Piano/Synth/Strings/DM Plugins

[Whizzinby]

Armed with a midi keyboard I started the free trial with Roland Cloud, the ultimate turbo championship version or some shit. So far… friggin ace. Zenology has a bunch of awesome stuff, and ive been screwing around with the various Juno and Jupiter models. I’m hooked on the drum machines atm like crack. Have a few more weeks to determine if I’ll subscribe to it.

Anyways, not being to familiar with this world, what are some other good plugins and software to eventually look at?

Any specific classic presets to key in on for the popular synths? Looks like most of the Roland models have the original presets. (I think?)

 

[Devin]

Two that I've been loving the hell out of recently are Native Instruments Tines Duo and Claire

Shockingly realistic sounding


They just put out a Reeds Duo that I feel obligated to get too


Here's the first lil test recording i did with Tines Duo:

 

[Whizzinby]

Two that I've been loving the hell out of recently are Native Instruments Tines Duo and Claire

Shockingly realistic sounding


They just put out a Reeds Duo that I feel obligated to get too


Here's the first lil test recording i did with Tines Duo:

Man I love electric piano. Dope

I’m watching the Claire demo, gawd damn…

I fear this rabbit hole

 

[Whizzinby]

@Devin

Have you tried the Noire plugin? I stumbled on that watching more Claire demos and the particle effects sound kind of awesome. Looks like Claire has that too?

I’m sitting on go if those dudes ever put Claire or Noire on sale. I’m using the Roland Earth pianos since they come with my Cloud bundle, but they don’t wow me like their synth stuff.

 

[Whizzinby]

I started the demo of Twin 3 by FabFilter. Sounds good. Very clean, almost produced. A handful of presets are excellent, but I think the synth stuff in Roland Cloud (Juno, Jupiter, Zen) might be better, or just have more instant vibe. I’ll keep kicking the tires on it, it’s cool that Fab does 30 day demos.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Arturia bundle just covers so much ground. Basically everything they make is great. Check used sites for older versions where you’ll get 95% of the available synths for a much bigger discount.

U-he stuff is great too.

 

[Frodebro]

I’ve been running Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate for close to 20 years, and periodically update to the latest version if something happens to make it worthwhile. I’ve always been really happy with their libraries.

 

[Devin]

@Devin

Have you tried the Noire plugin? I stumbled on that watching more Claire demos and the particle effects sound kind of awesome. Looks like Claire has that too?

I’m sitting on go if those dudes ever put Claire or Noire on sale. I’m using the Roland Earth pianos since they come with my Cloud bundle, but they don’t wow me like their synth stuff.

I haven't used Noire; felt like Claire was more my sound but I've also seen a lot of incredibly awesome sounding vids with Noire. Don't think you could go wrong tbh

 

[Whizzinby]

I actually looked at both the Arturia bundle and NI Kontakt Komplete and while I did shed a tear at the pricing, they look like pretty comprehensive solutions.

 

[TJontheRoad]

Disclaimer: I’m an Arturia beta tester.

Arturia runs sales from time to time. Sign in to your account for the best prices.

 

[TJontheRoad]

Also check out Steinberg Halion which is basically a Yamaha Montage in plugin format.

 

[mbenigni]

Man I love electric piano. Dope

If you're looking for some incredible realistic (and diverse) electric pianos, organs, clavs, etc. etc. etc. be sure to check these guys out:

The #1 Electric Piano VST Plugin/Virtual Instrument

All inclusive electric piano Rhodes VST with over 200 electric pianos. Included are the effects that you can use separately. Overloud Effects Included

gospelmusicians.com

I run Neo-Soul Keys Studio 2 on iPad. It can be a little flaky (resource intensive) at times, but OMG it sounds amazing. Lots of good presets out of the box, plus deep editing and excellent effects.




(P.S. I just looked at the pricing for Windows/ MacOS. Ouch. iPad OS version was like a dollar or something with in-app purchases for additional libraries? iPad - Home of the Cheapskate™.)

 

[mavrick102000]

@Devin

Have you tried the Noire plugin? I stumbled on that watching more Claire demos and the particle effects sound kind of awesome. Looks like Claire has that too?

I’m sitting on go if those dudes ever put Claire or Noire on sale. I’m using the Roland Earth pianos since they come with my Cloud bundle, but they don’t wow me like their synth stuff.

Noire is pretty good, Alicias Keys are both pretty good for acoustic piano. I have a few other freebies that are pretty good as well, I'd have to take a look to recall what they are.

The NI Summer Savings event doesn't seem to be as "good" as prior years, maybe I'm just being too cheap these days.

What I'm looking for are Saxophone libraries that have the articulations like "Squeals and grunts" (I forget the musical terms) that don't cost 250 to 300 for one instrument.

 

[DrewJD82]

Check out EastWest’s Play-



I can’t remember what the subscription costs but I’ve been paying for it for about 4 years now because it’s been worth it. You can audition sounds in the plugin and instantly download specific patches from their collections instead of downloading gigs of libraries. They specialize in soundtrack tools, so outside of the regular orchestra/choir stuff they have a bunch of genre-specific sound effects for movies

 

[mbenigni]

Check out EastWest’s Play-



I can’t remember what the subscription costs but I’ve been paying for it for about 4 years now because it’s been worth it. You can audition sounds in the plugin and instantly download specific patches from their collections instead of downloading gigs of libraries. They specialize in soundtrack tools, so outside of the regular orchestra/choir stuff they have a bunch of genre-specific sound effects for movies

This looks incredible. It took me a little bit to get my bearings on the soundsonline.com website, but if I understand correctly it's currently $99/year for "all 70+ EastWest releases". Is that what you're using? Looks like a good alternative to dropping $1200+ on Native Komplete Collector's Edition (and a massive new SSD LOL.) Perhaps even better than dropping $400 on Komplete Standard.

 

[DrewJD82]

This looks incredible. It took me a little bit to get my bearings on the soundsonline.com website, but if I understand correctly it's currently $99/year for "all 70+ EastWest releases". Is that what you're using? Looks like a good alternative to dropping $1200+ on Native Komplete Collector's Edition (and a massive new SSD LOL.) Perhaps even better than dropping $400 on Komplete Standard.

Oh snap, they changed it again.

It was Play when I first got it, then they went to Opus and now the Composer Cloud. From a quick glance it looks like they're essentially the same thing, just a different UI and name. I'm still going to check to see if I'm missing out on anything. I never read emails from these companies because I assume they're all junk mail, they probably announced the changes and I just deleted it.

There's a ton of sounds available on there and it works as advertised quite efficiently, I'm surprised they felt a need to change it again. Opus looks like this-

You can search via the actual library names or the categories like above, which makes things a bit easier for finding a specific sound. Pretty great sounds and there's a ton that'll spark up some inspiration just by pushing one key. There's about 20 EDM-ish tracks I have that last like 2 mins and I don't know what to do with them from just checking out the sounds and coming up with a song idea in the process.

 

[wreckless]

Pianoteq is my weapon of choice for all things piano, as well as EPs and other keys.

For almost everything else, unless I want to spend some time making my own patches for synths, the best bet - and very cheap too - has got to be Analog Lab. Tons of great usable sounds, from many types of synth to organs and other stuff,