Best FREE VST-Instruments suitable for PopRock (and Lovesong-) composing

[BlackWinny]

@crimsonwarlock or Black Winny: Which bank/preset have been used in the video above? (That Pad/Strings sound is absolutely brilliant & lovely as it most likely would fit perfect in your tracks when creating feelful parts for moments of relaxation)

It was the song which won the One Synth Challenge dedicated to Ragnarök:
https://sites.google.com/site/kvrosc/osc-70-ragnarok

The winner, composer of this song, was Photonic.

You can download his presets here (browse down to "Photonic KVROSC#70 - The Organist's Dream").

@BlackWinny: Nice list, but with all respect, keep in mind, your plugin-list you've shown there, includes a mix of commercial & free plugins, in contrast to my list, that just focuses on FREE plugins only, suiting for LoveSongs/PopRock (+ sorted in categorys of common instruments) and "Out of the box" plugins, for what composers can make quick use of great sounding patches/presets, instead of tweaking their sounds manually on and on until they finally got their satisfying sounds by wasting hours and hours of their precious time.

Yes, and I didn't write this post to hijack the readers from yours but to recall its existence to everyone and also to give you other suggestions to pick into.

Black Winny, you've also missed an absolutely MUST gem: ..

---> "POLY 2106" by Synthescience (Best Free Emulation by far of ROLAND JUNO 106 !!!)

You're totally right! And I'm going to add it to my list.


And if even you, you have other suggestions, don't hesitate! I'm glad that you can pick in mine to feed yours, so don't hesitate to also give your own suggestions.

About Orpheus Strings by Serrano -> Yes I agree, that at least here in this case, it seems to be more a 'matter of our personal taste'. <- Wasn't the idea to emulate the famous "E-mu Morpheus Z-Plane Synthesizer" Hardware with "Orpheus"? At least I haven't found yet any other FREE stuff that sounds closer to that machine. (Note, in old Playstation1 Games such as TombRaider, you hear that kind of synth string sounds a lot)

---> E-mu Morpheus Z-Plane Hardware demonstration ->
-
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2T3HpT8pFo

After listening to that, I was asking myself, why not using such a wonderful instrument for Ballads & Lovesongs when the texture of the sounds is so brilliantly producing enormous relaxing effects?

It's been a while that I haven't been in contact with Benoît. He stopped his production because while Synthedit went 64-bit, the modules that Benoît used a lot, modules from Chris Kerry, will never go 64-bit. For Benoît (and for many other users of Chris' modules, me included) it was very sad, a shot to the heart, and Benoît preferred to stop. And he had also other occupations on which he wanted to focus a bit more, mainly his family.

But I still love all his synths and effects, I still use them with JBridge.

Orpheus was not an attempt to simulate the E-Mu Morpheus Z-Plane. First he never mentioned it when we talked about Orpheus, even on our French forums. And Orpheus was mainly made for strings and pads (and Serena much more again as a dedicated string-machine extracted from the code of Orpheus), while E-Mu Morpheus was much more extended to many other types of sounds, being a huge digital synth with 197 extremely complex filters and multitimbrality and many ways to morph between the timbres hence its name.

"Full Bucket Music makes GREAT QUALITY PLUGINS indeed!!!"

Sure ! It is my main source of freeware synths. And I'm as Björn... a lover of the old Korg hardware synths since my younger age.

[crimsonwarlock]

@Crimsonwarlock: My Apologize to you for not adding it earlier, you totally deserve that spot in my list. (You can blame me, that I haven't doublechecked it enough on my testing attempt about 2 years ago, obviously, it wasn't carefully enough) That's why the last sentence in this poste now credits you guys with some ad, that you plugin-developers really deserve: ..

"Full Bucket Music makes GREAT QUALITY PLUGINS indeed!!!"

No hard feelings, my asking to put Ragnarok in the list was done with a bit of tong-in-cheek

Ragnarok has received its accolades more than enough, as it has been in the top of many 'best of' lists for the last years. However, because of its somewhat non-standard architecture it is often overlooked while that architecture is its strength and rather powerful, especially for pad sounds.

It also needs to be said that. although I'm the owner and builder of the actual hardware Ragnarok (which is purely monophonic by the way) and of course closely involved with the project, the fantastic sound of the software Ragnarok is Bjorn's effort alone as he does all the coding

And thanks to BlackWimmy and Halonmusic for the votes

[Halonmusic]

@Crimsonwarlock: My Apologize to you for not adding it earlier, you totally deserve that spot in my list. (You can blame me, that I haven't doublechecked it enough on my testing attempt about 2 years ago, obviously, it wasn't carefully enough) That's why the last sentence in this poste now credits you guys with some ad, that you plugin-developers really deserve: ..

"Full Bucket Music makes GREAT QUALITY PLUGINS indeed!!!"

No hard feelings, my asking to put Ragnarok in the list was done with a bit of tong-in-cheek

Ragnarok has received its accolades more than enough, as it has been in the top of many 'best of' lists for the last years. However, because of its somewhat non-standard architecture it is often overlooked while that architecture is its strength and rather powerful, especially for pad sounds.

It also needs to be said that. although I'm the owner and builder of the actual hardware Ragnarok (which is purely monophonic by the way) and of course closely involved with the project, the fantastic sound of the software Ragnarok is Bjorn's effort alone as he does all the coding

And thanks to BlackWimmy and Halonmusic for the votes

[Full Bucket]

I must admit that I never would have imagined Ragnarök to appear in a Lovesong list...

...and: Thanks for the flowers, fella bucketeers!

Cheers, the Full Bucketeer

[crimsonwarlock]

I must admit that I never would have imagined Ragnarök to appear in a Lovesong list...

Now wait a minute..... you and I need to talk

[Gabriel_West]

Demonstration of Poly 2106 (Roland Juno 106 Emulation) / Preset: Carpet Pad Magic in my Sentimental PopRock Song "I show you my way" as instrumental version and why this Synth+Preset sits so well in a track with Deep 'melancholic' Basslines (All used Instruments you'll find on the list on page1) ->

https://soundcloud.com/user-926227779/i ... briel-west

When I've composed the chorus in 2001, I still could sing the highest note of this song - the high d'' (whole tone step over the high Pavarotti c''), nowadays under the age of 40, unfortunately, I already get in trouble when singing the high c'' !! [Damn]

[BlackWinny]

Splendid!

[RunBeerRun]

Whats the best cutesy-poo vst instrument for my Grampa.

[sfd]

And what are the parameter settings on Ragnarök for composing love songs ?

You'd come up with a melody, build a chord progression, do the arrangement and orchestration. Then you'd consider what synth(s) to use to get the sound you want.

The OP's question is really, again, as asking: "Which pencil is best for writing thrillers?"

An author would say: "It doesn't matter."

While those who never wrote a book say: "Linton. Just look on those dramatic lines drawn with that pencil." (screenshot of an abstract zig-zag pattern)

Then Brian says: : "Wow, I never knew one could write thrillers with a Linton pencil".

I'm not criticizing any synth here. I'm pointing at the last word of the thread's initial question.

[crimsonwarlock]

And what are the parameter settings on Ragnarök for composing love songs ?

So when you need some piano you simply use a B3 for that...... they both have keyboards so it shouldn't matter, right?

Different synths have different strengths and characters. Of course you can take any bread-and-butter synth, like e.g. Synth1 for just about any type of music, but sometimes specific instruments are much easier to get a result fast. Ragnarok (just as an example) is specifically aimed at combining octave stacks and unison spread at the same time, making big pads, organ sounds etc. very easy to dial up and tweak to where you want them.

Comparing a synth, which is a pretty complex tool with incredible potential on its own, with a pen (or pencil) that does just one thing (leak some ink) is a bit silly tmo

[sfd]

@CrimsonWarlock - The essence of composing lays in melody, harmony and chord progression.

Not in the sound of a synth.

Since you, as in contrast to the guy who's post you refer to in your original comment, is a musician you should already know this.

[Saffran]

@CrimsonWarlock - The essence of composing lays in melody, harmony and chord progression.
Not in the sound of a synth.
Since you, as in contrast to the guy who's post you refer to in your original comment, is a musician you should already know this.

How do you explain my experience of fiddling with a softsynth going thru presets and one of these presets starts my fantasy and makes those "melody, harmony and chord progression" appear in my head? (Happens a lot).
Sadly i am not able to get them out of my head and in to the physical world.

[sfd]

@Saffran - Source of inspiration, which can be anything, is not analogous to composing.

[crimsonwarlock]

@CrimsonWarlock - The essence of composing lays in melody, harmony and chord progression.

Not in the sound of a synth.

You are right. However, creating music consists of much more than composing; how about arrangement, something that is intrinsic to music production and most certainly involves the sound of the instruments used. As a musician that does composing, arrangements and every other aspect of producing music, I know

And before you point to the topic title, any serious musician can infer from that topic title that he didn't mean 'composing' in the very strict way that you propose here

[sfd]

@crimsonwarlock - Yes, there is more to it then just composing.

And yes - obviously I targeted the way the OP formulated his question and everyone who went along with that. Any musician would have understood that irony.