As promised, welcome to ADR3-N's free producer stuff emporium, aka the primo magazine of my data hoarding habits and sample projects! If you're new here, check out Januarylist 2024's producer giveaways -- it's basically the same thing, but last month. ;)

There's also Decemberlist 2023, Septemberlist 2023, Novemberlist 2021, and finally Octoberlist 2021. That's three years of freebies! Holy cow, I'm getting old, but still check them out. You never know what may still be around, or what you can find with a little googling!

This month's issue would not be complete without a million special thanks to the NG Audio Pub gang, audio forum recommendations, honorable mentions, and market research; check out the bottom of this page if that's your thing.

If you find this post helpful, please consider donating on ko-fi and Patreon. 💙 It's thanks to my supporters that I have the time to do music, samples, AND megalists like these. I owe you a lot!

Without further ado, onto the list!

Huge News -- All my best sample projects are now FREE!

Thanks to my wonderful supporters, I've been able to release Take My Cymbals AND all three of my big sample projects in one place! No longer do you have to dig through my newsposts and audio page to find ADREANALINE, CTK-2400, and Saudade Drums. I've repackaged everything and dropped them all to beatstars for FREE!

Get them here!

What's the catch?

Nothing. Just making these babies easier to find. You can check out the project details and demos for each right in the beatstars "store."

In short, I'm offering 4 sample libraries/instruments: a 503 sample cymbal library, metal drum set, key library for sforzando, and my flagship industrial samurai hip-hop pack, ADREANALINE (beta).

Anonymous downloads enabled for those who like their privacy. Samples are in wav format.

What's New?

3 things. CTK-2400 (lo-fi keys) is available FREE for the first time ever, unless you count giving it away to finalists of NGADM/NGUAC 2023. The full version was $15 when I first dropped it.

ADREANALINE has some new samples and fixes. This pack is the foundation for a lot of my greatest hip-hop tracks and my baby. I plan to expand it in the future. Open for requests!

Take My Cymbals is a NEW acoustic cymbal library, designed for loading up into your sampler and writing completely natural, expressive cymbal tracks. I intended it for Nu Metal and boombap but it ended up capable of much, much more. It has a wide variety of professional grade, rare, and niche cymbals -- with BONUS kicks, snares, toms, and even cardboard boxes.

Newgrounds demo

This project took a year of research, searching for cymbals of various weights, and milling through over 1000 recordings. Samples were sourced from a variety of settings, processed for uniformity and occasionally salvaged by release-extension using frequency selection from blueprints. (felt super accomplished when I learned how to do this!)

My original vision was 5 or 6 multi-sampled cymbals, and it was a lot of work, but I'm happy to say it far exceeds not only my expectations but many PAID libraries I own. Special thanks to @MariogD on for helping make this possible and being my top supporter on ko-fi!

Also extra, extra thanks to everyone who commissioned me for audio critique the past few months, @JimmytheCaterpillar, @LD-W, SparkdaPhilly, and Emcdouble. It was the extra push I needed!

More about requesting content reviews (free and paid) here.

Or if you're a rock/hip-hop producer looking to get playlisted, check out this post.

I try to help independent producers out in any way I can, including resources, advertising, discounts on distribution, mastering, etc. If you need something, let me know!

STILL MORE FREEBIES

POISE PERCUSSION SAMPLER - One of the coolest samplers I've ever seen. It has 16 percussion pads, with a catch, 8 samples per pad (including support for round robins!) Most samplers only support one sample per pad. Poise will support 156 samples, 16 x 8. So you could make a drum kit out of it with 8 velocity layers a piece. Sounds like a great stock plugin replacement to me.

On the same page as Poise, you can also check out Grace Sampler, made for a particular group of people in mind: those who like making their own patches. You can even import SFZ patches. How about that?

The caveat is that export function is locked to proprietary software by Chicken Systems (paid versions). If you're not looking to sell your patches, this shouldn't be a problem. If that IS an issue, TX16WX is your friend, and there's this handydandy usermade converter.

Little aside, if you're a fan of Cymatics, as I am, they have compiled a list of free kits and have some new ones on the market every few months. There's also a freebie list on their sample collections.

METAL PRODUCTION FREEBIES

Excuse the choppy writing for this section. I was really, really excited and figured I'd drop links to videos to let this section speak for itself. I came across some unbelievable free stuff for metal prod. You'll want to check out:

Death Dealer Drums

Free Metal Drumkit Plugin | Death Dealer by Fire Portal

Steve Terreberry (the man, the myth, the legend) has a lil amp sim that don't sound half bad!

Brutal Bass all in one, GROWLER from AugustRose Audio. Also check out their page for the Howler

ML Drums has a free version -- that you can cheaty-cheat into having more cymbals than it's supposed to with separate tracks and midi routing.

I've enjoyed TMKD's metal drums for years. They're still around. Check them out!

Aaaaand KRIMH Drums FREE Edition by Bogren Digital

Krimh Drums Free – Bogren Digital

Note all of these freebies are super relevant for a trend emerging in current hip-hop -- genre-fusion.

Hip-hop and metal have always had a lot of cross over, if you remember Children of the Korn. If you're interested in trying on a heavy metal flavor for your hip-hop, or you're looking to expand your library of guitars, look no further. There are plenty of free options for that too.

AmpleSound Freebies -- Bass and acoustic Taylor. The bass in particular can be pitch shifted before running through your amp of choice for a NASTY tone!

Junk Guitar by Junk Spider is no longer available, formerly my favorite guitar freebie, but you may be able to go down a rabbit hole and find it. In the case you can't, as I haven't yet (and I'm looking to find the licensing to see if I can just throw it up on drive) these reads are your friend.

Reddit (INSTR) // Guitar Clan (FX) // Unison (INSTR, writeups)

It may also be worth noting that metal and hip-hop ALSO love to incorporate big cinematic, orchestral, and choral elements. I'm sure I've written about these over the years, but don't just read up on me -- keep an eye out!

MORE FREEBIES (FX) for various, sound design

Thanks to coinxdaproducer on YouTube for these recommendations!

Red Bass - add some sub to your instruments/samples. And it sounds freaking great. The free version comes with a non-intrusive banner to remind you to support the developer if you really like it!

This freeware/pay-what-you-want plugin directly competes with paid plugins like Submarine vst (a $35-90 value!) If you're shopping around for sub-bass plugins, this KVR thread may be of interest to you.

Soundly Place it - useful for sound design, emulating spaces like basements, speakers like radios and earbuds, outside a club, etc. I can see this coming in CLUTCH as a master effect for transitions!

PRISMA - unprecedented 4 band multi-effect processor, gain, clip, width, distortion, folding, and all sorts of effects offered. Ugly interface, gorgeous effects.

Ruina - part of the Frequel bundle from noise engineering. Probably the most unique distortion and degradation plugin I've seen in all my years, and beats a lot of paid alternatives.

What makes it worth the registration, (simple) download manager, and probably password change to log in if you're like me and forgot yours, is the multiple effects this bad boy brings to the table. There is MASSIVE potential for modulating every effect for transitions. Just look at it!

Sorry if this image comes up with a big transparent chunk at the bottom -- I can't get it to go away lol. Moving on.

@Leavesz recommendations (INSTRUMENTS and FX), quotes in italics

These are some that I use very frequently:

synth1 : it is very basic and a little outdated but it does its job pretty well, aside from some old software quirks here and there. If you're scared of programming a synth patch you can check out this very simple preset pack for it, I used it a lot before I learned how to make my own patches.

kilohearts essential bundle : it has various effect plugins that might come in handy if your DAW doesn't already have them.

melda free fx bundle : same concept as the previous but a bit more advanced in some areas and you can't save presets.

TokyoDawnLabs : There are a couple of very useful mixing and mastering tools at the bottom of the page that you can grab for free. I don't do serious mastering very often but whenever I try to I always throw the slickEQ somewhere in the chain.

libjuicysfplugin : it loads sf2 files. There are a couple sf2 piano libraries that I found to be really neat when compared to other dedicated VSTs I've tried: Here are a couple nice sounding piano libraries, and a pretty nice rhodes sf2.

4Front Rhode : Here's a rhodes vst if you don't like soundfonts. It sounds nice with a bit of delay and distortion.

I had spitfire labs installed at some point so that gets an (un)honourable mention, but imo it's a bit of a waste of space and if you're working on an older and slower machine it will eat your cpu and crash your daw. I suppose it might be fine otherwise because the sound quality IS very good.

I don't know what your skill level is so you might already know about some of these but eh, I could not resist the opportunity to write a list lol.

From <https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1531869>

@Synami on the NG Audio Pub recommended Outobugi's freebies

There are a ton of goodies, a clipper, an all in one drum processor, a la Diablo, and even a Skyrim UI mod. Definitely worth checking out. Donation ware alert!

For a well organized, super helpful resource list, see @LD-W's blog - FREE Audio Resources List For Composers - 2022/2023

Also news from the NG audio pub Discord, we have this bad boy. Soundiron have released a FREE playable experimental organ called Aquae Organ!

"It's an interesting combination between parts of their £££-costing Alpha & Omega Pipe Organs together in unison, recorded with hydrophones in tall crystal vases. It also comes with basic waveforms to also merge with the Organ-stack for additional design-capabilities <@&883575627217780797> This is FREE Kontakt Player compatible"

Honorable mentions and old news

Producergrind search: free - I've mentioned this one before, but in case you haven't seen it, producer grind has free hip-hop kits, and lots of them. Grab 'em before they're gone. They start on the bottom of page 1!

CODEC - great for glitching and ruining your audio <30

TB-303 CLONE - Juce port of Robin Scmidt's Open303 DSP engine, modeled on the Roland 303.

Wursy - Sampleson is offering this subtractive old-school key synth for free, if you don't mind subscribing to their YouTube! Thanks to 300 LUFS on VK!

PNCH - From unplug.red, adds harmonics and a gating effect, without added pumping as with other gate plugins. Suggested use by the developer, removing amp hum from a guitar signal, like a stomp box. Also may be useful for drum breaks, for a "choppy effect"

The developer also has what appears to be a GameBoy sampler on his site, and several other plugins worth checking out. They are all provided for free with little unintrusive banners to remind you to support the developer.

Camel Crusher is back in town. Two types of distortion, low pass filter with resonance, and an interface so simple a caveman could do it. This link is a direct download. Thanks to Bedroom Producers Blog for the heads up it's still alive! Compatible with 32 and 64 bit win/mac. Discontinued.

MeowSynth - who doesn't like cats? Believe it or not, I tortured this plugin into the bass for "you're late for work"

DelayLama - widely regarded as one of the worst plugins on the planet, because people have been using it WRONG. Modulate all parameters but pitch, make 2 instances, apply pingpong delay, and you have a cool monophonic portamento bass/lead. It can also do dubstep wobbles when massaged well.

Used as a lead here in several places

And that temporarily concludes our list of freebies because I'm scared of the character limit and I gotta save some more for later! Moving onto our video category.

Videos 100% worth your time

The most hated FL Studio producer ever

How to make your reverb sound massive, the right way

How to mix better than 99% of producers -- session organization

Metal Drum Mixing, Krimh Drums

Market Research:

As a beat and samplemaker, you can't go wrong with checking out the competition. Here's some stuff I felt was interesting. Look at the presentation of the kits listed in the descriptions and do a little case study. It's worth the effort!

You Only Need These Drumkits 2023 | TOP DRUM KITS IN 2023

I selected this channel to find what the AVERAGE producer is thinking, not someone who may or may not be receiving giveaways for product endorsements or for whom budget is of no concern!

I also circled back to BWB on drumify -- note kits and similar artists.

Discussion time. I kinda hate drumify; it's overpriced, appears closed, and licensing is DUMB. But the kits are worth looking at to see what influential and upcoming producers are doing, the kind of presentation people think is professional.

Note before you think about buying anything, according to licensing, melody loops on drumify are NOT NECESSARILY royalty free. This is kind of an f-u to the customer. If I'm buying, it should damn well be royalty free to use, and cheaper if not. You might as well sell me an album otherwise -- don't be like this when selling your stuff, or don't make these terms fine print.

Still, BWB has some of the highest quality kits I've seen and the largest variety. This is who producers are looking up to and whose content they crave. He's also nice and familiar to folks listening to the radio.

In short, when you see stores like these, stop and take a look around. Take notes. Sites like this are good for getting ideas of how to pitch and pack your samples, titles and vibes -- and how to structure your website or store!

Discussion of paid kits for your references

Great market research for hiphop sample packs. As we know hiphop is full of sample recycling and loudness maximizing samples. Here are some of the must haves worth looking into, and what people think of them.

And that wraps up this giant article!

If you read this far, thank you so much! I hope you found something that you've never heard before, whether it was a plugin, FX, or a write-up, and I especially hope if you copped any of my sample projects that you enjoy them for a long time. I'm always looking for feedback, whether it be on the format of these articles themselves or the content served up, and I'm open for requests!

Big special thanks to my supporters this month for all you've done. @MATRVG @MariogD @CyberDevil @JimmytheCaterpillar, in case I don't get a hold of you before the 14th, happy Valentine's day, or single awareness day as it may be! Love you!

Ciao!

ADR3-N's Januarylist, 2024. AKA music production freebies for people with too much time on their hands.

Happy late new year, and merry late Christmas, beat bangers! Kicking off the new year with a little music producer magazine madness. We got 32+ kick-ass FREE resources to speed through, from audio production plug-ins and samples video editing apps, discussion videos, blogs, and one easter egg for the lulz.

Props to @LD-W for several fantastic recommendations this year. Thanks to you, we're starting off this list with an innovation in music production and FX processing to keep an eye out for -- GPU powered plugins like the ones due to drop any time from GPU Audio! Link to the beta suite.

Atm, in-house beta is complete, but you can sign up to be notified when the plugins are released. There are also some goodies if you create an account: Impulse Response libraries, a drum library, and Make Your Audio Sound 3D stems.

Keep your eyes open for plugins like these while we wait. I missed out on the beta from pure ignorance, despite dreaming about GPU powered audio plugs for a solid week!

Now, onto the usual freebies! There are FX, VSTs, and samples that are making their first, second, and even third appearance over the years, because in the process of switching PCs, I've had to reinstall my entire library. If you recognize an entry on this list, it's because I still deem them useful!

Let's dive in!

Plugins, Instruments, FX, and Samples

Sidechainer2 - VST3. Does what it says on the tin. Allows you to draw a sidechain pattern and implement it. I've started incorporating it into most everything I make and recommend giving it a shot! Allows multiple sidechain note lengths and has a good selection of preset shapes.

Note: This was working in Mixcraft 9, but since updating to Mixcraft 10 it has disappeared from my library. If this happens to you, try to see where it installs to, and add that folder to your DAW's list of VST/FX locations. If that doesn't fix it, I have an alternative below.

Flux mini 2 - Basically the same thing, from Caelum Audio, but with a cutoff frequency, resonance, "amp" percentage, and a refreshingly dark interface. As a cool aside, the SYNC parameter allows you to draw a sidechain and stretch it out over 32 FREAKING BARS. Compared to Sidechainer2's 1/2 notes, that's pretty cool on its own!

ActionTremolo - Noise Ash. Pretty freaking cool little tremolo plugin, that can be used as a side-chain AND auto panner, as well as add drive to a signal! Get it by subscribing to NoiseAsh's newsletter. I used to use this one on every pad/lead I had and even backing vocals.

Vital Synth - a KILLER free synth for a multitude of genres, more than capable of competing with Massive. You can get extra presets, features and support for the price of a BASIC no frills plugin and install as many of your own as you want. It's pretty dope. I've used it for almost every synth on my latest cover track. Easily first place in my heart!

presetshare.com - where you can get tons of free presets for this awesome VST and many others ;) Preset Share also doubles as a space to share your tracks and presets of your own. People can subscribe to you for exclusive content/presets.

Micromusic.tech AI Vital Preset generator - Free alternative to Synplant 2's preset generation function, works best for mono and polyphonic leads <3 May not be best for dubstep growls, but the results can be very interesting, and I love it. Drop samples into this badboy and discover just how much wizardry Vital is capable of, even if you are a total noob at knob magic!

Filtron - The only high/low/band pass filter I've ever seen that doesn't just have a switch for filter type, but allows you to modulate between them seamlessly, no clicking or popping. You can also modulate each parameter from the audio output of another track. Perfect for acid sounds, and totally FREE! Just enter your email and subscribe to the newsletter, and check your spam folder.

JST Blackbox - pusher, stereo spreader, does what it says on the tin! (just kidding, it does nothing)

Geonkick - free percussion synthesizer for kicks, snares, claps, etc -- thanks for the ping, @LD-W!

Thump One - Deceptively simple drum synth that does much more than it says on the tin, with a very simple workflow that gets the job done. A lot of fun to experiment with and perfect for modern electronic music of all kinds.

DistorK - pay what you want distortion multi effect plugin by independent developer KiTiK.dev, aka @ kitikdub on Twitter/X. There are many other free plugins on his gumroad page as well! The developer is actively responding to bugs and would love to hear feedback!

Sting! - Drum pattern/rhythm generator (ableton max4live only)

Hatefish RhyGenerator One - SORT OF an alternative to Sting!, if you don't have ableton. Both generate rhythms and can be pretty fun to play with.

Bedroom Producers Blog - BPB Dirty Filter - Distortion, degradation, amplification and a really simple interface. Need I say more? Enter your email. Pay what you want and check out the blog!

Rare gems - abandonware, plugin rescue

From here down are instruments and FX you can't find anywhere else, whether they were always free, became free, or their developers disappeared off the face of the earth!

Give internet impermanence the finger and cop these bad boys!

Accusonus ERA Bundle - Declip, denoise, voice level, remove reverb, de-ess, match room tone, autoEQ voice, deepen voice, remove explosive p's, and auto-clean recordings with this abandoned pro suite -- MAC and WIN supported, perpetual license given by the developers after they were bought out by Meta (FB)

IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD EXPENSIVE PODCAST/FILM QUALITY AUDIO RESCUE PLUGINS, THIS IS A GOLD MINE! Before I had RX7, I used the freebies and trials off this bad boy in everything I ever made. They were also lower latency and CPU than RX6 and 7's DAW plugs.

Kjaerhus Classic Bundle - This legacy bundle originally came with Mixcraft. I use these plugins in EVERY single song I make and have for 10+ years. The chorus and delay are absolutely irreplaceable to me. They are well worth the 32 bit hassle. Help keep them alive! Kjaerhus died, but their plugs don't have to!

Beatskillz - Slampup a free two-knob tube drive and compressor plugin. No longer offered on Beatskillz, but you can find it here at freevstplugins.net. No need to enter your information. Just close the dialog box that pops up before the download starts. As always, scan 3rd party downloads with your antivirus before installing!

Smiley VST by Streaky - sort of like soundgoodizer, but can also be used the other way around, to make things sound flat and gross. It's hard to find, as the original download no longer exists, but if this link doesn't work, I'll see if I can find it in my dump files and provide a copy. You can safely ignore the email grab box that pops up -- tested it myself.

Saudade Drums Remastered - a metal kick, snare, and tom library rescued and remastered by yours truly (ADR3-N). This instrument was originally for Kontakt, but its creator, the metal band Vultures Overhead, disbanded and went offline, taking the instrument down with them.

I have cleaned the samples and made them into a sforzando instrument (sfz, the same format used by MuseScore), but included the wavs in case you want to use them in a sampler. Also seen in the demo are Adreanaline Sample Pack BETA and CTK-2400 Project (sforzando). Same link!

Improvements: removed white noise from samples so you no longer need to gate drums, expanded playable key range/pitches for each instrument and made them able to be played individually in sforzando. They're gorgeous processed samples -- highly recommend even the original!

DEMO: Saudade Metal Drums Remastered, CTK-2400 Sample Instruments, & ADREANALINE Sample Pack

NG Ver:

Video Editing Freebies

A short list of video editing resources you can use for free and descriptions of each.

CAPCUT - owned by bytedance, and pretty user friendly. Only concern is like tiktok, also owned by bytedance, it may scrape your personal information and send all your clips to the Chinese Communist Party, as all Chinese owned companies are required by law to do this for the CCP.

If you want to use CapCut but are afraid for this reason, you can sandbox your browser, use a VPN, create a new email for signup, and only use third-party clips for editing. There is some concern bytedance is taking biometrics from its users, like face scans, and scraping data from other apps on phones/PCs. The face scans I believe, but the app scraping may be unfounded.

I genuinely think CapCut is the best free video editor out there aside from these considerations. Looks very professional and TikTok ready. You can save your creations and post process them in other apps, including adding extra text, color correction and cropping, etc.

SPOOL - I wrote this in my notes and forgot what it was aside for offering visualizers, but upon googling it, it's a music video editing software that comes with access to visuals and 12 different FX -- tap the beats to your music. Seems intuitive and pretty cool tbh.

Vizzy.io - easy visualizer, totally free, and offers lots of effects, including green screening, importing your own assets, audio reaction jiggers, and particle FX. Online only. Type in vizzy.io and there you go.

Example made in vizzy.

Alternatives to Magix (Formerly Sony) Vegas Pro - AlternativeTo has a great list of free competitors for professional video-editing software Vegas Pro, with a list of features, pros and cons for each.

Great playlist adds - Videos 100% worth your time

Tracking guitars into FX plugins - you're probably setting your DI input way too high, because everyone and their manuals told you to. This can also apply to guitar vst inputs/outputs and routing your synths through amp sims. Check out the difference in this video, and some really nice guitar licks to boot.

Mixing: Top Down or Bottom Up? - Which is the best approach? Or rather, which is the best approach for what application?

Release Strategies for the Modern Music Producer - by Musformation (Jesse Cannon). This video is long but well worth the watch, covering the many pitfalls faced by music producers today. He details how to combat them effectively with a solid release schedule, understanding spotify and YT best practices, and leveraging social media to your advantage.

Highly recommend his channel in general to get a good grasp of music marketing!

Good Reads

Articles for Music Producers to wrap their heads around

The Missing Link - Joey Sturgis Tones

What you might not have thought of before mixing your guitar with an amp/cab sim, AKA why your e-guitar doesn't sound right, when you spent 4 hours mixing it.

Waves blog - A lot of great little articles for mixing, including how to use serial compression, mixing with channel strips, and how to get your vocals front and center in the mix.

Remove Potentially Unclean Frequencies with Fruity Circumcizer - Is your track 8 days old and thereby ready to comply with God's covenant with Abraham? Do all your waveforms vaguely resemble phalluses? Are you tired of chunky residue from your old plugins clouding your mix? If you answered yes to any one of these questions, boy do I have the solution for you.

Schoenerbeats blog - A new blog surrounding music production, with advice on how to make money as a music producer, avoiding gear lust, and best practices.

And of course, the BEST blog of all, Bedroom Producer's Blog. As long as it's running, I'll stan it. Free plugins, music production news, and tons more.

If you're looking for free plugins, samples, and plugin sales, ask LD-W for an invite to the Newgrounds Audio Pub Discord server. In the "resources" channel, we FREQUENTLY post announcements for all kinds of promotions and giveaways!

Word of advice to new music producers like me who got a new PC!

I've written some guidance slash tutorial for migrating your music software, sample libraries, instruments, and effects to a new PC safely.

This may seem like common knowledge, but back up ALL your files -- and expect to reinstall ALL your plugins! Do not delete ANYTHING off of your old PC or disable it in any way; you will probably regret it.

I've broken down the general process of switching PCs into simple steps.

Ensure that you back up your boot drive to a cloud or removable media

Install your secondary drive to the new device if possible, but don't expect the software on it to work

Save all the installers, serials, emails, passwords, and product managers to removable media/cloud BEFORE you transfer anything!

Even if you have the program installed on your secondary drive, save the installer to it/elsewhere too!

Unless it is a small dll plugin, there is a lot more to installing vsts/fx than dragging and dropping files.

Do not delete any of your installers or files, unless you haven't used them at all in at least a year.

When you transfer over your files, expect that most plugins/FX/instruments will need reinstalling.

If you don't have installers for something, go download them online!

If you used to use 32bit versions of a plugin, you'll have to install that too!

It's ok to reorganize your plugins for the most part, but you should write down where you moved samples to, if you're reorganizing your library. Your old projects will call for them and you need to know where they are.

OneNote is good for saving junk info like this because you can easily search the whole contents by keywords.

AFTER the hard part is taken care of:

Set up your music production software as usual. You should have taken notes of what plugins you intended to save from your old drive, and where all your samples are.

Your kontakt libraries will need to be reinstalled on the new computer -- take stock of those and make sure you have the addlibrary.exe handy, as simply copying over kontakt and re-activating it may not be enough (it'll probably break if you moved it and you may even get license trolled due to # of activations, beware)

Make sure you ALSO check your audio driver and sound settings before you get back to producing! Set up your DAW as it was before in terms of audio driver and sample rate/buffer. Then check the audio driver and settings out.

Why you should check your audio drivers:

Most if not all new PCs come with "premium" audio drivers like Realtek with gross "enhancements" on by default for "entertainment" and "gaming". They hijack your sound output and give it the equivalent of an 80s hair metal blowout, but don't actually apply to the sounds produced in your DAW, meaning you think your song is mastered when you export it, but it actually isn't.

Producing with these settings on is like having an imaginary mastering chain on EVERYTHING that plays on your PC. Your unmastered mixes will sound great on your device but trash in the car/on the phone. This is every producer's nightmare!

The proprietary effects applied by these drivers are vague in the hopes you never learn to do the enhancements yourself and only listen to your music/games with their software. They make audio sound "better" at the expense of destroying what has already been mixed well, fully sabotaging you as a producer. Luckily, it's easy to turn them off on newer systems with a quick google.

And that's about all you should really have to worry about. I just had to do this and made some mistakes myself, so if you're planning to upgrade, don't take my word with a grain of salt. Take some notes!

Until next time, love and stank beetz,

-Adrean

Special thanks to my supporters and commissioners. Love you!

@CyberDevil, @MATRVG, @MarioGD, and @JimmyTheCaterpillar!

If you'd like to see more content like this, or you think my work is exceptionally useful, you can tip me over at ko-fi and patreon, linked over on the left hand panel of my profile!

Hey guys, this is just a quick little PSA, I'll be on a brief hiatus while I upgrade to a new PC and get my audio stuff back set up. I kept running into issues from having a 1060 Nvidia GPU, which if you're not initiated into computer geek stuff is ridiculously underpowered for the kind of content creation I do -- music and music videos. I recently got an Acer Nitro 5 and ported over all my files, dropped the new HDD in, so everything should be fine.

Tagging my favorite people so you know what's up!

@CyberDevil, @MATRVG, @MarioGD, @JimmyTheCaterpillar, @Mejson, @JT424, @Trunotfals, @FarFromSundown, @Rusecue, @lawiuslorric, @zeroizerozero, @g2961, @Odd-Naw

Cross your fingers for me getting everything back up and running!

ALSO, expect my next news post to be a list of music production freebies to round out the month! And thanks to all of you who took a gander at my last news post. The music video is blowing up pretty nice! 800 views in 4 days. That's a record for me!

Little Dreams and Nas Ne Dogonyat have been stuck in my head for years. One night, I had an idea I couldn't shake -- what if t.A.T.u wrote it? Then I made a gay ass fan video as accompany it. Here it is!

Watch it while you still can! The video is a complilation of the good old days of t.A.T.u, their music videos, their lives, and of course, the All The Things She Said kisses we couldn't stop watching as angsty teens.

I made this video for my Russian speaking fans. If there is demand, I will make downloads for this available on patreon/ko-fi. If our YT overlords take it down, I'll put it out on Drive/Archive))

2023 is almost over. Christmas has come and gone. The New Year is around the corner, but is it too late to say I come bearing gifts? Because if not, Backstreet's back in black, with a sack of goodies I found all over the internet.

That's right, it's Decemberlist 2023, so kick back and dig in as we dive into the best and the baddest music production freebies I could get my carpal tunneled hands on. We got samples, we got instruments and FX, and for the extra nerdy little trendsetters, the easiest AI vocal conversion you've ever heard of. Producers around the world rejoice!

Normally I write a giant post, but I'll save that for later. Onto the list!

Glaze Features recorded live vocalists for vocal textures and runs, promising to cover a LOT of ground in terms of genres, but I think this one is going to be essential for HipHop and R&B in particular. Check out the project video. Glaze is available for Kontakt 7.6 and higher.

Maim - lofi glitch, mp3 compression. This plugin promises to utterly destroy your audio in ways you can hardly imagine.

_efx Refract by Arturia is free until January 4th, after which it will… not be free. The plugin offers harmonic distortion and other cool little doo-dads. Must register, after which you will be afforded a license.

If you're registering, it will send you a funny looking email with a htm document. Don't worry, it didn't brick my PC or trigger my antivirus. You're safe. But it does come with an annoying software manager for licenses.

Producer Grind Sample Kits - Free drum and sound kits in the search bar ;) They come with licenses. The freebies start at the bottom of page 1. Must have an account.

The infamous Spinz 808 is on there. Name a vibe, they probably got it covered. There are enough packs that I had to start shoveling them onto an SD card, believe it or not. Multiple genres covered, and some of them are BIG.

Venus Theory - Noctua (requires registration, ilok)

I saw the announcement for this instrument on VT's channel. It has been in development for a year, shocker, and it sounds pretty damn good. I can see the soundscapes and quirky instruments like EMF Detectors being used in industrial, cyberpunk, and all sorts of genres. Perhaps hybrid filmscore and hip-hop.

Also unfortunately requires UVI's software manager to install, but that's really the only drawback. Personally I can't wait until music production software sites cut that out. If you want me as a loyal customer, one application I can't delete without losing access to your plugin is a surefire way to make sure I don't become one. Two is pushing it.

Steinberg HALion - Taped Vibes (free with registration)

Thanks to @Garf_Richards on X! This one is a HALion piano, which immediately sparks a nostalgia in me I can't put a finger on.

Versilian Studios Freeware - Versilian Studios has a variety of free instruments in sfz format, in other words, that work with the free instrument player Sforzando. There are pianos, orchestral instruments, a jazz drum kit, and legacy discontinued software you can dive into to your hearts' content.

Pianobook - This site is more than just what it says on the tin. User created sample packs, kontakt instruments, sfz instruments, and more. I couldn't possibly name how many drum sets, pads, keys, guitars, and more that I found on here. It was even the inspiration behind my own projects, Saudade Drums Remastered and the CTK-2400 Project

Unison Audio - Zenmaster

Likely released as competition for Cymatics Origin (which I also recommend) If you're looking for some quick vinyl flavor, might as well cop it. You can't really knock free!

Cymatics also has OODLES of free samples and plugins, including an analog chorus, déjà vu, Diablo Lite, and Space Lite.

Although many sites promising free samples and plugins are absolute junk, Cymatics has delivered year after year, and I'll be the first to cop. No, this is not a paid advertisement. This is my honest opinion. I have Origin myself and the paid version of Diablo. I use them religiously in my productions.

And finally, I promised you a thicc write-up somewhere in here. Figured I might as well go in on the tangential project I've been working on all week, because I think the next app I'm about to talk about is SO cool.

Replay Vocal AI

Got a little how-to video for this completely free application, allowing you to turn your acapellas into entire choirs of different vocalists in minutes, or in my case seconds! It will take multiple models and takes for a true choir, but the conversions themselves are quick, and the applications for use in your music don't end there.

To show you I mean what I say, I've recorded an entire 19 minute script on my webcam mic and converted it into studio quality using a model based on my own songs and voice acting. Basically, it's a MASSIVE spoken word demo.

You've probably seen my AI voice covers and originals, which I recorded in realtime with so-vits-svc, one of the most popular methods out there. Well, this has been a game changer for me, and here's why.

So-vits is great for converting your voice in live chat, not so much in the studio because it requires big brain programming, virtual audio cable wizardry, and tons of editing takes. It eats up so much data, and it's a freaking hassle.

Replay RVC offers the ability to record your best takes beforehand and process them without any programming knowledge or complications. It comes ready to use after install and prompt access to models from weights.gg. There's everything from Hatsune Miku to a literal trumpet you can use. You can convert instruments to voice and vice versa too. It's super convenient and ready to get wacky.

So, I finally bit the bullet and paid for monthly Colab to make this video popping. I got my new voice models running in a matter of hours, converted all the takes in a few minutes, and converted them again for the other models I tested, some of which I also made.

If you'd like to attempt this yourself and upscale your bad recordings or experiment with turning an actual instrument like an electric guitar for a WILD ass vocoder, I'll be happy to train models for you for a small fee (to cover the compute costs -- I only have so many hours!) I'll also prep datasets and troubleshoot models/installation.

Hit me up if interested here, on X (OGAdrean), or Discord (ADR3-N). YT comments also get my attention.

That wraps it up for our end of year freebies. If you've seen any more lying around, feel free to drop them here. You can also ask @LD-W for an invite to the Newgrounds Audio Pub server, where he regularly posts free and discounted audio production resources. Really great place to stop in and recharge your batteries, as well!

Onto more pressing matters, like how many couches I've had to move this week, and whether or not I've finally broken a nail. The answer is 3 and no respectively. But I am still running playlists for Spotify and other platforms -- so if you're an artist looking to get playlisted, check in here!

Other news, Lyudi Invalidy has made its way to Spotify and YT safe and sound, no issues with my cover license whatsoever. You can stream it below.

And I am still doing free and paid track reviews for music producers and audio engineers both here and on X. If you're looking for quality, unbiased feedback on your compositions from the perspective of an experienced audio critic, tailored to your budget and individual needs, reach out to me via PM, X, or Discord. Paid items go to the top of my list, but I usually am able to get to all but the thickest albums in before a week is out.

I also do track writeups and album analysis, if you're looking for someone to write articles on literally whatever.

Other projects I'm working on include F-gents' Line of Work series voice acting, a free metal cymbal project I do in my spare time, several, several singles including one coming to us all the way from the annals of 2016, and finishing off Adreanaline sample pack. Now that the bulk of my audio engineering work is through and I have all my fancy new models in place, I'm free to get back to doing these little writeups every so often, collabs, and catching up on my mails.

While I'm here, I wanted to say it's been great being with you all this year. I hope you all have had a Merry Christmas and will soon have a very happy New Year.

I won't append a long list of @'s, but I'd like to thank all of my supporters, patrons, and commissioners. You have made it possible to continue to focus on what matters to me most, music and the vast content creation community we have cultivated on and off of Newgrounds.

I can't imagine a better decade to have been alive doing what I love. The possibilities are endless.

Thank you again, and if I'm not the first to tell you, I'll see you all next year!

-Adrean

Tip Jar

Patreon

YouTube

Spotify

X

Couple new developments, y'all, so I'll get right into it.

Firstly, thank you all so much for your responses to my last post. I got so many tracks to my inbox, it kept me busy for days! Big thanks to @JimmyTheCaterpillar for my first commission for professional audio critique and the most interesting pieces I've ever heard out of Audacity and BeepBox!

It took about a week to get through the DMs, sharing to twitter and in the case of Spotify playlisting everyone. I'm ready for more, which brings me to my next point.

If you've been following me on Twitter/X, I've been on a mission to connect with as many independent artists as possible, hip-hop artists, one man bands, indie rockers, and literal digital artists.

In particular, I'm looking for album artists and tracks to playlist on YouTube and Spotify.

I have a few playlists ready. If you see one you like, drop a track here and tell me where to put it! If it fits, I'll throw it on here, and if not, I'll start another playlist.

HOP ON THE PLAYLIST TRAIN BABY:

For independent hip-hop with vocals. I'm thinking of seeding it with a few larger artists for the algorithm, but not so many that it loses its mind!

I will be making genre specific playlists strictly for instrumentals as well, so feel free to drop your tracks, even if they don't fit, and bonus, I'll follow you on Spotify.

YOUTUBE PLAYLISTS

JAMMY BOIS - edm and hip-hop bangers - What it says on the tin and then some. Primarily Russian Hard Bass, rap, and EDM for cleaning the house, dancing when no one is watching, and setting fire to the club. Vodka is not an option. Anything hard, danceable, and liable to get the cops called when the beat bang, put it here.

Chill vibes. Slowed and Reverb. Lo-Fi welcome. Ear worms and songs that can be played on repeat. Featuring lots of Doja Cat, Jenny Darling, you're my best friend, and so much more. If I can kick back and play Borderlands to it as well as sit and talk to the girls, it goes!

Awesome Music - This one's an oldie of mine with all the classics. We got power metal, memes, absurd lyricism, mashups, and yes, more memes. If your music is epic, I'll probably add it to this playlist anyway.

Just Producing - YT for all you producers out there who like to show off your beatmaking skills.

My personal t.A.T.u playlist in case y'all make a cover or a remix. I watch this one a lot, so you'll be getting streams from me. It does a great job of serving me recommends off of this one since my last couple tracks, Ne Ver Ne Boisya English and All About Us Russian blew up!

And finally, INDEPENDENT ARTISTS ONLY!!! This playlist is actually a dinosaur from back when I made beats to sell on YouTube (2015???). No rules apply. Not genre specific. If you got a download link in that description, stick that bad boy right here.

If you got something else in mind, drop your track and tell me what kind of playlist you think would fit. I'm always looking for a reason to start a new one!

Give me a few days to sort out all the replies and playlisting. Going through that Spotify playlist up top took about a week to get through 80+ replies and threads, minus some other commissions work, and besides that, I'll be judging the semi-finals of the Newgrounds Audio Deathmatch, as well as working on "Rock and A Hard Place" for @JT424 this week. You can catch the first episode on Spotify here!

Still working on themes for @MATRVG's animations over with Reduce Team, expecting a release or two within the week. Expect a return to retro with some SNES Castlevania remixes!

Oh, and I almost forgot, for all the boys who are dumb af and the girls who fuck with them anyways, BOUNCE is now out on Spotify! We made a splash here on Newgrounds, so I figured I'd drop it. Now you can go on TikTok the next time some fuk boi slides in your DMs and become a memegod.

Get it here!

In other news, we have some images that belong squarely on weed twitter. Witness the napalm and cannabis induced AI wet dreams of Xena the Warrior Princess!

And that about wraps it up for this week! Thank you all for your support. If you want to help keep this train wreck afloat, you can do a few things. I got a ko-fi over here for donations, a Twitter you can follow, and a YouTube that could always use comments. I am not a bot, I reply, share, and follow back! :)

Special thanks: @CyberDevil, @MATRVG, @MarioGD, and @JimmyTheCaterpillar!

Sick album art by @Odd-Naw is now finished. Show him some love! (and check out the previous versions!)

Not sure how this will be taken, but I'll jump out of the gate and say it. As of three minutes ago, I am offering critique and content promotion, in that order. I will fairly and honestly review AND/OR promote literally anything and especially your music for a price that's fair to BOTH of us (including free). See bottom for details.

EDIT: I realized I made an error in my pricing. I wrote "up to" instead of "at least." That's what I get for writing at 2 AM! Also, content can be anywhere, not just Newgrounds!

Why am I doing this?

Well, the Review Request Club is effectively dead, and in the 17 years I've spent on this site, I've constantly seen non-reviews on music, games, and movies, now in declining numbers as infinite-scroll culture has hit its peak. The stream of low effort comments and alternating silence contrasts demand from content creators of all levels for actual meaningful feedback, which sucks. Everyone wants to feel their work is seen and heard, myself included.

To fight the engagement vacuum, I try to do little things, judge competitions, share user content, and occasionally offer myself up for reviews, basically to help out any way I can. Over the years I've become aware of some limitations, like buckling under the pressure of lots and lots of notifications, because I have a bad habit of over-volunteering myself for lots of things, just because. I've found that aside from all the thanks I get from the community, which make me feel good, spending days or weeks to review and post consistently is a challenge. Having little incentive to push through sucks, and so does the fact I could be working on things that might earn me money.

So, as a remedy for both of those problems, I'm offering free and paid reviews, as well as promotion upon request.

I will still of course be doing all the things I typically do on Newgrounds for free, and I will never ask for payment for services "already rendered." In fact, I won't be posting any links to payment platforms so you DON'T send me money for something I haven't yet agreed to do. Just giving you a little kick-me sign to hit the top of my to-do list whenever you want, for whatever you want.

So what is my expertise?

As I mentioned, I've lived here on Newgrounds as an aspiring music producer for many years now, judged several prestigious Audio competitions for the past decade, and have been involved in the community for quite some time as a an audio moderator and everyday user. Audio production and music composition is my primary concentration. However, I also fancy myself an occasional writer, as well as an avid consumer of virtually all forms of digital content. My favorites are first person shooters, graphic art, sci-fi fantasy books, and many, many documentaries. I am furthermore a treasure trove of useless facts, like how the Russian word for water is one letter away from vodka, and I find it difficult to hear people talking over the sound of spoons against ceramic.

Finally, I am a huge, huge nerd, and unlike people offering to give reviews for clout or commenting follow-back on your socials, I actually really like to do this stuff. I would just like to be able to do it for a living.

So, with that said,

All the power of my big-brain and carpal tunnel hands will be at your disposal for the low price of:

• FREE - 100 words or less
• $1 - at least 250 words, or content is ~7 minutes long
• $3 - at least 500 words, or content is ~10 minutes long
• $5 - at least 500 words, or content is ~15 minutes long

Special orders:

• $10 - 500+ words, up to 5 individual pieces
• $25 - an entire album with individualized track reviews, or long form content

Multiple tracks are accepted.

For promotion and publication to your liking, add $5 to listed prices.

Be advised, if I like your work, I will probably share it anyway. This is mostly for pitching your work to playlists in your genre of choice, promotion on other platforms, etc.

Payments to be accepted through Ko-fi donation, CashApp, and Venmo. Request via PM or your choice of Discord/Twitter. Payments upfront, negotiable and most importantly refundable. Honest reviews only, I will not lie for dollar signs, but I will highlight any area of your choosing as the focus for my review/promotion.

Also, I may place a limit on orders if I have a high volume to avoid burnout.

If you see someone doing a whole lot of these, or they look cookie cutter, there are lots of scams going around online with the advent of AI. You have probably unknowingly witnessed Chat GPT responses disguised as content review/promo, and that is NOT what I will be doing. Typically 10-20 reviews will take me an entire day, and this is what they will look like. (None of these are paid)

Now, contrast this with what comes out of Chat GPT when you ask it to review any song. Unless it has lyrics, GPT is shit out of luck, and it will still make complete gibberish. Reference, I asked it to review my discography and it invented albums I never made and influences that didn't exist, like what this guy is doing below.

I can see why people are using Chat GPT for this purpose. Reviews take a long time to write, and they are great for posting to your content hubs for promo/sales, your beat catalogs, your raps, animation portfolios, or whatever you feel like in the digital revolution. As long as they're not written by an AI or some idiot who isn't paying attention, they really do work.

That's what I want to offer, my experience, my time, and my whole, undivided attention. Hopefully a little added boost that just works.

Who wants the first slice?

Throwback to 2005! For those of you who loved Ne Ver Ne Boisya reimagined in English, it's t.A.T.u's All About Us like you've never heard it before. The song has been translated in Russian for the first time and sung into reality with AI! It's been a labor of love, a dream, and a lot of elbow grease convincing the Yulia AI to scream as usual. I think I spent a whole day yelling at my computer, thankfully all alone, lol.

Hyperlink: https://youtu.be/2unUQiSOS1g

Lyrics will be posted to the comments.

Ne Ver Ne Boisya English Version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lckpquvbvLA

I wanted to thank you all so much for your kind words, requests, and feedback. I'm so happy to share something you all enjoy, something we've been yearning for for years, more t.A.T.u. music! t.A.T.u. forever, Never Forget!

Aside from these projects, I have several commissions going behind the scenes. This video was made possible by viewers like you, because I'm pretty much making them for free thanks to YouTube copyrights. If you want to help support or strongly encourage me to keep going, you can leave a tip!

Supporters and Special Thanks: @MATRVG, @MariogD, @CyberDevil, and the Newgrounds fam as always.

Tip jars:

https://ko-fi.com/adr3_n

https://www.patreon.com/adr3_n

More about the project:

I made this video with the power of AI, my own voice, and manual translation, trying to stay as close to the original as possible.

Yulia Volkova and Lena Katina's vocals were sung in realtime through so-vits-svc in Python, with lyrics translated from English to Russian. The instrumental was pulled from the 2005 Dangerous and Moving album version run through Ultimate Vocal Remover.

More tools:

If you want to use so-vits-svc yourself, you can check out other videos on my channel discussing it first. It's a lot of work!

Yulia AI model, first test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psZN6TcMpRM

Yulia AI model, second test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS7jaHVjz7M

Lena AI model, test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5lF0c_mFGI

My dataset is available on Google Drive

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YJ8aLSxSpVJarfakVcO8FqbdSYJS6R6R/view?usp=sharing

I highly recommend p3tro's tutorials and trying things locally with the help of a thread I wrote for troubleshooting the software.

https://www.reddit.com/r/so_vits_svc/comments/1354iqj/useful_tips_faq_for_sovitssvc_first_timers_python/

Visualizer made in vizzy.io.

DAW: Mixcraft 9

FX: Howard Benson Vocals, Smiley VST, Cymatics Diablo

This post is subject to removal or redaction at any time in order to protect the real life identities of persons involved. It is illegal to harrass or slander these individuals.

EDIT 09/22: The victim and her partner have released further statements under duress regarding this issue.

It is so much WORSE than the rest of what you may read below, which remains unaltered with the exception that files aside from the now redundant text file have been removed.

I was absolutely disgusted by what I saw and completely concede all former assumptions about any claims of the victim and her partner (alleged grooming is no longer simply alleged), my doubts of the utter depravity of Johnny (exposed to an extreme degree), and that my further statements in this matter are and have been completely irrelevant and unwanted.

Johnny is an absolute depraved, lying, manipulating bastard. I am more than willing to testify in court as to his lack of remorse and callous disregard for anyone but himself, and at this point personally believe he used what he knew of my online sexual harassment, our friendship since 2016, and how I would BELIEVE his regret about reminding me of said trauma to garner sympathy or some sort of support -- because I confided in him that as a minor I did engage enthusiastically online with pedophiles. Probably gave him some kind of kicks, by the looks of it.

It follows that I have played right into his hand. This has caused further harm to the victim, justifiably dragged my name through the mud, and for that I take whatever comes with it.

Beyond that, the only potentially relevant items from this post and the aforementioned Read.txt are the address to pedophiles and groomers, why victims do not and should not have to be spotless lambs to be blameless in such cases as this, and the names and history of my own sexual abuse on Newgrounds and other sites. My statement pro-contact minors are a danger to themselves and need support and protection as such stands.

In regards to the victim's statements, I dispute only the claims I have any active alts (Newgrounds staff will be able to check this), or motive for Johnny's return to online life, or desire to prevent legal turmoil that likely will result from his actions. I certainly wouldn't have included evidence he paid a minor for sexual favors if I supported him. Nor would I include the evidence provided by the victim and Arnozy, or Shal. I have just seen that Johnny requested EDIT permissions to this document, which I of course did not grant. I would not be surprised if it, the document provided by the victim, and my text document are reported for "violating Google policy"

My only intention, which is irrelevant, was to examine the entire narrative from an unbiased point of view. The victim has accomplished better than this, in incredible detail. We clearly see absolutely NOTHING Johnny ever had to say beyond actually exiting online life instead of watching his world crumble was worth wasting breath on.

I wanted Johnny to at least admit what he had done, for how long. We have seen where that went. A waste of time. Further, I sought to demonstrate that Johnny need not be a monster and the victim need not be a saint for his actions to be preventable, wrong, and deserving of jail time.

This much is still true. She shouldn't have had to post anything but the dick pics he sent and his aliases, and that should have been enough.

Additionally, after reading the statement of the victim, I realized I had uploaded the unedited versions of some screenshots received, inadvertently exposing the victim's discord username. She responded with a further body of evidence that is so unbelievably horrific, I struggled reading it, and I am ashamed to be part of the reason you felt the need to write it. I have removed the files as there is no need for them and will not be speaking of or contacting either individual after this point per implied request.

The situation is so much more awful than anyone could have imagined. No one should have to go through what Johnny put her through, the phone calls, the sexual favors, "edging", and the internet sex dungeon he took it upon himself to make. No one should have to deal with the amount of shame and self doubt as their abuser uses every avenue to ensure it keeps continuing, and to silence them when they finally speak out by any means necessary.

The victim did not and should not have had to show anything beyond those initial pictures for Johnny to deservedly lose everything he has built. He should stop playing sex games with kids online and go to prison for grooming, emotional abuse, libel, cybersex with a minor, indecent exposure, and soliciting/possession of child pornography. And he should stop acting like anyone should feel sorry enough to hear anything but his own admission of guilt.

Jesus Christ, Johnny, what the fuck. All I ever did was try to get you to admit what you have done and know why you acted the way you did. It was your decision to try and twist that around too. What can I say, I WAS warned and you literally did it to everyone else.

I really DO hope you go to therapy. In prison.

And to the victim lastly (I don't deserve the right to use your name), you should never be ashamed of what you did or what happened to you. I'm sorry that I entertained this piece of human trash and his slander, assumed anything he said to be correct about your relationship with Arnozi, and ultimately made your life that much harder. I thank you for exposing the fuck out of the man I thought was just a decent guy making multitudes upon multitudes of stupid decisions, and for proving me dead wrong about my assumptions about him, about your case, and him grooming you most of all. I'm so sorry for this to be the way I find out I was right, and your story of abuse is so much worse than my own.

You don't have to accept my apology, nor respond. I don't blame you, I don't judge you, and I hope to God you can get the help you need. If there is anything I can do besides shut my mouth, like testify on your behalf, provide any libellious statements of Johnny if you think them relevant for prosecution, I will do it. Again, I am so sorry to be in the same sentence as the man who did this to you.

Original post follows.

Readers:

I hope in reading this analysis and my thoughts you understand why this post exists. It is not because I have any desire to protect Johnny. I don't. All of this information is more than enough to send him to jail.

It is because this day and age, we have this concept of GROOMING MINORS as the only instance in which minors will engage in sexual acts with adults, and the reason why minor victims cannot be seen as pursuant of encounters with adults (pro-contact minors). Persons talking about their childhood sexual abuse now feel like they must PROVE GROOMING in order to tell their story, because it is so, so embarrassing to tell.

I would argue that grooming minors is the very FIRST step on a long journey to pedophiles gaining access to easy victims. However, the effects of grooming are slow to accumulate and hard to understand.

Each minor is affected differently. Myself, I am not a universal model as has been pointed out, but my own experience with grooming began in 2005, or 2006. I hardly remember -- some of it will be detailed in my document, at the end. As I realized over the course of writing, I do still feel deep shame about my interactions as what would be termed a pro-contact minor, and about not releasing the names of those adult men I remember.

At the end of my document, the names of these men are released. I am still unsure of how I feel 17 years later. Perhaps, free.

EDIT: See images. I found even MORE of them after I wrote this and removed countless erotic stories written from that time.

But I have digressed. My point is that AFTER grooming, the psychology of children is incredibly well understood to change. The minor begins to seek out adults for sexual gratification, and this is not talked about nearly enough. As such, virtually none of them are able to get help.

I had men like this in my inbox. DAILY.

These minors deserve to be protected and understood. They need an extra push getting away from adults, because they don't want it. They may press their desires on unwitting adults (developmentally delayed, insecure, autistic) and then we have a situation as we see here, with Johnny and the victim -- and I will continue to refer to her as victim, because it sounds like that is what has occurred to her for a LONG time, victimization, to end up in Johnny's inbox.

EDIT: Johnny was not at all unwitting from the body of evidence presented. Original post continues.

My argument is and has always been that victims do not have to be perfect angels or even sympathetic characters to be recognized as victims, and the WHOLE story of pro-contact minors be safe for discussion. Move the Overton window.

Minors should be encouraged to pursue legal action against offenders, protect their identities, and that they don't need public approval to do so.

Measures need to be taken to protect them online, so that we do not have stories develop such as the one you are about to read. Mental health services need to be provided for these children, as well as education provided for adults, that these situations are ALWAYS wrong, no matter WHO PURSUES WHO, or who does what.

Warning: NSFW, discusses pedophilia, sexual text, grooming, blurred images of Johnny's penis.

What Happened: A few days ago, it was revealed that @ThatJohnnyGuy had an illicit sexual relationship with a minor. That minor, now 19, released with her boyfriend a trove of information regarding the sexting, images exchanged, and finally, alleged that she had been groomed by Johnny.

Later comments, additions to the dossier by Arnozi, and further responses from Johnny online made it clear that was barely scratching the surface of all that had happened. Several inconsistencies which will be discussed in the course of my own document were uncovered, as well as complicating factors to the case.

EDIT Sep 22: These inconsistencies were due to a rushed document according to Arnozi and are no longer relevant. Post continues.

Victim's and Arnozi's statements, subject to further additions. Complete with images.

Around that time and since, Johnny has released additional statements, half-admitted guilt, backpedaled, sworn to take legal action over libel (as seen in victim's doc and later mine), mulled over suicide, and in general done all the things a potential legal defendant SHOULD NOT DO, including share further screenshots of the conversation (which I was able to get my hands on) and more final statements.

EDIT: Sep 22, Johnny has removed all documents and information, is reporting documents others create. He has further removed posts and comment sections entirely.

Additional Evidence and Angles Emerging

The document below contains severely disturbing content, underage sex-work, monetary exploitation, explicit sexual themes. My intent in sharing this information is not to exonerate Johnny of his crimes in anyway, but to explore the wider picture of how this all happened, as well as why it is important to examine the entire facts in determining how to move forward.

EDIT: The files associated with this document are now redundant, as are some statements, such as those regarding grooming and the relationship of Arnozi and victim. Original text file. Post continues.

Its purpose is as a response to the discourse surrounding the victim's statements, Johnny's admission of guilt and proofs, resolving contradictory statements, and shedding light on a massively non-discussed topic which is the genesis of this affair: minors in online sex work (which I myself participated in from the ages of 11 to roughly 16).

In this document and accompanying screenshots, the genesis of his illicit relationship with minor victim is shown, motivations of both explored, and legal complications explored. It is by no means exhaustive, but it is the best idea of truth I think we will ever have.

EDIT Sep 22: These screenshots are irrelevant, as the victim has clarified the information to a stomach churning degree. Post continues.

Also included are the names and details of my own sexual exploitation as a minor, occurring here on NG and on TribalWars, Skype, etc.

To Johnny

I am still so beyond disappointed in what you have done. I still wish you would take accountability. More accountability. YES, you did have a sexual relationship with a minor online, and YES, knowingly. My friendship of years with you does not override that you have acted incredibly selfishly in this situation and committed serious crimes.

You may not have initiated this sexual relationship, but you allowed it to begin. No matter how manipulative a person is, or how poor your skills at setting boundaries are, you should at the very least know it will be prosecuted, and hopefully that steers you away from allowing it to happen. As you have mentioned countless times, you should have blocked her the instant you thought this was a possibility, and probably reported her for sexual harassment.

You deserve to lose everything you have built. I struggle to hear anything else. The only thing you don't deserve is death, dismemberment, and harassment. You're not a violent offender. You didn't actively seek minors to have sexual relations with online. But it still happened.

EDIT Sep 22: I retract the claims you didn't seek minors and not deserving anything, at this point. You've alienated perhaps the only person online who still cared about you. Congratulations.

Hey Newgrounds! Been a while. I'm back with another list of free samples to build your stash. Keeping the text wall fluff for the end of the post. Minimum necessary deets. :)

Let's dive in with Phonk Guys Discord, a one stop shop for phonk production. All types of phonk are represented, from hard hip-hop, memphis rap, and chillout to cloud phonk and house. Tons of phonk samples and a vibrant community of producers. Multiple language chat supported.

Hot spots to check out are the downloads, samples and kits, and production help sections. Literal gigabytes of kits and sounds available. Server is active. Hip-hop producers won't be sorry you stopped by!

See also NG Audio Pub Discord: resources tab. You can ask @Lich to be added to the Free Resources Ping. He never misses!

ADREANALINE sample pack is still up on Drive, updated today. Get it while it's hot!

I plan to update this pack periodically. Just added some more snares and weird noises. Next up is more 808s, rides, and other cymbals. Open for requests!

PHONK DRUM KIT vol 5 - Reddit

Reddit kits are notoriously recycled junk, but this one is a good starting point for those looking to branch out into phonk or spice up their existing sound. Beware acapellas likely need licensing or extensive manipulation... Which reminds me:

R/drumkits

See above! Most recent pack I came across was the "best oneshot kit ever," which folks have complained is old news -- but that means some of these samples at least have been used to great success. There's something to be said for familiarity, so worth checking out! Also, see plugmaximum's 800 mb glitch kit

CTK-2400 Project & Saudade Drums

Those seeking after a more organic set of drums or weird olskool keys need look no further than the CTK-2400 project and its cousin, Saudade Drums Remastered. Courtesy yours truly. Punchy, natural drum heads and warm, wacky synth sounds, playable in sforzando (free)

Unison Freebies

These require a little patience with Unison's penchant for constant emails, but if you like getting freebies in the mail, they're actually pretty good for that. The most recent pack I've seen from them is a Hip-Hop drum sample taster. Check it!

KyleBeats Freebies

One shots, melodies. There's 3 kits there. Occasionally he drops freebies in his email list as well. Some of his kits are hit or miss, however I do think Kyle puts out good work. I also enjoyed his Drip plugin... once I learned how to use it -- cough, automation, cough.

DJ Pain 1's website

DJ Pain is a long time producer, beat and sample maker known for his attention to detail. He has also made more beats than most high school graduates these days can count. You can trust his samples to be what they say on the tin, whether that's royalty and hassle free or full of actual hip hop soul. If you subscribe to his email list, expect some freebies in addition to the kits he offers on site. The Spice Rack, Lavish Loops 1, and Unfinished Friday Kit are FREE

https://djpain1beats.com/sound-kits

Bedroom Producer's Blog has released their 2023 drum sample collection. BPB is almost always a hit and has tons of freebies for the seasoned producer and the man who just started cooking alike. You'll want to see Gratis and Goldbaby respectively. Here's the list.

There's also a guide to start making beats, if you haven't done that already.

To make use of all these samples, you're gonna want a good sampler. I have a few recommendations.

I can't recommend Mixcraft's home suite of plugins enough

--alphasampler and omni sampler, manual 1, manual 2

The best way to get these is to download a Mixcraft trial, if you don't have them already, and yeet all the plugins you like out of the VST folder and into your DAW of choice, as you would with any DAW's native plugins. That's if you decide you don't like Mixcraft. (I do!)

Other samplers are not hard to find. These are my two favorites. Your DAW probably has its own native solutions as well.

And if you find your samples are lacking punch, I personally find these three plugins to be the magic touch.

I stand by them wholeheartedly. Repping them for years at this point.

Slampup

Cymatics Diablo Lite

KSHMR Essentials Kick

I swear by all three of these for my drums and will even use them for synths. The latter offer paid versions, of which I use Diablo religiously, particularly the width, clip, and tilt features. Essentials Kick is great as an all in one, best for single channels. SlamPup shines in its dry/wet, particularly when pushing drums hard to bring out sustain and dirty things up.

Cymatics Origin is another great quick and dirty plugin. When used to its full potential, it can breathe life in and out of a track, even craft transitions before and after the master, like I did here, with it on the master bus as well as almost every track in the mix.

And if you are stuck on a trial version of your DAW, or god forbid using a mobile or browser based DAW, try these before you throw your hands up entirely

Reaper - great DAW, offers an unlimited "evaluation period" (trial) which will allow you to use the product indefinitely -- what a deal!

Cakewalk - free, and pretty good at that, what more need I say?

Reaper also comes with a host of great plugins which you can yeet into your main DAW, such as precise EQs and compressors.

And that about rounds off my list. Have any favorites? If you found anything this week, drop it in the comments!

You can check out my recent projects below. (yes, hip-hop)

Other stuff I'm working on

-free metal cymbal sample/sample instrument, alpha stages, may hire a programmer for sforzando

-Voice acting and music requests for Reduce Team Animations -- check out @Mejson @MATRVG @MariogD

-Never heard before t.A.T.u. AI originals and translation covers like this one, and this one

-Wrapping up NGUAC and NGADM Judging

There's more behind the scenes, but that's the big stuff.

 COMMS and BEAT/SAMPLE USAGE

It's beat banging season over here in the Mississippi sticks. I'm open for commissions on beats, samples, and mastering. Paid work will always come first. Discuss initially via PM is preferred.

Anything already up on my Newgrounds as well as my samples are always free to use with prod/sample credit, unless stated otherwise at the source. That goes for covers, remixes, games, and movies, as long as you share alike.

No samples are to be sold in whole or in part as part of a paid sample pack, or redistributed without my permission. That means don't rip samples off of my pack and toss them in another one without asking me. If you want to do that, request permission and give production credit.

 Special thanks and acknowledgements

Big thanks to my patrons on ko-fi and Patreon, which I recently got set up properly for tips. Your support inspires me to keep doing what I'm doing and eventually will mean I'm able to do this stuff full time. From now on, patrons will be listed in the credits of my submissions on and off NG. So if you really enjoy what I do and wanna pitch in, drop me a tip!

Other ways you can help out are to subscribe to my Youtube, drop a like or a comment, or add me to a playlist. Every little bit helps. Don't worry, let me know and I'll return the favor!

That's all for now. Ciao!

Thanks to: @MariogD, @MATRVG, @CyberDevil