If you’ve been following my life and this blog on a regular basis, you know a couple of things.

1) I’ve been having a tough time financially.

2) I haven’t written any articles in a couple of days.

I needed to regroup and get my life together, which I have done. Today, I sat down and made out a schedule for myself. I’m going to share that schedule with you. Hopefully, it will give you the inspiration to get your life in order as well, especially if things have been a little crazy for you as well.

Essentially, there are 6 things that I have to make sure I take care of each day. Any time I have left after these 6 things are completed is gravy.

So what are these 6 things?

Here they are.

1) Write Article For This Site

Yeah, that’s the first thing I have to do each morning when I wake up at 6 AM. I’ve slacked off for a couple of days but that ends now. There is plenty of stuff floating around in my head that I can share with you on a daily basis. Some of it might not interest you, but I’ll be putting it out there anyway. Isn’t it great to have a little X at the top right hand corner of your browser?

2) Write 1 Dance Track For Exercise Dance Beats

Now this might actually be of some interest to you either because you like to dancercise OR you’re a marketer looking for a way to earn a few bucks. So let me tell you something about Exercise Dance Beats and why I have to write at least 1 track per day.

Exercise Dance Beats is a package of dance tracks that I’m selling to people who like to dancercise. It’s 5 packs of 30 tracks each for just $29.95. All the music is originally done by myself.

While the main package is complete, there is also a monthly membership option. And while I do have all the tracks done for month 1, I still have to keep creating tracks for all the months to come after.

Now, this product does have an affiliate program through Clickbank. You can get the link to promote it and sign up through the URL below. It pays 75% commission on every sale.

Affiliate Program

Please spread the word. Money is starting to get hard to come by. I’m sure you can relate to that in this miserable economy.

3) Write Royalty Free Track

As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t been updating the music on this site as often as I used to. The main reason is that the site just hasn’t been profitable at all. But I don’t want to give up on it entirely, so I’m going to go back to doing at least one new track for it each day. Hopefully, I’ll get some custom work in order to start paying the bills and keep the lights on.

4) Contact Exercise Sites

You’re probably wondering why I’d be doing that. Aren’t they my competition? Well, actually no. There aren’t a lot of these sites out there that sell custom music. They may have dance videos and programs, but music that you can download and listen to, not so much.

So why contact them?

They’re a perfect fit for what I’m selling. There is no conflict of interest and therefore they can promote it as an affiliate and make some money for themselves.

As of this article, I’ve contacted 50 sites and have heard back from two of them. One said they don’t accept unsolicited emails and the other said to write to another department. All the rest, haven’t heard a thing from yet.

My goal is to contact at least five of these sites each day. All I need is one big site to help promote this thing for me and I could be home free.

5) Create Easy Sketch Pro Video

There is this new piece of software called Easy Sketch Pro. It actually sketches the drawings in real time.

What’s really cool about it is that you can add music to these videos. That’s when I got a brilliant idea. Wanna know what it is?

Sure you do.

I make these videos for other marketers who have something of their own that they want to promote. They tell me what they want the video to display as far as graphics and text and what kind of music they’re looking for and I create them.

Let me know if you’re interested in one of these. My rates are very reasonable.

Anyway, in order to build up this business, I’m going to need to show lots of samples. Hopefully, if I have enough quality ones I can build a name for myself.

Time will tell.

6) Create Synth Patches

As you’ve probably guessed, I use a lot of synths to make my music. Well, some of the synths I use are very popular. So popular that there are people out there who actually pay for patches, or sounds, that they can use for their own music.

Since I’ve been programming synthesizers since the 70s, I figured why not? I could do this stuff in my sleep and it’s fun to boot. So each day I’m going to try to create at least 2 or 3 new synth patches for one of the top synths. Eventually, I’ll have a nice collection of packages that I can sell. If I price them right, I shouldn’t have too much trouble.

And there you have it. That’s my daily to-do list. It will certainly keep me more than busy.

I look at it this way. The more I do, the better chance I have of getting something to stick. Maybe they’re all going to turn out to be turkeys. Maybe they’ll all turn out to be winners.

All hope is not lost until you’re dead and buried in the ground. That’s the way I have to look at it. As long as I keep plugging away, as long as I don’t give up, there is always that chance that something will click.

If there is anything you can do to help me out, I will appreciate it more than you could ever know.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

It’s always good to know what’s going on in the world of music if you’re a music producer, writer, performer, whatever. Over the last year or so, I’ve stumbled upon a few places that I go to now and then to either get help or some info of some kind. So what I thought I would do in this article is share some of these places so that you can check them out yourself. Please note that some of these forums are very specific to a certain product. But they can still be useful for generic information that you might find you’ll need someday, maybe if for no other reason than you run into somebody you end up working with who uses one of these products. And who knows, you might actually decide to pick one of them up yourself after doing the research.

Anyway, having said all that, let’s get started.

Probably the top music related forum for producers anyway has to be Gearslutz. The place is like walking into a black hole. I have never in my life seen so many sub forums.

Gearslutz is kind of like that candy store that you just don’t want to leave but you know if you stay there any longer than necessary you’ll never get out without a tummy ache, or in this case, a headache. Way too much info and way too little time.

My personal favorite sub forums are the Computer Music, where you can get info on all the best plugins and VSTs. In fact, there is one thread there right now that you could get so lost in, you’ll never make it to any other part of the forum. The thread title is something like “Your Top 5 Plugins” and each post, which I think has been going on for something like 50 pages, is a members top 5 plugins. Some will also list their top 5 synth plugins. Well don’t ask. The recommendations are all over the map. And let me tell you, I’ve checked out some of these plugins and they’re excellent. We’re talking top of the line stuff like $200 compressors. Just demoing all the recommendations could take weeks. And you’ll never see another thread at the whole forum.

Do yourself a favor. If you’re into music production, go to Gearslutz to find out what the top gear is. It covers everything in the field.

Now, if you want to dedicate your time to home recording and actually getting good at the art and getting the best sound possible, I recommend going to recordingreview.com.

Here you’re going to get into all the specs and how to’s of recording so that your home recordings don’t sound like crap. There is one sub forum called “Bash This Recording” where you can actually get your work reviewed. Please keep in mind that members of forums are not afraid to tell you just how crappy your recording is. But you’ll at least get some honest opinions.

There is also a recording gear review section and a sub forum on recording tactics, tips and tricks that I’m sure you’ll find useful.

If you’re struggling at all with getting a good sound out of your home recordings, you just might want to check this place out.

What if you’re a songwriter? Well, there is a forum just for songwriters. It’s thesongwritersforum.com.

You’ll probably want to check out the sub forum Documents, Tutorials and E-Learning if you actually want to learn how to write songs.

But believe it or not, that’s not the main focus of this sub forum. The main focus is actually on the law, primarily copyright law. You’ll even find your copyright registration forms there.

This is not a flashy, glitzy forum and as a result doesn’t appear to get a ton of traffic. Some sub forums haven’t had posts in a month. But the info is there if you need it. If nothing else, every songwriter should make sure they understand copyright or they could land themselves in a to of legal trouble.

Next we move onto the KVR Audio forum. Like Gearslutz, this place is massive. Maybe not as big, but big.

KVR focuses mainly on plugins but it does cover other avenues as well.

One of the great parts of KVR is that is has company forums. So let’s say you want to get info on Embertone. There is a subforum for just that company and you can ask any questions you want specific to that companies instruments. It’s like having a direct link to customer service.

What I love most about KVR in general is that you can do a search for the most recent plugins and it will list them from the newest releases going back. This way you’ll never miss anything that’s coming out. The other day I think I downloaded something like 5 or 6 new VSTs, some of which weren’t bad for free or dirt cheap ($1.71).

KVR is another place you can get totally lost in.

So let me stop there because I think this is important. Forums are great for getting information. There is no question about that. But they can also be a time suck. Some of them have so much information that it can be overwhelming. This is why you have to discipline yourself when you go to one. Make a schedule for yourself. Agree that you’ll only stay there a certain length of time each day or you’ll never get your work done.

One other thing about forums that you need to be aware of. At every forum you’re going to run into your trolls. These are people who are there just to start arguments. They’ll say things like “VSTs suck and can never be as good as hardware synths” and then the battle begins. Don’t let yourself get caught up in these. The trolls are hoping to get a rise out of you. Don’t let them.

Anyway, that’s about it for this article. I know I’ve only scratched the surface on forums and we’ll do more in the future. But I’m sure these will hold you for a long while.

Maybe too long.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

In a previous article I had gone over my top 5 synth plugins or something like that. But because there are so many more plugins that I use and like, I thought I’d go over a few of them here to give you some more choices for your sound creation arsenal. Let me just say up front that none of these are going to blow you out of the water if you’re the owner of things like Omnisphere, Zebra 2 and Massive. But if you’re looking for some more sounds that are usable and even unique in their own way, you might want to check some of these out.

Let’s begin.

There is this guy by the name of H G Fortune. At least I think that’s his name.

Here’s his website.

http://www.hgf-synthesizer.com/

This guy makes some very interesting sounding synths. For the most part, they’re sample playback machines. You pull up your samples (in most cases two max) and then set your other parameters.

Ah, but this is where his stuff gets so interesting. He has a lot of very odd and quirky things that you can do with these synths. The best way to describe these features is to say that through a variety of controls you can make these samples dance around in some very unusual ways creating what could probably be best described as some very interesting soundscapes that probably aren’t possible with conventional synths, not even your most advanced ones.

H G Fortunes synths have lots of reverb and delay to really give you that washed out pad sound great for ethereal pads and the like. Sound wise, the synths won’t blow you away. We are of course talking free. But they’re usable. And if you’re looking for something different sounding, H F Fortune synths will definitely fill the bill.

We now move onto another synth producer. His name is Xavier Kalensky. He makes the KX77 series synths. These are extremely complex monsters to program so you probably want to stick to the presets unless you’re a seasoned pro.

For one thing, there are tons of parameters on these things and they’re not all clearly marked or even understandable. Plus, they are not laid out like traditional synths. Stuff is literally all over the place. Plus, you are going to run into features and controls that you won’t find on other synths.

What do I like these synths? They sound very good. Again, we’re talking free synths here. Some of them sound downright great. Unlike H G Fortune synths, these use traditional synth waveforms such as saw, triangle, square and sine. You won’t find any fancy waveforms but you don’t need them. The control that you will have over the sound is amazing for a free synth. But like I said, programming these things is a nightmare if you aren’t a pro. And even if you are, you’re going to have a lot of trouble understanding some of the controls. The matrix synth is pretty much click something and see what effect it has. So you will probably want to stick to the presets, which sound great. Many usable sounds here.

You can check out his web site below.

http://kx77free.free.fr/English-page-vst.html

Next we move onto the Kamiooka.

You can check out the website below.

http://www.g200kg.com/en/software/kamioooka.html

Here is the description right off the page.

“Kamioooka is a polyphonic Full-Modular synthesizer with patch cable system. You can freely combine modules and make patches. 10 module slots and 7 types of modules (VCO/VCF/VCA/ADSR/LFO/MISC/SEQ) are available.”

If you’ve never worked with patch cables before this synth cab be a bit daunting. But it sounds great. It comes with a few basic presets but not very many relative to what you usually get with a synth. So to get the most out of this, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty and dive into it. Warning: Programming this thing can become very addictive if for no other reason then to see if you can get a sound out of it…any sound.

Moving on.

Check out this website.

http://www.omnitaur.se/

If you look at the first synth listed, the Daedalus, you really want to check this thing out. Why?

Well, for starters, it sounds very good. But more importantly, it is very easy to program if you know basic synthesis. This is your standard meat and potatoes analog synth with 2 VCOs, 2 LFOs, mixer, filter, ADSRs for VCO, VCF and VCA and even chorus and delay effects. Reminds me a little of one of my old Moog synths.

My only complaint is that it doesn’t come with many presets at all. In fact, it comes with all of 16. But, I just discovered today, in going back to the site to get the URL for you, that there is a download for extra presets. How many? I don’t know because I haven’t checked them out yet, but extra is extra so I’ll take what I can get.

But like I said, this thing is easy to program so you’re going to have a lot of fun with it coming up with your own sounds.

Oh, one other thing about this synth. Yes, it is free, but that comes with a small price. There is a nag screen for a donation that you have to click through each time you use it. Plus, it appears that you can’t access extra presets unless you donate. So you’re probably going to be doing a lot of programming with this thing. But it’s worth it. Easy to do and sounds great.

As I have hundreds of free synths, I could probably do this for quite some time, but I’m going to stop here so I have some more of these to go through in a future article. You’d be amazed at all the usable free synths that there are. If you’re on a 64 bit machine, some of them won’t work. Yes, that’s a problem. But there are plenty that do as is or with a bridging program like JBridge.

Hope you enjoyed the article and have some fun with these synths. They should keep you busy for a while.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that technology today is just making things way too easy for us. It’s making it so that we don’t have to think as much as we used to. In short, we’re not really being challenged and we’re getting lazy. So what I’m suggesting in this article is that we try to challenge ourselves. How can we do this? Ah, well that’s where you’re going to have to read the rest of this article to get some ideas. Hopefully, some of these will trigger a spark in you.

I want to begin with synthesizers because that’s where I think we’ve really gotten lazy. Let’s face it, synths today can do just about anything. There really are no limitations. And sample playback engines allow us to recreate authentic sounding orchestras if we want. In a way that’s good but in another way that’s not so good. Need a sound? No problem. Just go to your go to synth for that sound. No need to try to think through things.

Well, here’s what I’m proposing. Don’t go to your go to synth. Pull out one of your cheap plugins and see what you can do with it. The other day I laid down about 24 tracks for an electronic piece. I could have used all my top of the line synths to do it, like Omnisphere, Massive, Zebra 2 and others. But I didn’t do that. Instead I pulled out my free Synth1.

Now let me tell you about this synth. It’s really basic. It has a couple of oscillators, two LFOs, a few mod sources, filter that can go LP or HP, basic ADSR, arpeggiator, a few simple effects, unison mode, poly or mono mode and that’s about it. I mean it’s really basic and it’s free. You can’t do really complex sounds with it. In fact, it’s mostly good for emulating old analog synths like Oberheim and Moog.

Anyway, of my 24 tracks, about 20 of them were made with this free synth, using multiple instances and pulling up some interesting patches. With some slick arranging and other outboard effects, the piece ended up sounding really cool. It was almost hard to believe that most of it was made with a free VST.

Now I didn’t have to do this. But I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could come up with something good while limiting the tools that I was using. For the most part, I’d say the experiment was a success.

Here’s something else that you can do to challenge yourself.

Let’s say you’re primarily a composer. All the material you record is original. So you’re able to do just about anything that you want. That’s great. But how about trying this? How about picking out a song from a group or artist that you like and doing your own version of it. Your goal is to make it sound as much like the original as possible, right down to that fuzz guitar lead.

This might take some doing, especially if it’s a very old song using very old equipment. Some old sounds are very hard to replicate. I don’t care how good your modern gear is.

For example, you know the fuzz guitar lead that Tony Peluso played on the Carpenters song “Goodbye To Love?” Well, I did some research on how he created that sound and let me tell you, good luck finding that gear today. And modern emulations aren’t very good. I’ve tried my guitar rig fuzz and it’s not even close. None of them are. So something like this could be a challenge, especially when you have a very identifiable sound that you’re trying to replicate. Good! That’s the whole idea behind this exercise, to challenge yourself. See how close you can come to the original.

Let’s turn that around now. Let’s say all you do is cover songs of artists and you’re very good at it. Your recreations are almost identical to the originals. Great! Now, how about trying to compose and record your own song? What’s that you say? You’ve never written a song before in your life? Great! This should be a real challenge.

Now you don’t have to do this in a vacuum. You can listen to all those songs that you’ve been recreating over the years for inspiration. Heck, I don’t know one songwriter who doesn’t use the music of others for inspiration. That’s why there’s really nothing totally original coming out of songwriters today. Every song sounds a little like something that came before it. I don’t even remember the last time we had true innovation.

I’m not done though.

After you’ve written your song, now try to record it in the style of one of the songs that you’ve replicated over the years. See if you can make YOUR song sound like song X. I’m not talking musically. I’m talking sound wise. That means getting the right drums sounds, guitar sounds, etc. When you’re done recording your song, what you want people to say is “Wow, that sounds just like a Cars song” or whatever group or artist you’re going for. Don’t give them any hints. Don’t lead them in anyway. Just say something like “I want you to listen to this.” See what they say.

Here’s something else you can do. Let’s say you only do instrumental tracks because you sound like a dying cat when you sing. Great! Write a song with lyrics and sing them. That’s right. Don’t hire a singer. Sing the song yourself in all your dying cat glory. You don’t have to let anybody hear it if you don’t want to, but challenge yourself to do it. You may be surprised at how good you sound with a lot of vocal processing and some autotune.

And these are just a few of the things you can do to challenge yourself. I’m sure you can think of more. And by challenging ourselves, we force ourselves to grow as artists.

Isn’t that ultimately what we want?

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

So the other day I wrote a song for a songwriting class that I’m taking. You’re probably wondering why a 35 year veteran of songwriting is taking a songwriting class. Later on that. Anyway, I finish up the final assignment and post it for the class to comment on. One person says it was very good but there was too much echo at the very beginning.

Too much echo? Really?

What the #%^$ does that have to do with songwriting?

And for the record, there was not too much echo at the beginning. It was a little delay on the vocal and more than appropriate for the song. But I digress.

Okay, there is a point to this rant and I’m going to get to it now so that you don’t have to wait another 900 or so words to read it.

No matter what you do, and I don’t care what it is, people are going to nit pick about the stupidest things that may not even have anything to do with the main point of what you’re doing and there is nothing you can do about this.

If this was a course on music production then the comment on the echo would have been more than valid, even if I didn’t agree with it. But at least it applies to music production. Songwriting has to do with the song, not the production.

What surprises me is that this person didn’t comment on my lousy singing voice. No, I can’t sing. Let me just put that out there right now. That’s why I have a royalty free music site with all instrumentals. I can’t sing. That this person says nothing about. But the echo at the beginning, that bothered them.

Un freaking believable.

Okay, there is a bigger point here and yes, it does apply to your music production. So here goes.

As you do a project, the more complex it becomes the more you begin to look at the project as a whole and stop looking at the individual little parts. The reason we do this is because seeing one tree in that huge forest becomes very difficult. Sometimes it’s almost impossible.

That’s when we start running into trouble as far as getting that mix just right. Our ears are overwhelmed with sound. Too much going on.

So, how do you combat this problem? I mean what do you do if you have 67 tracks to have to deal with? Do you just randomly move sliders and hope for the best? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work. And what works for one person may not work for another. So please take my “solution” with a grain of salt. It’s what works for me but you may need to try something else. However, I think you may want to give this a try.

When confronted with a monster mix and I’m at the point in the process where I’m ready to mix everything down into two tracks, this is what I do.

I start from scratch.

That’s right. I start from scratch. I take all 67 volume sliders (if that’s how many tracks I have) and turn them all down to zero. Naturally, I have everything marked so I know what track is where.

I then start turning the volume up one slider at a time. Now I don’t compose every song the same way. Some will start with drums, others with a bass riff and still others with a piano solo. Whatever instrument starts my song, that’s the track I turn up first. If there is more than one track (say I start a song off with piano, bass, drums and guitar) I’ll turn those 4 up together but one at a time. I’ll try to get just the right level between those 4 instruments.

After I’ve done that, I’ll turn up the next channel in the mix. Maybe it’s a lead guitar that needs to be heard over the main band. I’ll turn it up so that it’s just above the other levels. I don’t want anything to stand out too far from the mix, at least not at first. Why? Because I still don’t know what’s coming next. If I have levels turned up too far, I might not have enough head room for anything that’s coming afterwards.

When I’ve finally gotten everything on, I’ll go back and listen to the whole mix and see if there is anything that stands out too much or is too soft. By having raised sliders one at a time, this is going to be pretty unlikely as I’m adjusting levels as I’m going. I should hear if something is too loud or too soft before I ever get to the final slider.

Now, sometimes I may find that I have to carve out some mid range with a little EQ because one or two tracks are sucking up the bandwidth between 2k and 5k. That’s always a problem area in a lot of mixes and a lot of beginners end up boosting these frequencies too much and you end up with a lot of mud.

Just the other day, I noticed how my vocals were taking up too much bass. I never imagined it, but there it was. So I had to take the EQ to my vocals to thin them out a little so they sat in the mix a little better.

As I said, this isn’t the only way to go about mixing your song. I’m sure there are others. Maybe even ones that are more effective. But this is what works for me. My brain can’t deal with 67 tracks all at one time.

You can also use this method for reverb, echo or any other effect. Turn the effect mix all the way down to dry and then slowly move it up until you get just the dry/wet mix that you’re looking for.

Anyway, I hope you have found my little procedure helpful. By all means, see what works best for you.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Well, the other day I spent a bit of money that I didn’t have. So what else is new. Arturia was running a sale on their synths that I just couldn’t pass up. So I grabbed hold of the V collection and I couldn’t be happier. I’m going to hit the high points and some of the low points in this particular article. Yeah, nothing is perfect but for the most part, this was money well spent.

Where to begin? Well, let’s begin with the amazing deal which is still available until September 8th, so there is still time for you to take advantage of it.

You get 11 of their products for just $199. That comes out to less than $20 for each product. If you think about it, in this day and age when everything costs a fortune, that’s a damn good deal and that’s why I couldn’t pass it up.

So what do you get for your $199? You get the following products.

Analog Lab
Analog Laboratory
ARP 2600
CS 80
Jupiter 8
Mini Moog
Moog Modular
Oberheim SEM
Prophet V
Spark Vintage Drums
Wurlitzer

Not bad for 200 bucks.

Let me start with the Wurlitzer. I never liked the sound of that thing when it was “popular” and I still don’t. So you can’t go by me as far as the quality of the plugin. Does it sound like a Wurlitzer? Sure does. Yuck!

Moving on.

Spark Vintage Drums. I haven’t gone through all the drum sounds but the few sets I’ve listened to certainly do sound like their old counterparts. It comes with a 122 page manual and you’re going to need it in order to use this thing. The interface is not very intuitive. As I have lots of drums, I probably won’t be using this much.

Finally, as far as the not so great goes, most of these modules are on the small side. I understand that if I was using a larger resolution (I’m using 1280 by 1024 or something like that) they’d be easier to read but then I’d have the problem of not fitting as much stuff on my screen and I use a lot of stuff. So it’s a trade off. If you can use a larger resolution, you might want to. Of course if you know the layout of these vintage synths like the back of your hand, it won’t matter. You won’t need to be able to read the description of each knob and slider. If not, you’re going to have some trouble.

Now that I’ve gotten all the bad stuff out of the way (yes, that’s all I can nit pick about) let’s get to the good stuff.

All of these modules are true representations of the originals as far as sound and look. I think they did take some liberties with the Mini Moog and added some modern stuff to it, but other than that, it’s pretty close to the original as far as look and sound.

Each of the modules comes with about 400 presets so you have plenty of sounds to choose from and most of them are just great and really show off what those instruments were capable of doing. I especially love the Oberheim SEM. Back in the day when I used to think that all synths sounded the same, I could always tell the difference between the Oberheim and the Mini Moog. The Prophet has that Prophet sound and the Jupiter 8 has that lush washed out sound that you either loved or hated.

Speaking of loved or hated, the Yamaha CS 80, which was one hell of a beast, sounds so authentic I’m not sure how I feel about it. It even comes with the ribbon controller. Truth is, I always thought the Yamaha synths were a little overpriced. The sound wasn’t the greatest in the world. But in listening to this thing again after all these years, I am starting to get an appreciation for why it was so popular. There is just something about it that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. Who knows? What I do know is this…you WILL feel like you’re playing a CS 80.

For the record, I never owned a CS 80 back in the day but I did own the CS 60 which was just a step down. The only thing I remember about it, other than sounding so cheesy, was that it weighed a ton. I can only imagine what the CS 80 weighed.

Let me touch on Analog Lab for a moment. This is a strange machine. Essentially it has two oscillators for lack of a better term. Each oscillator can be assigned a different vintage synth sound. So for example, you can assign a lead from the Prophet to one oscillator and a pad from the Jupiter 8 to the other oscillator.

Now, I haven’t had the time to dive into this thing in detail but I’m hoping that you can load in sounds that you’ve created from your other synths. Wouldn’t that be great? I’ll have to download the manual to see just how flexible this thing is. But it does look promising.

Finally, let me touch on the patch chord synths, the ARP 2600 and the Moog Modular. This is where I really wish the modules were a little larger in size. These beasts were always a puzzle to me. I’m pretty good with programming synths but I never quite got the hang of the patch chord thing. And running my own business, I’m not sure I’ll have the time to dive into these other than to just use the presets, which by the way sound great.

And that’s really what it all comes down to. If you loved the sound of these vintage synths then you are going to love this collection. Installation is a little tricky and I had a little trouble finding a few of the VSTs inside of Cubase because they were put in areas I didn’t expect, but other than that, I can’t complain. I’ve got 11 sounds, well 10 if you chuck the Wurlitzer, that really bring me back to when I first started doing this stuff in 1979.

If you’re an old guy like me, you won’t be disappointed.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

So this morning I get up a little before 5:30 AM. Yeah, I’m an early riser. Anyway, I didn’t really feel like getting right to work (writing this article) so I decided to do a search for the best synth VSTs. I wanted to see if maybe there was something that I had missed. After all, new stuff is coming out all the time and you can never be 100% sure that there isn’t something out there that you won’t find useful.

Well, I do this search at YouTube and up pops all these videos on the subject. One of them really caught my eye. It was the top 100 free VST synths. I couldn’t resist. So I started the video. Essentially what it was, was about 30 second samples of each VST spread out over the course of two videos, each one 25 minutes long.

Now, some of these VSTs I already owned and knew how good they were or whether or not they would even work on my 64 bit host. That’s the problem with a lot of free VSTs, especially older ones. They don’t play so well with Windows 7 64 bit and a lot of VSTs that I had downloaded, which actually sounded great while they worked, eventually crapped out and crashed my Cubase. Some never worked at all and the only reason I know they sounded good was because I had heard demos.

Point is, I went into watching these videos with some reservation. I understood that if I had heard anything that I really liked that there was a chance that it wouldn’t work.

I was pleased to see that a number of free VSTs that I really liked were on this top 100 list. What this did was give me some confidence that I’d find something else worth getting. Had all the VSTs in the video been garbage, I probably would have turned it off after a few minutes, if that.

So, did I find anything good? Actually, yes. I found a few decent sounding synths, even if some of them were essentially only good for certain applications.

For example, I found this T-Force Alpha Plus for making trance sounds. It’s actually a very good sounding synth. Basically you’re limited to trance leads and bass sounds but if you need that sort of thing, this synth will fit the bill just fine. And it has a couple of features that even some premium synths don’t have. I guess you can do that when you’re only doing one or two things.

And then it hit me.

I’ve been searching for the ultimate synth, not that I expected to find it out of a list of free plugins. But still, I keep looking. T-Force Alpha Plus made me realize that you don’t have to find the ultimate synth for your music production. A good narrow synth might be just what the doctor ordered.

That’s when I realized that I have a few of these in my collection that maybe I have been unfairly neglecting. So I went to Cubase to see what I had and found these few little tidbits. I think you might find then useful, even if they’re rather limited.

Altair 4 – Did you ever see that old 1950s film “Forbidden Planet?” Well, if you did, you heard some strange sci fi like sound effects. Altair 4 recreates those effects and other synth noises. You’re not going to use it for melody lines, but if you need some good sci fi effects, this plugin will do the job.

Trancedrive – This may very well be the mother of all trance synths. It has that classic sound and has it in spades. It’s not really good for much else but if you’re looking to do trance music, this is one VST that you want to have.

X-Wof – This is one oddball synth. It’s difficult to explain just what it is this thing does. I haven’t yet figured out how to play a lead with it, if it’s even possible. What it’s great at is setting a soundscape. There are multiple parts to this playback engine including drums, percussion, bass and synth sounds. Essentially what you do is program each part, set it to the tempo of your DAW host and let it run. The sound isn’t anything earth shattering but it’s perfect for those ethereal soundscapes that you hear in lots of sci fi or horror flicks.

And that’s just three of the many plugins that I have that you probably only want to use for certain applications. But when you need something for those certain applications, plugins like these are extremely useful.

What you may want to do, if you’re looking for a particular sound for one of your songs, is look up that particular sound itself, assuming it’s something that you can describe. For example, if you searched for “synths that make sci fi sounds” at Google, Atair 4 would be in the top 10 results and you’d have a perfect synth for what you need.

Looking up best synth vst is great if you want a synth that can cover the meat and potatoes of music production. But if you’re looking for something very specific, maybe you don’t need to plunk down between $100 and $500 (for Omnisphere). Ironically, trying to program Omnisphere to do what Altair 4 can do might prove to be quite a challenge and not worth the effort when Altair 4 can do it in a matter of seconds. Time spent on creating patches has to be considered when choosing a VST for your arsenal.

And so the endless search will continue. At the rate that new synths are being made, I have no doubt that, if a month from now I do another search, I’ll find yet more synths that I never heard of or never tried. And I just might find something that I can use. What I won’t do is solely look for the ultimate synth if all I want to do is make a few sci fi sounds.

Sometimes a simple little VST is all you need.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Well, I’ve just finished my six week songwriting course and all I can say is wow. In spite of having been writing songs for over 35 years, I have learned a whole new way of looking at the process of songwriting. In fact, I will never approach writing a song the same way ever again. Not only that but I will never listen to music the same way ever again.

Having said that, I don’t expect everybody who writes songs to use the same songwriting process. I am sure there are many ways to go about this process that can produce similar results. But I’m going to share the process that I’ve been exposed to in my own way. It may not be 100% identical to the one actually taught, but it’s the way I understand it and interpret it and it will be the process I personally use when writing songs in the future.

It starts with the idea. What do I want to write about? At this point, I would probably jot down some ideas on a piece of paper. When I come up with one I like, I will try to come up with some kind of a title for the idea. It doesn’t have to be the title that the song ultimately ends up with but it’s at least something to start with.

After I get a title, I’ll break out my boxes. In each box I will outline the “story” of the song from beginning to middle to end. The beginning will go in the first box, the middle in the second box and the end in the third box. I will concentrate on making sure that the song Moves, that the story doesn’t stagnate. I will rely on my six friends, who, what, why, where, when and how, to get me through the story and fill in the details such as who is telling the story and why are they telling it and so on.

From the boxes we then move onto our keywords for the story. These are the most important words in the story. And for each keyword I’m going to think of words that rhyme with this keywords. But not just any old rhymes. Words that rhyme but have a direct meaning to the story itself. This will eliminate words that rhyme just for the sake of rhyming.

I will try to use rhymes that are more interesting than just your basic true rhymes. I will try to use family, additive/subtractive, assonance and consonance rhymes. I may not use them all but I will be aware of them all and list them on my rhyming worksheet. I will try to come up with at least nine keywords and at least 5 or 6 words that rhyme with each. I will use a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus to come up with these rhymes.

After I have done all that, I will actually start the songwriting process. I will probably have some idea of what form I want to use for my song, whether it be verse/chorus or AABA. It doesn’t have to be set in stone at this point. It can change. But I’ll start out with some idea of where I want to go with this.

Here is where I will start combining multiple tools into the process in the writing of each line. A lot of different things come into play when writing a line of music.

For starters, I will want to establish a mood for each line as well as the overall song itself. Is the song going to be happy or sad, definitive or wishy-washy? What person will it be sung from? First, second, third? Will the song be about myself or about others who I have observed? This will all help determine the way the lines themselves are constructed.

I will be very conscious of stability for each line. Am I confident in what I’m saying? If so, the line is probably stable. If it is stable, I’m probably going to want to have the accented words coming in on the downbeat of the line, or the first beat. If I’m not really confident in what I’m saying and there is a hint of uncertainty or maybe longing, then the feeling is more unstable and I’ll probably want the accented word to come in after the downbeat.

Moving on to the next line, if the mood is stable, I’ll probably want the next line to have a stable rhyme. So I will lean more towards true rhyme or maybe family rhyme. If the mood is more unstable, I will learn more towards additive/subtractive rhyme or even assonance or consonance rhyme. As for the length of the first verse or section (depending on if we go verse/chorus or AABA) if stable, I will want to keep to an even number of lines. If unstable, I will probably want to use an odd number of lines so that the section naturally wants to move onto the next section.

I will continue this process for every line and every section of my song, making sure that the structure of the song matches the mood of the song.

After the lyrics are done, I will begin working on the melody if I haven’t already gotten one in my head while writing the lyrics themselves. In doing this, I will make note of the tonic of the melody, depending on what key I’m writing in. If the line is stable, I will want the accented words to use notes that are stable to the tonic. So in the key of C, that would be C, E and G with all other notes being unstable. For unstable accents, I will use those other notes. If in the key of C the chord for a particular line changes to the dominant, G, and the mood is still stable, the stable notes change to G, B and D. Suddenly, C is no longer a stable note.

Now, we didn’t get to harmony in the course but something I have figured out on my own over the years is that when you want to express stability harmonically, you’ll use major chords. If you want to express instability, you’ll use minor chords. Minor chords make us feel sad or angry while major chords make us feel happy. I’m not sure exactly why that is. That’s far advanced from what I’ve learned from the course. But I think it rings pretty true with few, if any, exceptions.

Will I “micromanage” each line and even each word of the song I write? Probably. I’ve come to realize that just by changing where the accented word comes in relative to the downbeat can have a HUGE impact on the feel of the song. The question is, will all this micromanaging make for a better song?

It will make it better relative to the amount of skill that you’ve developed as a songwriter. The level of that skill will be determined by many factors including how long you’ve been writing, how long you’ve been using the tools and your ability to absorb concepts and execute them.

Do I believe that everybody has the ability to be the next Jennifer Warren? No, I don’t. But I do believe that everybody has a better chance of achieving that level of expertise by learning the tools of the trade and crafting better songs.

If this makes it sound like some kind of assembly line process, in a way, it is. Yet, there is still room for plenty of creativity in the process. it’s not like we’re making cars where each one is the same.

Anyway, I hope this has been of some help to you in seeing how I would go about the process of writing songs

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Don’t let the title of this article fool you. It’s not about compressors. Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s about all DSPs in general and whether or not you really need to spend $200 on a compressor or whatever plugin it is you’re thinking of getting.

If you recall, if you’ve been following my articles on a regular basis, I wrote one on using effects effectively. So this isn’t going to be a tutorial on using this stuff. It’s more about your ears. I know meters are there for a reason and yeah, it’s great to know what your sound looks like. I personally love my graphic EQ so I can draw my line just the way I want it depending on what the sound “looks” like.

But it still ultimately comes down to the sound. And the ultimate question I’m going to ask today is this. Is the sound that you get from a $200 thingamajig going to be $200 better than the sound you get from a free or relatively cheap plugin?

Now, with synths, for the most part, the answer is quite obvious. After having downloaded hundreds of free synths, with the exception of very few, sound wise, the top of the line synths blow the free ones away. Yes, there are exceptions. I have a few free synths, including Synth1 and Sonigen Modular, just to name two, that sound very good. But for the most part, free synths are pretty bad.

But I haven’t found the same to be true with DSPs. Now maybe that’s because what a DSP does is relatively subtle compared to the rich filters and oscillators of the top synths.

Now granted, I don’t own many “premium” DSPs. In fact, you can probably count them on one hand. Now part of that has to do with how many of these things you really need for music production.

I mean really, what do you really need to do basic music production? In my opinion, these are the only DSPs that are absolutely essential for getting a good sound out of your mix.

EQ
Gate
Delay
Reverb
Compressor
Limiter

That’s it. Six plugins. If you have these six plugins you pretty much have the essentials.

Now, any decent DAW comes with all these things. I know Cubase does. How good are they? Well, I guess that depends on what you’re comparing them to. Personally, I’ve found them satisfactory for getting a good sound out of my mix. They do the job.

When I bought NI’s Complete 9, it came with some plugins that I guess people would call better than free if not premium plugins. Do they sound better than the ones I had previously? The EQ is absolutely much better than the Voxengo Curve EQ that came with Cubase. In fact, comparatively speaking, it’s like the Voxengo doesn’t even do anything. I was genuinely surprised.

But here’s the kicker. I’ve listened to demos of a couple of $100 to $200 EQs. I didn’t hear that much difference between them and the NI Solid State EQ. Certainly not enough to justify plunking down $200 on it.

And this is what really got me thinking. There is no question that a professionally mixed song sounds better than my own. For me to argue this would be foolish and make me look, well, just plain stupid. And I am sure these professional producers use the most expensive equipment in the world.

But how much of that great sound is the equipment and how much of it is the skill of the producer himself?

Let me put it this way? In whose hands will that $200 EQ or compressor sound better in, his or mine? I think the answer is pretty obvious. As good a sound as I’m going to get out of it, the pro is going to get an even better sound.

Okay, let’s now take this one step further.

If the pro is going to get a much better sound out of that $200 EQ or compressor than I will, how much better a sound will I get out of that $200 EQ or compressor than out of my free or cheap plugin? Will it be worth the extra cost?

See, a $200 DSP may technically sound better than your free DSP but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get $200 worth of sound out of it in your hands just like not everybody can get the best sounds out of a $500 synth plugin or a grand piano. The skill of the artist does come into play.

Well, the skill of the producer absolutely comes into play. He knows exactly what knobs to turn and how much. The novice is going to just fumble around and hope for something that sounds good.

But what about us guys who are somewhere in the middle? We’re not pros but we’re not green either. We’ve been mixing music for a while. How much of our money can we soak out of that $200 plugin? For some of us it might be no more than $25. For others, maybe $50 or even $75.

And that’s making a very big assumption that this $200 plugin is actually worth $200.

Come on, let’s face it. We’ve all bought expensive things that turned out to be disappointing. Not everything with a high price tag sounds like it comes with one. Or do I really have to point out how badly old analog synths sounded and how much they cost?

And then there is this? Are YOUR ears even trained to hear the difference between your free limiter and Voxengo’s Elephant? I was only able to tell the difference in side by side tests where they boosted up the DB by +8. Who does that? I don’t. So if I don’t, will the Voxengo, which I think is about $129 right now, sound that much better to me than my free Limiter 6?

If you can’t hear the difference then you can’t produce the difference.

And ultimately, that’s what it comes down to. So download the demos. Try them out. See if you can “hear” the difference. If you can’t, the answer is obvious.

You don’t really need a $200 compressor.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

In this article, I’m going to list my best synthesizer recommendations and give some reasons why I chose each one. Hopefully, this will help you to make an informed decision as to what synthesizer you get for your collection. Please note, these are all soft synths used in digital audio workstations. So if you’re looking for hardware, you’re going to have to look elsewhere for recommendations as I’ve sold all my hardware synths.

Okay, let’s begin.

Number 5 – Synth1

This one might surprise a lot of people. After all, it’s a free synth. How good can a free synth be Well, let me tell you something about synthesizers in general. You might or might not wonder what parts of a synthesizer are the most important as far as the quality of the sound that you get. If I had to pick just one thing, it would be the filters. Well, Synth1 has a great filter. There is only one, but is has low pass 24, low pass 12, high pass 12 and band pass 12 settings. You can get some nice filter sweeps and analog sounds out of this thing.

You get two oscillators that can be sync’d and you also get a ring modulator that sounds great. There are two LFOs with limited routings but they cover the basic things you’ll probably want to modulate including filter, amp and pulse width.

There is also an arpeggiator and an effects section.

If you want some great meat and potatoes synth sounds, as this things is equally good at basses, leads, pads and sfx, you really can’t beat this as a free synth.

My only complaint is that it’s not completely 64 bit compatible. When you go to edit the parameters, the interface goes a little wonky and it is a bit of a pain. But the sounds make it worth while. If you’re broke and need a good sounding synth, this is my recommendation.

Number 4 – NI Massive

A lot of people are probably going to ask me, why only number 4? Well, as the “premium” synths go, this one is probably the most limited. It only has 3 oscillators. All the synths I’m going to list over Massive have a minimum of 4 oscillators.

Here is why I do love Massive so much that it made my top 5. It is probably the easiest synth in the world to program. The design is incredibly intuitive. Modulation routings are so easy to set up. It’s essentially click and drag. Plus, they’re incredibly flexible. Now, you don’t have as many routing options as the higher end synths, but the learning curve is so much easier. I give NI 5 stars on the user interface.

As for the sound, it’s excellent. There are two filters and each one has 12 options including acid and scream filters. The oscillators also have a number of options that go way beyond sawtooth, square, triangle and sine. There is a modern talking waveform that is to die for.

Throw in 4 envelopes, a couple of LFOs and some neat effects and you have everything you need for a meat and potatoes synth and a lot more. Super complex sounds out of this you won’t get because the synth is slightly limited in what it can do. But for most musical applications, it’s perfect.

Number 3 – Synthmaster 2.6

Honestly, this and number 2 are percentage points apart. In fact, I had a hard time in choosing between the two of them. Ultimately, what it came down to is ease of programming.

Synthmaster is a bit of a learning curve. It is very flexible but also very deep. The interface isn’t nearly as intuitive as Massive. You really have to study it and work with it before you’ll get comfortable with it.

For one thing, it has two layers per patch. By default, layer 2 is turned off. You have to manually turn it on to get any sound out of it.

Then there are the oscillators. Upon first examination, it would appear that they are limited. They are not. You need to left click with your mouse where it says “Basic” next to type to uncover the other oscillator options. You have additive, wavescan, vector and audio in. These oscillators are very flexible when combined with the modulation matrix.

Let me touch on the matrix. I don’t know how deep it can really go. The reason for this is because there are only 8 possible routings per page. However, you have have multiple pages. How many? Ah, not sure. Have never gotten past page one. But appears the routings are virtually unlimited.

Synthmaster’s filters have a number of options. You can go digital or analog. The graphical representation makes them very easy to program. In fact, everything is easy to program because almost everything is graphical. Makes it easy to see what you’re doing.

You also get 4 LFOs and 5 different effects. Yeah, it’s a little skimpy on the effects but that’s not where this synth shines. It shines on its sound. I can’t think of very much you can’t get out of this synth. It is very flexible. The sound is excellent. It can go fat, thin, atmospheric, deep bass, screaming lead or whatever. It’s a little pricey but worth every penny.

Number 2 – Zebra 2

Okay, so why did Zebra 2 just beat out Synthmaster. Soundwise, they’re very similar. I think Zebra’s sound is a little fatter but that’s to be expected because it has a couple more oscillator options and some really powerful filters which pretty much blow every other synth’s away except for the synth that made number 1 on my hit parade.

Zebra’s interface is very compact, but don’t let it fool you. It is very deep. The oscillator section is so complex you can get lost in it. You can literally design any waveform that you can think of visually. Sound wise, there is nothing you can’t create unless you’re trying to duplicate exactly an acoustic instrument. That’s still beyond the capabilities of plain synths without samples. And no, none of the synths so far use samples. Massive uses wavetables but that’s as close as it gets.

Anyway, Zebra is semi modular. You can pretty much build your synth the way you want, within reason. It’s not totally open ended but it’s close enough. You got 6 oscillators, 4 envelopes, 4 LFOs and a ton of modulation capabilities.

Then there is the sound. Wow! Equally as good with pads as leads, bases or anything else you can think of. And with the semi modular structure, you can get some pretty complicated sounds out of this.

If you don’t want to spend the really big bucks on number 1, this is the synth I would recommend you get. It can do virtually anything.

Number 1 – Spectrasonics Omnisphere

At $499 and change, this thing better be unbelievable. And it is. Aside from the synth programming and your traditional synth waveforms (sawtooth, square, etc.) you also have a ton of sampled sounds. Speaking of which. As of right now, this monster comes with about 8,000 sounds. So right there is blows away every other synth on the market. If you never wanted to program your own sounds and just pull something up and play and never run out of new sounds, this is your baby.

But it doesn’t end there. I talked about Zebra’s compact interface. Well, this thing has taken 10,000 pounds of ham and somehow fit it into a 2 pound bag. Powerful doesn’t even begin to describe it.

However, there is a downside to this. You really have to dig deep into this thing to get the most out of it. And without reading the manual and/or watching the videos, that’s not going to happen. There is just too much here to absorb, even if you’re a master synth programmer.

Modulation? Anything, and I mean ANYTHING can be modulated from just about anywhere. You can not only modulate the effects but you can modulate just one parameter of an effect. You can do it on the oscillator or patch level.

And while each patch only has 2 oscillators, stack mode allows you to stack 8 patches at once. So effectively, you can have as many as 16 oscillators. If you use Unison mode on each patch, well, you can imagine how fat this thing can get.

Remember what I said about the filters being so important? Wait until you see how many different filter options this thing has. Has to be close to 30.

For something to be close to $500 in a land where other soft synths cost $99 to $150, this thing has to be amazing for me to say that it’s worth every penny and probably cheaper than I would have imagined had somebody told me what was in this thing.

If you want just one synth that can literally do anything and I mean ANYTHING, then Omnisphere is the synth you want to get. If Zebra is a 9, Omnisphere is a 19. There is just nothing that even comes close.

Anyway, there you have it. My top 5 soft synth picks.

If you have any questions about any of these, please feel free to email me using the contact form on my main site.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim