Everywhere I go, people bug me about when they’ll see better support for OpenSoundControl (OSC) in applications. Why use fancy-schmancy OSC when MIDI does the job? Well, OSC supports higher resolutions of data when needed, maps variables elegantly (when you’re controlling something like visuals and descriptions like musical pitch or filter cutoff make no sense), and plays nice over networks and with multiple computers. In other words, go ahead and use MIDI when it does the job — but we need something else when it doesn’t.

Here’s one way to get OSC from your favorite app: hack it in. Spotted today as Gav tells Create Digital Motion about gluing together Isadora and Ableton Live, the OSCGlue plug-in is a simple VST insert that listens to MIDI and sends OSC.

Sure, what with it being 2008 and all, “plug-in” to many people means audio processing. But what if you want an arpeggiator? Or something to harmonize incoming notes, or match them to scales? Or … well, just about anything else you can do with pitch and time with MIDI, from utilities to music effects? And what if your host’s built-in options are letting you down?

The good news: you’ve got lots of options. The bad news: a lot are on Windows.

We saw Chirp, a Mac/Windows utility for assigning QWERTY keyboards to MIDI input, earlier this week. But that’s led to some other discussions.

The MVelope MIDI Toolkit includes a whole range of free MIDI plug-ins for Windows VST hosts. There’s already MKey, a very nice, mature QWERTY keyboard (similar to Chirp, but a little simpler and functioning as a plug-in). In beta or “teaser” form are some other interesting utilities: a pattern-based arpeggiator (pictured, top), filter/router, chord generator, and eventually a Control Change-powered LFO you can drop anywhere you like. (I’d love to have that last one in Ableton Live, since I miss the readily-available LFOs found in tools like FL Studio.) Thanks to Peter for the tip on this one.

But ready to jump down the rabbit hole?

Today, CDM is proud to announce a new feature to keep us competitive with fast-moving music technology coverage on the Web. It’s called “Industry Clipboard Connection,” and it allows us to fully connect you with the latest industry news by giving you complete, un-edited press release content, pasted up to the minute. And we kick it off with what I think is a really game-changing product that could change the relationship of vocalists to bands forever. Be sure to read the full press release for the complete details. Seriously. I think you’ll want to read to the end.

Sweetwater announces today the innovative Virtual Frontman plug-in:

(Fort Wayne, Ind.) - New addition to Sweetwater’s plug-in family brings true character to any vocalist -

Sweetwater’s Reasearch & Development Department, creators of such popular tools as the Talent plug-in, Guitar Racket, Minute Audio, and the Octavisor, has announced their latest addition to the Sweetwater family of professional music and audio tools, Virtual Frontman.

Virtual Frontman is a Mac- and Windows-compatible plug-in that supports Audio Units, MAS, VST, RTAS, Direct X, TDM, and 120-volt plug-in formats. The plug-in uses sophisticated proprietary runway modeling techniques to encode the vocal and behavioral characteristics of the world’s most iconoclastic rock frontmen onto any vocalist’s performance. According to Mark Hutchins, Sweetwater’s Assistant Director of Cable Ties, and the near-genius behind the idea of Virtual Frontman, “I’ve suffered for years with the uni-dimensional performances of the singers in my bands. I was looking for a simple, efficient plug-in tool that would allow you to add real excitement and charisma to a band’s vocals.”

I noted in January that enigmatically-talented programmer Jack Dark had released the source of his misbehaved SynthEdit-made plug-ins for Windows VST. Here’s one of the fruits of that release: a glitching, stuttering sonic thing that now also syncs to your host, so your little glitchstutters hit on, um, an eighth note or whatever instead of just appearing willy-nilly. SynthEdit may be notorious for insanely unstable and sonically-destructive plug-ins, but DarkWare’s plug-ins are so beloved for their unpredictability that developers are actually worried about making them too normal: 

For those knowing and loving Shattershot Lite VST, Shattersync is essentially a host (and therefore BPM) synchronized version of its predecessor. it should be noted that the work I made to modify the creature will not make it sound any better and possibly all the voodoo magic spawned from Shattershot Lite will disappear, replaced by a tamed, ordered, boring, mechanism of nothingness.

Original DarkWare VSTs

Pluggotic and C.d.P. Page, with various free VSTs for Windows, including the Scattersync download.

Rekkerd.org: Pluggotic releases Shattersync — and, yes, I love Rekkerd.org; it’s like a nerdster filter for the barrage of 2.43.0.5 upgrade releases and eight trillion forum messages at KVR

In addition to a new GUI and MIDI implementation, there is a “new independent stuttering FX in the signal chain”, so perhaps that’ll add a little voodo back. Presumably, you’ll still be able to do the same glitching, stuttering thing as the gentlemen in the video here (aka Pluggotic & C.d.P.).

Hint: with either the synced or un-synced version, this will sound different from Ableton BeatRepeat.

Windows is getting enough instrument and effect madness for free to make your head spin — a lot of it previously commercial software. Here’s the latest addition: Beatburner, a looping sampler combined with a wave shaper and enveloped filter. In short, Beatburner takes your loops and makes them into sonic insanity. I’ve been playing with it a bit this evening, and making things sound … well, scary. As the author describes it:

BeatBurner, using innovative wave shaping and filtration methods, turns innocent drum beats, loops or sounds into new, fresh and vibrant audio parts for you to incorporate into your musical arrangements. BeatBurner comes with a myriad of sample loops to get you started but it doesn’t stop there, you can mangle, whittle or process any sound you want! Full automation and preset morphing means there are literally no limits to the soundscapes you can create.

Beatburner is NOT made with Synthedit.

Beatburner blog, downloads, and donation link, via DigitalLoFi

The plug-in also includes a healthy selection of bass and drum loops to get you playing right away.

I like having some free software to add to the arsenal — you get to experiment with some unusual soundmakers without the pressure of, you know, having a financial investment on the line. And if you appreciate the developer’s work, send a donation. There are still quite a few tools worth paying for, but I’ve gotten some musical ideas jump-started with the free stuff, too.

This isn’t the only free plug-in from Fat-Ass (aka CodeAudio, and yes, that’s their real name — I’m not just being mean or something). There are a whole bunch of synth and effects plugs available for free, some quite nice.

Just keeping score: on Windows, you can grab the rich Acusticaudio Nebula Hispasonic edition, a faux Commodore 64, the unique and powerful Open Circuit sampler, many of the excellent xoxos plug-ins and the highly-controllable Mechaverb, and the now-open source discoDSP HighLife sampler from the late Argu, all for free. There are a zillion more great choices from Adrian Anders, as well.

We got an interesting discussion going on the last free round-up here. It almost became a boring platform war, but for the most part, it went more along the lines of asking, honestly, why is there so much more free stuff for Windows? (And 7oi showed up, whose music I really love, a sign that it wasn’t just another boring platform thread.)

The conclusion for Mac users:

1. Check out Studiotoolz to track down hundreds of free Mac tools. There’s still not the quantity or quality of what’s on Windows, but there’s easily enough to distract you from doing any real work — erm, I mean, round out your creative arsenal.

2. Look at the open source SonicBirth for making your own plug-ins, along the lines of SynthEdit and SynthMaker on Windows. If Mac developers start to embrace this tool, it should deepen the available options

There’s a disturbing amount of free sound-making stuff out there, enough to clutter up your VST folder and make you forget where you put that multi-tap delay you wanted. It’s a beautiful thing. So, as a regular, erm, public service, I’ll be semi-regularly rounding up some of the free instruments and effects appearing around the Interwebs.

This week: a brilliantly deep reverb, plus everything from a beat box (as in human beat box) to a motorcycle simulator.

How do you make the Moog legacy of instruments accessible — assuming you can’t afford a studio full of vintage gear? One choice is to model the instruments virtually, as developers like Arturia have done. That provides real-time control, but models may not be perfect, and if you want more than one instrument, you really need more than one model. Others have reimagined some of the Moog sound designs on more modern instruments, as Craig Anderton did recently with Cakewalk’s Rapture.

IK Multimedia, working with veteran sample house Sonic Reality in collaboration with Moog Music, have taken the “museum” approach — put samples of everything in a single box. And what an ambitious collection they’ve got, as we noted when the product was announced. But can you win over even someone who owns some of the real gear? We put that question to our own Lee Sherman, who’s been diving deep into the tool. Mindful of the tradeoffs, he’s got some insight into just how useful they were able to make that sampled content.

SampleMoog can’t help but be greeted with some degree of skepticism. Even virtual analog synths like Arturia’s Minimoog V don’t go all of the way in reproducing the Moog experience. How can something based on samples even come close?

Pristine digital technology — some people just can’t resist putting it in the service of recreating grungier, noisier sound-producing tech. Hot on the heels of Indirect-to-Digital - by-way-of-tape samples of the TR606 and 808, here are some digital recreations of circuit-bent noisemakers. Of course, I generally prefer to see circuit bending producing actual, DIY hardware — see our Circuit Bending Challenge — but it’s still an interesting exercise. (And it’s worth sampling some of this gear for live performance, especially when you can record sound before something, um, breaks. At least if it’s my project.)

Rekkerd.org finds not one, but two projects:

• Eric Beam releases Circuit Bent TR-505 samples, samples of a bent TR-505 “DeComposer”, captured “with pristine TC-Electronic A/D converters.” (What, no Marantz portable? The hardware in-progress pictured above.)
• de la Mancha releases Bent, a free “circuit-bent resynthesis” effect, with tempo-sync granulator effects, and jittering, morphing, and jittering morphing pitch. Windows VST.

De la Mancha’s stuff is great, and with some granular effects, you get a “bent” creation that can only exist in software. In fact, maybe “faux” is unfair in that case. Software doesn’t have the reputation of hardware circuit bending, and there’s not the immediacy of a contact point on a physical circuit. But you can certainly find just as many, if not more, strange and organically accidental “discoveries” when working with code and patches.

Crispin writes to tell us about his site, which lists a couple hundred free VST plug-ins (most are Windows-only). You can add that to the growing list of places you can find free music software tools, as well as "reasons no one can argue computer music is too expensive" and "reasons no one has an excuse to pirate software."

With that many choices, I asked Crispin to tell us his top five favorites. Here’s what he came up with (in no particular order), plus a few words from me:

DSK Brass: Sample-based brass instrument, with two layers and 23 waveforms, effects, automation support, and even micro-detuning. There was a full tutorial [PDF link] in a recent issue from our friends at Computer Music magazine (UK).

DSK StringZ: Sample-based strings, two layers, separate ADSR envelopes for each layer, effects, automation. (See above, but for strings.)

Syntar: A sytar-like synthesizer.

Dr-Fusion 2: Drum sampler and synth with, well, a ridiculous number of identical silver knobs. Layering, per-sample controls, and effects round out the various goodies.

Tapeworm: Mellotron-inspired synth with fine-tuning and automation support. (Get it? Tape?)

In case you’re not overwhelmed enough by these options (once you click through, you’ll find loads more stuff at each developer site), Crispin’s regular site has more:

http://freemusicsoftware.org/

Previously:
The Best, 100% Free Windows Music Plug-ins - Just Add Host (Updated) (including a number of Mac plug-ins in there, and yes, we do need to do a good best of Mac list)
Straight Out of No Cash series