Do you ever get frustrated that you don’t own the virtual instruments that you know will make the ultimate difference to your music production?
I understand your frustration but I’m also here to let you know that you don’t need premium plugins or virtual instruments to create great music.
Almost every DAW these days comes with an inbuilt VST instrument that is very often overlooked. While Kontakt, Omnisphere, Sylenth, Massive and similar premium instruments are amazing in their own right, you can still create incredible sounds and music with the instruments you already have at your disposal within your DAW.
AIR Music Technology’s Xpand2! comes bundled with Pro Tools and I decided to create a video mini-series on how powerful a tool this instrument really is.
You don’t need Pro Tools or Xpand2! to follow along because the concepts can be applied to any DAW or stock instrument you might own.
The first video in the series is all about creating a drum beat so…
Let’s dive right in!
Now, I’d love to know…
Do you think premium virtual instruments are essential for making great music?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time…
professional sounding mix every time...
thanks buddy. the video was really good. Jeff
You’re welcome and glad you liked it Jeff!
Just one word this time (and that makes five, no, nine): brilliant!
Obrigado meu amigo!
No way!
You can speak Portuguese!?
LOOK EVERYONE! STEPHEN CAN SPEAK PORTUGUESE!!!
(well done!)
Three simple words with the help of Google Translate for ‘meu’! I thought it was ‘mi’ like Spanish.
🙂
Ok: the right answer to the question in my oppinion is no, we don`t need premium VSTs for making (good) music. I consider myself an example of that (coff!,coff!…) and will continue to craft music only with what I already own as long as my current DAW / my current gear keep working.
Thanks again by picking such relevant matters!
Much respect to you for having faith in your abilities and your gear!
Don`t forget you`ve helped me very recently with that… 😉
Thanks!
good vid man, I bought Xpand2 from plugin boutique for 1pound, about a year ago ,as I use cubase so did not have it .great vsti use it loads.
1 pound! Now, that’s a deal and a half. It’s a great instrument all right. Keep an eye out for the rest of the videos in the series and thanks!
Nice video Stephen. A question or two, if you don’t mind. When you rendered the midi files to audio did you leave the faders as they were when you had mixed them together as midi or did you increase the volumes and then mixed them again later? Also, would you recommend this kind of approach with all midi or is it okay to leave things as midi?
Cheers Stephen,
Regards.
Great question, Paul. I try to remember to pre-adjust the faders the new audio tracks to the same level as the MIDI tracks. Then I set the MIDI tracks to 0.0 and record. Sometimes, I forget and then I’ll leave the new audio tracks at 0.0. It doesn’t matter too much as long as you remember the level at which everything should be. Make sense?
Cheers Stephen. What about midi in general; do you prefer to mix it as it is or render it all to audio first – or does it not matter? Regards, Paul.
Another good question. That’s more to do with how much processing power your CPU has. If you’ve got a beast of a machine, then you can leave everything in MIDI and add plugins on those tracks. I personally like having everything in audio tracks because it stops me from going back and tweaking with the MIDI instruments. There’s an update on rendering to audio in Part 2, so don’t forget to check that out!