5 VST Effects I Use in Every Song

VSTs are so great. I have a massive collection of free instruments and FX that I've tracked down. There are SOO many to choose from...

But I notice it every time I'm working on a new song. I always use the same VST FX. At times I use others as well, but these five FX are used in, literally, every song I make. Here they are and why I use them so much.

Classic Compressor / Chorus

I've grouped these together, so I could get an extra VST in this list :) . Every drum sample I use gets the Classic Compressor - usually the default preset. It adds punch and just really brings the drums to life. Some of my synths get this treatment also.

The Classic Chorus gets significantly les use - but for any sound I want to be 'three dimensional' the default preset on this FX is perfect.

EasyQ

Nearly every single track in every single song I do gets the EasyQ. My only criticism is you can't automate the nodes you create. This may be a limitation in the VST guts since they are dynamically added/removed. But still. I just love this EQ. It is lightweight, I have other parametric EQs that are such resource hogs they are nearly unusable.

Now that I'm writing this, I'm thinking it may be time to see what else is out there, it has been a while since I've tried out EQs.

ReaComp

The ReaComp compressor is shipped with Reaper and it handles sidechain compression. So that is what I use it for. There is typically a need for at least one instance of this in every song. I really should explore what the plugin is really capable of but so far it's just a sidechainer for me.

TriDirt

This little beast is amazing. It is 1/2 three band distortion pedal, 1/2 two band filter. And it sounds sick! The filter on it is one of my favorites and sounds really good when you automate it. Some of the filthiest neuro-bass I've ever made utilized automated TriDirt filtering. Each band can be set to one of - I believe 5 - types of distortion and the overall output is filtered by a treble and bass value.

Classic Delay

Like the other Classic FX the delay is just so solid. I've used other delay FX that are great. One of them does super analogue style feedback (If you set it to high it begins squealing, just like a meatspace delay pedal). but just like coffee when I've tried to switch to tea, I always come back to the Classic FX.

I'm All In

Well it turns out I love video recording and editing. Having never seriously thought about trying it, I never knew. I love hearing about the artistry and super subtle nuances of editing video. I watch not only YouTube editing tips (My chosen medium) but actual movie editing insights and advice.

I've been circling between making music then making videos for the music then producing videos for my new watch nerd channel. The music videos are still patchworked clips of movies and other YouTube videos but they are a great learning arena.

I then apply what I learn there to my watch nerd videos. Although my videos are just vlog style, I want to find ways of telling stories or evoking emotions, thoughts, excitement simply by way of how I've edited my clips.

I need to improve my filming skills as well. I think part of that is equipment due to the dark setting I film in. My Pixel seems to take grainy footage in such scenarios.

I'm already feeling more comfortable in front of the camera, and getting more proficient in Blender's video editor.

We'll see how it goes.

Strobe Hack

I am definitely still a Blender video editing noob. I am working on another video clip collage for the latest Neutrient song I've made. To give the video energy and movement I wanted to add a strobe effect. In Blender's video editor the Transform blocks have a strobe option along with a setting to get it to fire every X frame. So I gave this option a try.

No matter what settings I used it appeared to have no affect at all. When I tried hitting the internet I didn't see any conversations on this feature. I decided to think of a hacky way I could pull it off using the tricks I've learned so far.

I do a lot of layering in my videos. Adding one clip on top of the other and setting the top one's alpha over to < 1. So I hopped on YouTube and found a video that was just black flashing to white and back. Just the strobe I needed.

I dropped that clip over some of my other clips and turned down its alpha. Perfect. I now have a cool strobe effect I can add wherever I want.

FPS Mismatch Pain

I am dipping my toes into video production. I began with some collage-style music videos now I am starting a YouTube channel about wrist watch nerdery. One pain has become immediately apparent is the trouble of frame rate. I made the mistake of adding audio as the first component to my video, so the frame rate wasn't set to my video's FPS. To my surprise the audio was out of sync with the video. I had never encountered this, my collage videos all used an audio track and video only clips.

I tried going into VLC and saving each clip's audio as a separate file, then importing it into Blender but I wasn't aware of exactly what was going on. It was still out of sync.

I next tried manually getting the FPS to match my video but then it refused to render (I later found some other settings I could have tried that may have helped).

My projects were still set to 30FPS so I had to keep all my clips short so that the mismatch was unnoticeable. I then learned how to set my phone camera to 60FPS and figured while I'm struggling with this, I may as well get a higher frame rate.

Bad Idea.

The only camera on my phone that is capable of 60FPS is the back camera. The front camera is still 30FPS. So I ended up with some clips at 60FPS and some at 30FPS. So I went through every 60FPS clip and converted it to 30FPS using FFMPEG.

Tonight I'll be starting a new video. I'm hoping it goes smoothly. By dragging my clip into the timeline first thing I believe the project will automatically set the the FPS.

After working on the video tonight, it did indeed set a custom FPS, however there is still a little bit of drift. This will be a problem when I get better and can create longer takes but for now it works well enough.

CI/CD'ing Music

I've changed how I use Soundcloud lately. It used to be that I would work on a song, listen to it on various sound systems, do the 'car check' an so on. Then I would go back and make corrections and re-check. After many such iterations I would post it to Soundcloud and consider it done. A finished sculpture, never to be altered again.

Lately, however, I have been doing my usual iterations and posting to Soundcloud, with one major difference. I no longer view the song as a form chiseled into stone, rather it is like a software application to me. I continue to listen to it after I've posted it. If I hear something that needs improved (A 'bug' in the song), I make the tweak and replace the song on Soundcloud.

I like it. I just listened to an older song and heard all kinds of improvements I need to make. In the past I would just grumble and never listen to it again. But now, it's time to fix the bug and push out another iteration of the song.

How We've Given Up On Tomorrow

Whenever I fly, or see public transportation, Or traffic in general, the same question inevitably comes to mind.

Why have we given up on the future?

There was a time when we looked to the future with excitement and imagination. We envisioned a world full of endless possibilities. Then we just kind of gave up. I'm not talking about flying cars or cities in giant glass domes I'm talking about everyday things. Take flying. We pile into an airplane, seats packed so tightly everyone in your row has to get up if you need to leave your seat. And if you have to use the bathroom while the food cart is working its way down the walkway, too bad (And you're not allowed to use the restroom in first class).

Why have we decided that this is what air travel is, and will be forever? Where did innovation go? Yeah sure - costs. But still. What constitutes improvement in air travel? Plugins for your laptop or phone? Rentable notepads to play movies on? How about we find a way to have more room? How about we are allowed to move about, and have like minibars etc. Why is that only for private jets? Wouldn't it be worth some extra money to be able to hang out, more like a cruise ship than a crappy city bus? Surely there's some way to make such a thing accessible. We used to think outside the box. We used to be excited for the future. Now we're just cynical and complacent.

We need to find optimism again. Fun needs to be reborn. What's wrong with doing something just because it's fun and makes tasks like air travel actually enjoyable? Why can't art or books or movies exist simply to inspire and entertain? Why does there have to be some hidden agenda or politics?

We need some Neo-Futurism to make its way into meatspace!

A Great and Lacking Java-based File Manager

For a long time my go-to file manager has been Double Commander. It is quick and powerful and I can configure it super minimal - even hiding the tabs. The search feature works so much better than the native Windows search tool, so when I'm on a 'dohs' box it is especially handy (Although lately I've been using grep within the GIT bash).

Every now and then I get bored and change it up. I've explored VIFM and other console-based file managers. They are cool and a lot of fun but I usually end up missing Double Commander's features.

I have recently returned to muCommander. Now that I've spent a lot of time working in Java it's cool to use a Java-based file manager. And I've grabbed the source code. I may see if I can get it to always hide the tab bar. I've returned to it purely for fun. Sadly it is lacking one major feature... searching. Yes the latest version has a file search dialog you can pull up, but it's more of a placeholder than an actual tool. I navigated to a temp directory and searched for 'category' which I knew was in an XML file in that directory. 0 results. Even the Windows search tool would have found that. I tried case insensitive (Even though the case was the same) and I tried the Regex option. Nothing - in fact it wouldn't even search with the Regex set. And when you launch the dialog the options are always set to their defaults, not what you set them to last - huuge headache. And shouldn't the search results show in a new tab versus commandeering your current tab? It is just unusable. I feel like searching should have been a goal early on in the project. How useful is a file manager if you can't search your files?

Also lacking... you can't create a new file (I couldn't figure out how at least). So to do so you have to pull up a different file manager - or text editor. If you have to leave a file manager to create... a file, you've failed.

If I have to rely on other file managers to do basic things then the file manager in question isn't a viable option.

I do like muCommander and would love to use it as my primary tool for dealing with files, but sadly after all these years it is still not ready to do basic file-related tasks. I'm going to poke around in the code and see if I can somehow make it usable enough for me.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about muCommander in the near future. Maybe I'll do like I did with Jreepad and create a 'murdered out' version.