Six extremely cool free VST effects a for adding spice to your beats - plus some bonus freebies.

Here is a list of six free VST effects that I think will benefit many of the beat freaky readers out there looking for that new sound to nod your head to.

Of course there are way more than just 5 free effects out there, and of course you could use these effects on other sounds, but I thought these were very useful, and some of them not as well known.

Let’s start with FreeZZZer 2 you can get it here.

FreeZZZZer gives you control of little ‘snapshots of your sound’ and gives you a choice of manually syncing to the host tempo or entering the tempo yourself. It will make your sounds seem to stutter to the beat.

You can hit midi notes over three octaves and each of these notes represents the freezing of a specific length in time in regards to the beat. It will repeat the sound when you hit a key until you let go. You would really be better off trying it out for yourself instead of hearing it from me!

I like the ‘Half’ button myself. It turns the ½ note into ¼, the ¼ into 1/8 and the 1/64 into 1/128. I use the latter for some extreme granular fun on my loops or vocal lines.

In the ‘Change over Time’ section you can set it to up, down, or bypass. This will make the pitch of the sound gradually go up, down, or stay the same. You can set the amount and speed with the sliders.

Just trust me and download this thing, it seems like it doesn’t do much, but I guarantee you, it will blow your mind.

Ambience (Grab it here)

Ambience is a top quality reverb that is in the same league as many plugs you have to actually pay for.

While not totally free it is considered “donation ware” you can use it as long as you want, but have to deal with an annoying nag screen whenever you load this amazing reverb. You can donate however much you want to support the developers and get rid of the opening nag . This reverb is packed with features but is a CPU hog if there ever was one. Luckily there is a CPU knob to control the quality of the sound (you can always turn it up to 100% when you’re ready to render). Lot’s or presets, nice body and tails, not to mention the GUI . This is one VST I would have easily expected to pay a few dollars for.

Classic Flanger (Grab it here)

This impressive flanger effect is one of the best that I’ve heard. It doesn’t really have any special tricks, it just does its job incredibly well. There are also 4 more hi quality free effects to grab from the site as well. Also you can find the ‘Gold Series’ product line which is available for a reasonable price. The free stuff is packed with quality so I can just imagine what you get when you actually have to open up your wallet and plop down some coin!

Flaser (Grab this one here)

Flaser is sort of a delay but with a twist (meaning twisting your head in circles).

This is an insane and crazy effect. It sounds warm, yet destructive. Try out the bend preset and run a loop through it. I also like this for one hit sounds that you can then send to your favorite sampler. I’ll tell you an easy way to do that later on in the article. I like to run the output of this effect into the input of the classic flanger mentioned above for an excellent source of ambient drum hits and soundFX.

Green Machine (Grab it here)

Or if you feel daring try Green Machine 2 which is still in beta stage, but looks like it will be very cool!

Green Machine is an excellent amp module that will add some distortion or flavor to your sounds. It comes with a few presets for you to get started. I really recommend trying out the beta version of GreenMachine2 since it offers so much more. It really is a no brainer.

More than just an amp sim, it has a BPM delay, gate, reverb, and more.

 

Alien Solo VST (Grab it)

This is really a shareware product, but I’ve been using the freeware version since I first came across it.

This is an amazing effect that comes in DirectX and VST versions. It will take your voice, synthesize it, and make it sound like it is singing. Try it out on your beats or your vocals and you will grow a grin from ear to ear. The free version ships with 8 presets that you can use freely with no limitations. The only snag is that you can’t manipulate any controls. That is not a problem, because what it does is so amazing anyone could get good use out of it. If you end up wanting to be able to tweak the controls a bit, the cost of the full version is very reasonable. Beware though it has the power to bring your CPU to it’s knees.

Right now for some bonus freebies

LSR free (Grab this here)

LSR doesn’t actually make any sounds nor do anything to your sounds. Instead this cool VST sits in your effect line and constantly records your output in 1 or 2 bar loops synced perfectly to your host’s tempo. This makes it very easy to add, destroy or change your loops and have them constantly recorded in ready loop form. You can see the wave build up in the “buffers” and save it to a file. If you’re lucky enough to own Devine Machine you can send it to a DM track or a live loop. It can auto name your loops in an organized manner so you can really get going without worrying about stopping to name every file. There is a pay version that has up to 8 one bar buffers, but other than that the free version is exactly the same.

Channel Grabber: tobybear.de

Given to us by the wonderful tobybear at www.tobybear.de , this handy VST is a lot like LSR but you can trigger recording with a midi key (you will need a host that sends midi info to an effect). It will even record up to 32 bits!

This is a nice effect to grab your one shots of snares or other hits that you run through various FX like flaser. You can really build up a nice library of original drums hits using this method, then drop them in your favorite sampler to break out that new fresh riddim.

Toby has a bunch of other free FX that you can check as well.

 

SupaTrigga (get this here)

(Loads into default VST controls here I show it in Chainer.)

SupaTrigga’s main thing is to mess up beats for you. By changing the controls you tell supatrigga how to manipulate the sounds that are coming to it. It will reverse certain sounds, speed them up, slow them down, or double them up. Put this effect right before LSR or channel grabber you can record every thing it does. Just sit back let your host play and wait for the perfect loop to come about. It is extremely simple yet equally powerful.

Inspector (Grab it here)

Inspector shows a very accurate display of the entire audio spectrum (well at least the ones that are important to us humans). To the left is the lower frequencies and it gets higher as you go to the right. The height of the image shows how loud the sound is at that frequency. So if you have a lot of loud bass in your track the image will be more toward the right side and be pretty high up on the scale.

Inspector will let you know what your effects are doing and where the frequencies are going in the sound spectrum. It is very useful and has controls over when you are alerted to clipping sounds and a quick visual of your peak and RMS values.

Conclusion

Remember to support your generous free plug-in developers by sending them an appreciative email or at least consider buying some of their products. These are top quality FX if there ever was any!

Cheers.

Review brought to you by:
Member: Derik White.
www: Traxmusic.Org.