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I occasionally get asked about the gear I use for composing. While Burst HQ does have some expensive goodies (of course we spare no expense for YOU, our friends and fans), and I’ve already mentioned my beloved toys, some of my favorite things are free plug-ins. Because I’m a cheap bastard, I love to troll KVR Audio looking for that ever-elusive “free” tag.

I’ve compiled here my 8 favorite free plug-ins.

Note: Being an avowed Logic Pro user, these plug-ins are in Audio Unit format, though some of them do exist as VSTs

LiveCut | Smartelectronix

A one-trick pony that does a REALLY cool f’n trick, LiveCut is a live beat-slicer that can either lightly butter a track with glitch elements, or grind it into little bite-size bits of audio love - like a sonic version of tic tacs or cheese curds.

There are 3 settings, “CutProc1″, which does pretty linear 32nd and 64th note stutters, “WarpCut”, which created some pretty wacked-out Aphex Twin-style burbles and sweeps, and “SQPusher” which, well… makes it sound like Squarepusher.

I don’t have a lot of examples of this plug-in at work, because I usually end up over-using it, and Daniel tells me to stop scaring the natives and confusing the children. There’s a light touch of it on Deck The Halls, but hopefully I can trick Daniel into letting me uploading a track that shows what this baby can really do.

Crystal | Green Oak Software

Crystal is a subtractive and FM synth that allows you to “breed” 2 patches together to form a new patch. It also supports SoundFont files. Additionally, it’s sounds like f’n tits. In particular, the “Vintage” and “Swells” banks are stellar.

There are also auxiliary banks of patches that can be downloaded from Green Oak’s website. I don’t have a track handy that it is used noticeably on, but rest assured, it was used a lot on some upcoming Chill specimens for our production music library.

Automat | Alphakanal

Another subtractive synth, Automat is a different beast entirely. It has 3 oscillators, and every property of each (width, tune, phase, pan, volume) can be modded by drawing in a curve by hand. It also has 2 unique delays and tempo sync, y’know, if you’re the kinda guy that gets turned on by that sort of thing… which I am. A lot of the sounds in 100 Pharmacies and Effin Round including the leads, are done with Automat.

Alphakanal is at work on a follow-up version that includes more features, but as of today, it is still only in beta. A quick aside - the previous incarnation of Automat was the also-excellent Buzzer.

FreeAlpha | LinPlug

I’m still a little green with this one. I downloaded it because it’s a stripped down version of a LinPlug instrument, and LinPlug hasn’t made anything that didn’t at least get me a little randy. It’s got a pretty sexy interface, with all of the usual suspects - 2 oscillators, filter, amplitude envelope, LFO, chorus, and glide, as well as a complicated-looking “matrix” section.

The presets are good enough to get it a lot of use in my room, but I feel like when I actually get around to rolling my sleeves up and getting under the hood, it’s really going to excite me, or make my buy the full version of Alpha3 - which, I guess, is the whole point of giving it away in the first place (sneaky…).

Orca | FXpansion

The stalwart lads at FXpansion found it in their hearts to bestow on us a simple subtractive synth with a pleasingly grotesque UI. I think it’s supposed to be a whale skull or gills or something. I’m not sure, I’m a fresh-water fisherman, and the few times I saw whales in Lake Michigan I was really really drunk - like “Where are my pants” drunk.

Anyway, where this thing really excels is at acid-type bass lines. It has a really cool velocity-sensitive envelope - the harder you play, the longer it takes for the envelope to open. There’s a lot of other technical junk that makes it sound so badass, but I am not the ideal candidate to explain it. Something to do with mismatched diodes and asymmetrical non-linear components or something (click on the pic for a full write-up at their site). Whatever the case, it sounds good, and that’s what counts.

Vinyl | Izotope

Ah, like an old pair of jeans that fit so well, such is my appreciation for Izotope’s Vinyl. Whether I’m using it to added some of that turntable fuzz on the edges of a sound, or trying to make it sound like it’s been stepped on, scratched, and left in a hot car, Vinyl always does the trick. It’s used pretty heavily on Taxi and The Truth, and it just flat-out makes things tasty.

On a technical note, however, if it’s instantiated on any channel in Logic, even if you solo another track, you still hear the Vinyl effect, and to avoid that happening you have to bypass it. Oh well, they don’t call it Version 0.3493b for nothin’.

LMC-1 | SSL

As I have often been known to say, if it’s good enough for Phil Collins, it’s good enough for me. Based on the talkback mic from the legendary SSL “E” series console, this thing can make stuff sound crappy in the best possible way. Phil Collins is way underrated among hipsters because their moms like him. Honestly, take another listen to “Take Me Home” without all of your preconceived Phil Collins notions and tell me that shit doesn’t rock hard in a sensitive way. That’s what the LMC-1 does- it makes you rock as hard as Phil Collins. It’s hard to explain… just listen to the drums on The Truth. See? It’s like if Phil Collins grew up in the Bronx instead of Chiswick (which, ironically, is the birthplace of fey, pale, British hip-hop).

King Dubby Delay | Lowcoders

Ah, dub (dubdubdubdubdubdub). Lowcoders isn’t reinventing the wheel with this tape-delay effect, but they are providing a free, good-looking, and infinitely usable plug-in.

The thing I really dig about it is the “Degrade” function, which controls how much the signal atrophies over its decay. That’s the way I roll.

You can hear it in action on Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel. I did that little “dubdubdub” thing because I thought it was funny. Lighten up… Lee Perry would get it.

Chime in below and tell me your favorites, maybe I’ll dedicate my next plug-in laden music track to your mom. [ms]