beginner plug ins

[Mushy Mushy]

http://www.audiodamage.com/instruments/ ... ?pid=AD033

Designed for this very purpose.


One day not long ago, we were speaking with the music department head of a local college; he lamented the fact that there really wasn't a commercial-quality low-cost three oscillator subtractive mono-synth available for the educational market. This puzzled us, because there's no shortage of synth plug-ins out there, and this seems like a fairly glaring oversight.

So we did some market research, and discovered he was right. All the available options are either slavish recreations of classic synths, with all the foibles and strange UI decisions intact, or modern behemoths with every feature under the sun. We decided to tackle the challenge of an inexpensive, simple 3-osc mono-synth that followed the classic subtractive style, and Basic is the result.

While it is designed with ease-of-use, low cost, and simplicity in mind, the panel sits in front of a powerful modern synthesizer engine with an aggressive tone and self-resonating filters that scream when pushed. We're sure every electronic musician will find a place in the mix for Basic.

[brainzistor]

OK, this is advice from someone who is using FL since version 4.
Forget about Sylenth or any other 3rd party synth.

You have 3xOSC in FL, this is the most basic synth that has 3 oscillators


and you can adjust envelope and LFO by switching tabs (triangle icon, actually it's the picture of envelope), activating envelope so that you adjust attack, release, sustain, etc. and in the last tab (wrench icon) there is arpeggiator, echo/delay, etc.

Don't be fooled by its simplicity, 3xOSC is a very powerful and good sounding synth.
It doesn't have all fancy stuff, but that's the point if you want to learn synthesis.

By learning how to get good sound with it you will also learn how to use effects, reverb,
delay, phaser, chorus by applying them on 3xOSC.

You can also go to Image Line's forums and visit 3xOSC section of forums
to see what music people created with it, for example this guy Oziaso who used 3xOSC for everything and used 3xOSC in many of his tracks:

http://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.p ... 7&t=138662

and you can find tons of presets for it to get you started, but I wouldn't recommend downloading presets but instead making them on your own. Learning synthesis is like learning any other real instrument, you need to invest some time to learn things and to suffer a bit

Next one is FL's MiniSynth (added later on in FL, a couple of years ago):


This is probably even the best synth for starters, when it comes to FL Studio. It's simple, straightforward, it sounds good.

Next non-FL Studio synths I would recommend is freeware Synth1,
then Dune BE which you can download here (you need to register first):
http://www.studiodrive.de/?t=plugin_det ... 8&cat=&os=
The main difference between Dune1 and Dune BE is that Dune BE doesn't have FX section, but nonetheless Dune BE is still awesome.

There's no point of buying Sylenth, Spire, Serum, etc. and taking that path. It's like buying Fender Stratocaster or Ibanez with 7 strings while you still don't even know how to play chords.
You already have tools that sound great and that are easy to use at the same time.

The most stupid thing you can do is to torrent those synths (Sylenth, Spire, Serum, Massive, etc.), next thing you'll do is torrenting a bunch of soundbanks. That way you won't learn A SINGLE THING. In 1-2 years you'll give up and throw away everything.
I've seen it dozens of times throughout years, practically definition of being the king for a day, fool for a lifetime.

[Aryaroman]

Omnisphere.

[electro]

 
TAL U-NO-LX V2 (commercial)

this is exactly what you want. not tried the free one, but LX is cheap.

the sound is simple yet spectacular, the interface has everything you need to start getting to grips with the basics.

easy to use, great old school sound. it has lots of free (and pay) presets.

also, get a midi keyboard if you haven't. very important. testing patches with a keyboard is the way to go. i didn't have one for ages, relying on the piano roll. BIG mistake. i can't play for shit FYI.

don't make the mistake of keep on buying stuff when you don't get the sound you are looking for in your head.

get the TAL and a midi keyboard. anything else is a waste of time and money and will likely only confuse and discourage you.

great advice. TAL is #1

[Aryaroman]

 
TAL U-NO-LX V2 (commercial)

this is exactly what you want. not tried the free one, but LX is cheap.

the sound is simple yet spectacular, the interface has everything you need to start getting to grips with the basics.

easy to use, great old school sound. it has lots of free (and pay) presets.

also, get a midi keyboard if you haven't. very important. testing patches with a keyboard is the way to go. i didn't have one for ages, relying on the piano roll. BIG mistake. i can't play for shit FYI.

don't make the mistake of keep on buying stuff when you don't get the sound you are looking for in your head.

get the TAL and a midi keyboard. anything else is a waste of time and money and will likely only confuse and discourage you.

great advice. TAL is #1

I tried the demo, but it was somewhat CPU-heavy.

How about AAS Ultra Analog 2? It's on -50% sale, 99e.

[exmatproton]

 
TAL U-NO-LX V2 (commercial)

this is exactly what you want. not tried the free one, but LX is cheap.

the sound is simple yet spectacular, the interface has everything you need to start getting to grips with the basics.

easy to use, great old school sound. it has lots of free (and pay) presets.

also, get a midi keyboard if you haven't. very important. testing patches with a keyboard is the way to go. i didn't have one for ages, relying on the piano roll. BIG mistake. i can't play for shit FYI.

don't make the mistake of keep on buying stuff when you don't get the sound you are looking for in your head.

get the TAL and a midi keyboard. anything else is a waste of time and money and will likely only confuse and discourage you.

great advice. TAL is #1

I tried the demo, but it was somewhat CPU-heavy.

How about AAS Ultra Analog 2? It's on -50% sale, 99e.

CPU heavy?? What kind of CPU do you use?? This synth is awesome and not at all heavy.

[Aryaroman]

 
TAL U-NO-LX V2 (commercial)

this is exactly what you want. not tried the free one, but LX is cheap.

the sound is simple yet spectacular, the interface has everything you need to start getting to grips with the basics.

easy to use, great old school sound. it has lots of free (and pay) presets.

also, get a midi keyboard if you haven't. very important. testing patches with a keyboard is the way to go. i didn't have one for ages, relying on the piano roll. BIG mistake. i can't play for shit FYI.

don't make the mistake of keep on buying stuff when you don't get the sound you are looking for in your head.

get the TAL and a midi keyboard. anything else is a waste of time and money and will likely only confuse and discourage you.

great advice. TAL is #1

I tried the demo, but it was somewhat CPU-heavy.

How about AAS Ultra Analog 2? It's on -50% sale, 99e.

CPU heavy?? What kind of CPU do you use?? This synth is awesome and not at all heavy.

I can run Omnisphere okay and mostly without crackling. This one started crackling with too many voices and it wasn't the demo limitation.

[exmatproton]

 
TAL U-NO-LX V2 (commercial)

this is exactly what you want. not tried the free one, but LX is cheap.

the sound is simple yet spectacular, the interface has everything you need to start getting to grips with the basics.

easy to use, great old school sound. it has lots of free (and pay) presets.

also, get a midi keyboard if you haven't. very important. testing patches with a keyboard is the way to go. i didn't have one for ages, relying on the piano roll. BIG mistake. i can't play for shit FYI.

don't make the mistake of keep on buying stuff when you don't get the sound you are looking for in your head.

get the TAL and a midi keyboard. anything else is a waste of time and money and will likely only confuse and discourage you.

great advice. TAL is #1

I tried the demo, but it was somewhat CPU-heavy.

How about AAS Ultra Analog 2? It's on -50% sale, 99e.

CPU heavy?? What kind of CPU do you use?? This synth is awesome and not at all heavy.

I can run Omnisphere okay and mostly without crackling. This one started crackling with too many voices and it wasn't the demo limitation.

Well, omnisphere isn't really heavy. It can be, but only with certain patches, the heavier ones. TAL's synth is quite light. I can run 9 of them without any problems...9x12 voices @96kHz.

[Aryaroman]

I'll have to check it again.

[SampleScience]

TAL NoiseMaker is pretty good and comes with a great set of presets:

https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker

[felis]

Learn to really use what you've already got first. Then anything else you get later will be easier to pick up on.
Synth1 is a good recommendation. Tons of sounds for it that you can use or dissect to see how they are getting
the sounds from it.

[wagtunes]

After going through my list of VSTs, these are the ones I'd recommend as beginner synths.

Any free TAL synth. They're simple and sound great.

A decent Mini Moog emulation. I'd go with Arturia Mini V. It is a very basic 3 osc synth with a great sound. This is what we learned on back in the late 70s.

I'd also recommend Synth1 because there is a vast library of patches out there that you can study and dissect.

After you get these down, you can move on to more complicated synths.

[GaryG]

http://www.audiodamage.com/instruments/ ... ?pid=AD033

Chris teased in a tweet recently a poly version could be on the books (certainly sounds like they have a prototype...)

ANyway, anyone mentioned Charlatan?

Free, sounds great and good for getting the hang of the basics of subtractive synthesis.

[exmatproton]

http://www.audiodamage.com/instruments/ ... ?pid=AD033

Chris teased in a tweet recently a poly version could be on the books (certainly sounds like they have a prototype...)

ANyway, anyone mentioned Charlatan?

Free, sounds great and good for getting the hang of the basics of subtractive synthesis.

Offtopic; is audio damage still alive? I haven't heared anything from them for quite some time now...

[ruud07]

I would install Live 9 suite and use the Analog synthesizer which sounds great. Find some tutorials on YouTube and follow along, it's a great way to learn programming your own sounds.