By Snowbanks.
11/17/19
Man o man, is this a topic I could go on about. Plugins are awesome and fun and exciting and one of the best and most crucial components of this metamorphosis from “out of the box” production to “in the box” production. However, with great power, comes great responsibility. No matter what daw you use, and how many plugins you have, there will always be newer, cooler ones. And while the thought of buying a new VST is very tantalizing, especially around this time of year, with all the big black friday/ christmas sales coming up( cough cough waves), you have to take into account the countless additional hours you might spend now scrolling through drop-down menus in Serum or Massive now while you’re looking for an even more perfect synth for your project. Option anxiety is when we get paralyzed from having too many options, and in a world where workflow and creative efficiency is paramount, and the goal is to get the idea from your head to the DAW as fast as possible, Drop-down menus and lists of 1000’s of presets are your biggest enemy. I suggest buying plugins one at a time, perhaps taking advantage of splice’s Rent-to-own program, where you can slowly pay off the cost of the plugin every month, until you own it, and you can stop at any time. If you do want to save and you know you’ll use the plugins for lots of big mixing projects, especially with vocals, then I would suggest going for a package deal such as waves gold bundle, native instruments Komplete series, or a personal favourite, the Izotope producer bundle… That being said, take it one plugin at a time, Get to know every last knob, and then as you master it, write down all your favourite presets and/or patches you designed and then save them to a separate folder in your synth menu called favourites. It’s the same with drum samples, I suggest everyone go through their drum kit folders and pick out all kicks they will actually use ever, and then to make a drum rack of 64-128 kicks you might ever use, and save that drum rack so you can pull it up and all your good kicks will be on a seperate key of your keyboard. You can then super easily audition different kick samples for a part by dragging your pattern up and down in the piano roll. Good drum rack plugins are the default drum rack in ableton, and Battery 4 by Native Instruments (What I use) . Repeat this with 128 hi-hats, snares, openhats, percs, SFX, Vox chops, etc, and watch your workflow leap to new heights.
Snowbanks 