The year’s best free instruments
The past year has seen phenomenal growth in the popularity of synthesisers, both hard and soft. Analogue synths have dominated the market, with the biggest names in the industry resurrecting legends of old (Korg with their ARP Odyssey and Yamaha with their Reface version of CS and DX synths). Also in fashion is modular synthesis – and we’re not just talking about hardware, with the likes of NI Reaktor’s newly-added Eurorack-style Blocks.
Freeware developers have been working diligently to ensure that the shallow-pocketed among us needn’t feel excluded from the synthesis party, with plenty of new free options, some of them easily equal or even superior to the best commercial synths on the market. Matt Tytel’s Helm is one such instrument, with enough analogue-style firepower to fan your creative spark into a veritable conflagration of controlled voltages. Best of all, it’s not only free, but open-source, too. Grab it at tytel.org.
Recognising that not every desktop musician is a synth nerd, we also present for your consideration a fully loaded ROMpler stuffed with a massive collection of instruments, ranging from basic bread-and-butter staples like electric bass, piano, organ and drums, to a large range of more exotic instrumentation. The special thing about Samplescience’s Orion Sound Module, though, is that its samples have been collected from license-free, opensource repositories. You could download them yourself, but here, the developer has done that for you, as well as editing and mapping them in order to create a supremely usable instrument, available from www.samplescience.ca.
Orion is awesome for a bit of everything, and if you need a touch of guitar, you’ll find it there. However, if you need a full-blown convincing substitute for a real guitarist, you’re once again in luck, thanks to Ample Sound’s Ample Guitar M Lite II, which enables you to craft authentic fingerpicked and strummed guitar passages and even slather on some pedal effects. You’ll find it at www.amplesound.net.
With those three providing the power and versatility to compose full arrangements, all you need to do is sing. Or do you? Plogue’s Alter/Ego ( www.plogue.com) can give your lyrics a voice – albeit an unusual one! This singing synthesiser is the subject of our first step-by-step tutorial…