Let’s be honest, we all love free stuff, especially free VST plugins for Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Cubase, Bitwig Studio or any other DAW! Tell me one electronic music producer doesn’t!
- Read more / download: The TX16Wx Software Sampler is a simple, yet powerful sampling instrument inspired by various classic hardware samplers from the 80s and 90s, but mainly the excellent Yamaha TX16W sampler as used with the Typhoon operating system.
- Get Synth1 by Ichiro Toda and learn how to use the plugin with Ableton Live, Logic, GarageBand, and FL Studio for free. Discover 20+ world-class professional VST/AU music plugins like Serum, Arturia’s V Collection, iZotope’s Ozone, & Presonus’ Studio One DAW. Please try again or contact [email protected].
That’s why I’ve written up this review of my top choices for free plugins that you may want to check out and download to use in your music.
The brilliant thing about getting your hands on a high quality piece of music software, is that nowadays it’s really easy to expand even further. Any high quality digital audio workstation (DAW) will have the ability to link in additional virtual studio technology (VST) plugins.
Speaking of free stuff, if you haven’t signed up to us yet, you can get free sample packs and tutorials by some of our featured artists from the BassGorilla Podcast – all you need to do is sign up here.
This list is in no order and may be expanded to include other plugins over time. Let me know in the comments if you know any other great free plugins at the bottom of this post!
1. SampleTank FREE
Windows, Mac OS X It’s insane that something as good as SampleTank could be free. It comes with a wide range of virtual instruments, from basses to drums, guitars, synths, organs, ensemble strings and orchestral sections, vocals and much more! You can upgrade to SampleTank 2L or 2.5 XL if you’re impressed with the quality of the sounds you hear in the free version.
Sampler Ableton Live
SampleTank FREE Sounds- Sample based sounds (parent): 58
- Preset sounds (child): 146
- Combi sounds (combi): 0
- Total sounds: 204
Ableton Sampler Vst Download Mac
- Total size: 579 MB
2. Flux BitterSweet v3
Windows, Mac OS X BitterSweet from Flux is a free transient shaper plugin. It works well for adding more ‘punch’ to your drums, especially your kicks, snares and toms. The extra punch comes when you turn the dial to the ‘bitter’ setting. You can soften the punch of a sound when you turn the dial towards the ‘sweet’ setting. It is available as a 32-bit and 64-bit plugin. Features:
- Output Gain, controlling the gain at the end of the processing.
- Bypass routes the incoming signal direct to the output for a true smooth transition between processed and clean signal.
- Three different transient processing modes:
- Main, using a regular stereo signal scheme for the processing.
Free Sampler Vst
- Center, processing the Mid channel only, very efficient for snare and kick drums.
- Stereo, processing the Side channel only, very efficient for panned rhythmic/transient instruments.
3. Glitch 2
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux Glitch is an audio effect plugin for Windows (VST), Mac (VST and AU) and Linux (VST), available in both 32-bit and 64-bit formats. Featuring a new and improved sequencer which can play multiple effects simultaneously, with the ability to trigger unique scenes from every note on your keyboard, Glitch can be as gentle or as brutal as you like. Add the occasional splash of re-trigger or stretcher to single hits within your drum loop, or fill the entire sequencer with random effect blocks for a totally chaotic trip down the digital rabbit hole… the choice is yours! Features:
Sequencer
- Each program consists of 128 scenes that can be triggered via MIDI notes. Each scene has its own unique sequencer pattern, timing, and effect settings, allowing you to create tons of unique variations for every moment in your song, all ready to go at the press of a key!
- Multi-lane sequencer allows many effects to be played simultaneously, to create interesting layered sounds.
- Improved sequencer timing controls to better match your groove and song structure.
- Intuitive pattern editor with drag’n’drop. Draw, erase, resize, split and join blocks with ease.
Effects
- 9 cheeky little effect modules designed to slice, dice, chop, screw, twist, turn and mangle your sounds into radical new forms.
- Tempo-synced effects can easily be dialled in to precise musical timings such as 16th notes, 8th note triplets, and so on.
- Filter, mix, pan and volume controls on each module, to help shape and fine-tune the output.
4. Zebralette
Windows, Mac OS X Zebralette by U-He is just one of its big brother Zebra2’s oscillators packed into a simple, easy-to-learn framework – but you have everything you need to make some pretty amazing sounds. Sounds that can be directly loaded into Zebra2 later. And should you eventually decide to upgrade to Zebra2, you will already know everything there is to know about the oscillators. Zebralette has two LFOs (one per voice, one global), a multi-stage envelope and three on-board effects (chorus, EQ, delay). Not forgetting Zebra2’s famous dual spectral effects, which include several squelchy filter algorithms. Download Zebralette Here
5. Camel Crusher
Windows, Mac OS X CamelCrusher is a free ‘colouring’ multi-effect plugin. It offers two characteristically different distortion sounds which can be blended together to create a wide variety of tones and textures. Great for guitars, drums and plenty more! There’s also a warm, smooth analogue-style low-pass filter with buckets of resonance. Assign a MIDI controller and start tweaking! Finally, let’s not forget the easiest-to-use compressor you’ll find anywhere. It can ‘phatten’ up your sound as quickly as you can turn up the ‘Amount’ knob! Features:
- Two different distortion types.
- Warm, analogue-modelled resonant low-pass filter.
- High quality, easy-to-use compressor, with ‘Phat’ mode.
- Powerful ‘MIDI Learn’ function.
- A collection of useful Preset patches to get you started.
- Randomize for instant inspiration.
Here in the Free Stuff Friday department at Ableton HQ, we enjoy sharing fantastic free stuff from the community - especially if it can expose you to new ideas. This week, there’s some playful/somewhat out-there pieces of stuff to download, which might just provide you with the creative shot in the arm that you’ve been looking for.
Ping Pong Push
Inspired by both table tennis ping pong and the classic arcade game, Pong, Certified Trainer Mark Towers presents the Pong Sequencer, a Max for Live device built to work with Live’s native MIDI Effects. The sequencer comes in two versions, including one that works interactively with Push - watch the videos below to see it in action:
Push Pong
Live Pong
Arovane - Sound & Beat Design
Combining glitchy percussion with gorgeous synthesized and sampled atmospherics, Arovane aka Uwe Zahn has established himself over the past two decades as a glitch force to be reckoned with. Listen to a piece from his latest album, Ve Palor, below:
Arovane - “Vendt”
As part of an interview feature with Akai, Arovane has released a set of free sounds - including glitch one-shots, and some unusual assembled beats. Get inspired by Arovane’s words and music, and make your own delicate glitch pieces.
Download Arovane’s samples
Download Arovane’s samples
Feel the Noise
“Noise” is a pretty amorphous term when it comes to sound - generally, we’re talking about sound that is atonal, and which we’d prefer not to hear. But one can do a lot with synthesized and sculpted noise - from percussion sounds to gradually unfolding sweeps and buildups.
Noisedrone 2.0, a Max for Live instrument from robTech, features a number of tweakable parameters for shaping noise. From traditional white and pink noise sounds to click-y pulses, there’s a range of sounds to synthesize. Further, nonsensical parameter names such as “felph”, “chrid”, and “dend” encourage blind exploration. As robTech suggests: “don’t ask what they do, just try it”.
Download noisedrone 2.0
Download noisedrone 2.0
That’s a wrap for this week! Enjoy exploring new sounds, and let us know if you’ve got any free stuff to share - you can reach us on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, and don’t forget to use #FreeStuffFriday.