Why I stopped using most third party plug-ins
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:23 pm
Hello,
This is not a you shouldn't be wasting your money on third party vsts thread. I went through a period where I realized I was buying a lot of plug-ins but never really utilizing all of them. I got to a point where I would just have so many third party plug-ins that I wouldn't use because I was comfortable with a few.
I asked myself why am I not using these amazing plugins? It took me some time to admit to myself because I honestly had no idea what most of them were doing. An example, ohmicide. A multi band distortion/dynamics plugin. I remember using it all the time without even understanding what it is. Going through presets until it makes my synth or kick or whatever sound dope.. And thats how I went about it... there is nothing wrong with that..
However, I have become literally 10x better in the last three months by taking a step back and doing most of my work with lives native devices (besides synths, however, I will circle back to why this improved my synth sound design later). I own live 9 suite and considered max for live devices to be third party vsts as well as I didnt understand them 100% either, so they were excluded from this 3 month voyage. Anyways, I set out for 3 months of using only native devices...
Let me say the first week was easily the hardest.. As it made me feel stupid and untalented. I started to develop a procedure where I would look at third party plugins and try to recreate them with lives native devices. For example, if I wanted to make a multi band distortion/ dynamics plugin I would have to use an effect rack with 3 chains, 3 different EQs on each of these chains to create the band separation, one high pass, one bandpass, and one lowpass. From there I would place an ableton saturator on each channel. This is where things get crazy because with ableton saturator you have so many distortion types. My favorites are the default setting and wave shaper. Anways, you distort each band to desire and you have a compressor on each chain at the end as well, and you can squash each chain.. to top it throw a glue compressor on after the audio effect rack to glue everything together.
Anyways, I have honestly found that I can create MOST of these sounds with native devices for these special fx. I have created my own sausage fattener, ohmicide, cooper time cube, 5 and 8 band compressors *overkill as hell btw lol*, Ice Frozen Reverbs, honestly too many to list.
What am I trying to say? I learned how to make any sound I want and I could achieve it with mostly native devices. I went from feeling like an absolute idiot about sound design and fx processing and signal flow to feeling pretty ahead of the curve in just 3 months by doing this. I had only one crash over these 3 months as well, benefit of using mostly native devices. I recommend this process to anyone. Wether you are a complete beginner or expert or anything inbetween. A lot of people have echoed this on this forum in the past, but master your current tool set. Skill comes out and will defeat all gear/software power that your competition has.
As I understood more about creating amazing fx with native devices, I started to understand more about sound design at the core, and I would be able to retain so much more if I were to watch a tutorial on building a certain sound patch, and be able to create it without reference after just watching it. In the past I understood envelopes and LFOs and stuff, but idk, I can sort of visualize how the sound is supposed to be made in my head now, something I was not able to do before.
Learn those native devices! Again, Im not saying that third party plugins are to be ignored. I have gone back to using certain 3rd party vsts to just achieve a quicker result. But I understand these 3rd party fx 10x more now because if learning the native devices. I dont have to search 3rd party vsts to get the result I want, I actually am comfortable enough to just open a third party plugin and just make it sound my own. I think I may force myself to do a 3rd party cleansing once a year and just use native devices for a month to refresh everything for me.
Happy musiking, I hope my experience can help yours.
This is not a you shouldn't be wasting your money on third party vsts thread. I went through a period where I realized I was buying a lot of plug-ins but never really utilizing all of them. I got to a point where I would just have so many third party plug-ins that I wouldn't use because I was comfortable with a few.
I asked myself why am I not using these amazing plugins? It took me some time to admit to myself because I honestly had no idea what most of them were doing. An example, ohmicide. A multi band distortion/dynamics plugin. I remember using it all the time without even understanding what it is. Going through presets until it makes my synth or kick or whatever sound dope.. And thats how I went about it... there is nothing wrong with that..
However, I have become literally 10x better in the last three months by taking a step back and doing most of my work with lives native devices (besides synths, however, I will circle back to why this improved my synth sound design later). I own live 9 suite and considered max for live devices to be third party vsts as well as I didnt understand them 100% either, so they were excluded from this 3 month voyage. Anyways, I set out for 3 months of using only native devices...
Let me say the first week was easily the hardest.. As it made me feel stupid and untalented. I started to develop a procedure where I would look at third party plugins and try to recreate them with lives native devices. For example, if I wanted to make a multi band distortion/ dynamics plugin I would have to use an effect rack with 3 chains, 3 different EQs on each of these chains to create the band separation, one high pass, one bandpass, and one lowpass. From there I would place an ableton saturator on each channel. This is where things get crazy because with ableton saturator you have so many distortion types. My favorites are the default setting and wave shaper. Anways, you distort each band to desire and you have a compressor on each chain at the end as well, and you can squash each chain.. to top it throw a glue compressor on after the audio effect rack to glue everything together.
Anyways, I have honestly found that I can create MOST of these sounds with native devices for these special fx. I have created my own sausage fattener, ohmicide, cooper time cube, 5 and 8 band compressors *overkill as hell btw lol*, Ice Frozen Reverbs, honestly too many to list.
What am I trying to say? I learned how to make any sound I want and I could achieve it with mostly native devices. I went from feeling like an absolute idiot about sound design and fx processing and signal flow to feeling pretty ahead of the curve in just 3 months by doing this. I had only one crash over these 3 months as well, benefit of using mostly native devices. I recommend this process to anyone. Wether you are a complete beginner or expert or anything inbetween. A lot of people have echoed this on this forum in the past, but master your current tool set. Skill comes out and will defeat all gear/software power that your competition has.
As I understood more about creating amazing fx with native devices, I started to understand more about sound design at the core, and I would be able to retain so much more if I were to watch a tutorial on building a certain sound patch, and be able to create it without reference after just watching it. In the past I understood envelopes and LFOs and stuff, but idk, I can sort of visualize how the sound is supposed to be made in my head now, something I was not able to do before.
Learn those native devices! Again, Im not saying that third party plugins are to be ignored. I have gone back to using certain 3rd party vsts to just achieve a quicker result. But I understand these 3rd party fx 10x more now because if learning the native devices. I dont have to search 3rd party vsts to get the result I want, I actually am comfortable enough to just open a third party plugin and just make it sound my own. I think I may force myself to do a 3rd party cleansing once a year and just use native devices for a month to refresh everything for me.
Happy musiking, I hope my experience can help yours.