Keyboards VST?

littlebadboy

Roadie
Messages
115
On a budget, would anyone know a good keyboards VST? I probably just need one with strings, pads, and piano. Just the basics. Windows rig.
 
I'm using a few I've picked up over the years, the one that gets the most use is East West's Play, which I have on a subscription service that gives you access to all their libraries. https://www.soundsonline.com/ I think it's $20 a month.

It's really, REALLY convenient and I really dig the sounds available, it'd cost me several grand to buy the libraries outright. I think they're offering a 1-year membership to the subscription service for a flat $179 right now. I first came across them stumbling on a video oh their phrase trainer, you can program words into the choir stuff and with some finesse, have them say what you want. It's tricky though, it's all phonetic and requires some guess work, but it's a lot cheaper than paying for a choir and a studio!

They've got a bunch of world instruments that are AWESOME, instruments I've never even heard of that are specific to certain regions. Steven Wilson's Ghost library is a really good one, too. I use that one whenever I'm ripping off Floyd.

Edit- I just went and checked to see if there were any new libraries as I haven't checked it out in about a year; they have a new Opus engine that organizes all the libraries you have loaded and this is pretty impressive, it allows more tweaking of the libraries in a way that's really user intuitive, IE- adding an arppegiator to something and being able to program the notes and pattern of the arppegiations within a couple clicks. Full mapping of a MIDI controller, routed to different instances of the libraries and a whole lot more. I'm downloading it now because this is a massive improvement on what was existing. It's like a UI for UI's.

 
Last edited:
You ever try any of the Toontrack plug ins for keys and such, @DrewJD82

Can't say I have, I suck pretty hard when it comes to keys so I'll use a new song as an opportunity to get gud, but it's slow going because I've yet to catch the "I really want to learn how to play piano" bug, so I'll practice something while I'm writing it so I can record it, then not touch the MIDI keyboard again for 6 months. I had to write the notes names on the keys because I can't even memorize that. :rofl
 
I was mainly curious about the quality of other Toontrack VSTs... since their drum softwarre is so well regarded.
 
Cool! :beer


I am considering just sticking with one provider for all my plug in needs so I don't have to learn
more than my meager abilities already limit me to. ;)
 
If whatever is already in your DAW isn’t cutting it, look into EZ Keys. That may work for you.
 
Thanks, everyone! I was going to move on from my beginner DAW (Magic Music Maker) which had tons of VST plugins to a more advanced one like Reaper or Tracktion. I didn't know that they would come with one as the above mentioned.

Anyways... I got Submission Audio's EuroBass and will be looking at the synths that my new DAW has to offer.
 
Back
Top