordings, but if you're not spot on as a vocalist or a player, and you have trouble perfectly recreating a performance this becomes difficult. The ADT plugin sounds really good, and it's a great alternative if you have trouble replicating the performance to make your own double tracks. This is by far my favorite plugin ever. The screen cap is from my DAW, and it shows all the options you can use, but you can also just use the preset for great results.

2.) VOS Slick EQ by Tokyo Dawn Download SlickEQ Plugin

This is the EQ I end up using the most. It has lots of nice presets, and a lot of customizable features to help you get a good sound. It also comes with a nice price tag of zero dollars. If you don't yet know what all the knobs on your EQ does yet there's a ton of presets to get you started in finding your sound.

3.) Brainworx Solo Download Brainworx Solo Plugin

This is a nifty little plugin that allows you to control stereo widening, and it will let you easily switch between stereo and mono. This is the "lite" versions of a paid plugin, but it has full functionality on its own. If you want more features you can of course upgrade to the shiny version. Widening makes for a cool addition on some tracks, but use it sparingly.

4.) Limiter 06 Download Limiter 06

Nice limiter with many options. Has some very useful defaults to get you started, but also all the bells and whistles if you need to custom dial in your sound. If you are a complete recording n00b (me) you can get away with using the defaults until you find something that sounds good.

5.) Azurite Chorus Plugin Download Azurite

While I do use the stock plugins sometimes depending on the sound I'm looking for this one has a lot more options. More often then not my chorus usage is subtle, but if I need something bigger or more unique I tend to use this plugin. Especially if it's something sitting in the background.

6.) Piano One Download Piano One

Finding a virtual piano that does not sound like crap is difficult. Finding one that is free is expert level. I'm not super experienced with playing virtual piano yet, but I really like this plugin. It has a ton of options to help give you a more realistic piano sound for your recordings. If you can't afford to spend a fortune on virtual instruments this is probably your best bet. You have the option to choose different pianos, the amount of reverb, whether the lid is open, closed or at half position; among other options.

7.) Crystal Synth Download Crystal Synth

This is probably not the best synth in the world, but as somebody with zero knowledge of this type of instrument it was the easiest one for me to use. I'm sure there are many other better synths, but they have so many features that the learning curve is steep if you're new to electronic music like I am. I found this program super friendly, and fun. You can hit breed, and it will create a totally unique new sound mixture for you to use which you can play with a keyboard. You can further edit these sounds or create your own new sounds as well to save as presets for later. Just sitting there randomizing sounds is amazingly entertaining. (They also have some kind of iPad app if you have one of those, but I've not tested this.)

8.) Tyrell 6 Synth Download Tyrell Plugin

This synth plugin is modeled after an analog synth, and it has really great sound quality. The learning curve is a little steeper than something like Crystal, but you can make some cool sounds with it. I'm learning to use this one, but it's slow going so far.

9.) Nasty DLA Download Nasty Plugin

Nasty DLA is kind of a multi-talented plugin. It gives you some really cool chorus and echo effects, and it also acts as a tape delay which can be a great addition to your tracks. Lots of features, but still easy enough for you to start benefiting from it immediately. This one is from Variety Of Sound, and they have a whole slew of other nice free plugins on the provided download page as well, but this is one of my favorites from them.

10.) Brainworx Cleansweep Download Cleansweep Plugin

My second favorite free brainworx plugin is cleansweep. This plugin does just what it says. It will clean up offending frequencies on your channels. That being said I've also used it as an effect before by using the "singing into a pillow" setting to turn an acoustic guitar track into an ambient bed. Pretty cool, and it added some depth to my track. Great free option if you need high and low pass filters for your DAW. This is another "lite" plugin, but it's fully functional without restrictions. The paid version just adds more features, but doesn't take anything from the free version which is always nice.

Okay, well that's my first contribution to Steemit! I've seen lots of artists here, but not a whole lot about recording. So, I thought I'd put something up. If you have some favorite free plugins you think would be helpful for people learning to record please mention them in the comments. There's a ton of great free software out there. I'm new to Steemit, but I plan to post more recording/music related content in the future if you'd like to follow me. Thanks for reading. : )