Hey guys, I'm back! This month's freebie mag is a little short because LIFE HAPPENED. TLDR I worked a LOT, did some home improvement projects, got a car, and lost power after a storm. And that seriously impeded my habitual data hoarding and list making, as I'm sure you understand!

I was charging my phone at work and sweating to death for a few days, writing in my notebook for shiggles by candle light, worrying how much food was going to go bad out of the fridge, and eating gas station tacos for a bit. There's still a tree just chilling on our power line as I write. I only just got back to business semi as usual and still have a lot of projects to get back on!

Anyway since I've been touching grass against my will, this issue is gonna be more like a midnight snack. If you're still hungry later, you can go ahead and check out the last several issues below. I'm kinda in disbelief the last one went over 350 gigs. I can't imagine anyone really downloading ALL of it, except me. But you're more than welcome to prove me wrong!

Previous articles: Aprillist 2024, Marchlist 2024, Februarylist 2024, Januarylist 2024, Decemberlist 2023, Septemberlist 2023, Novemberlist 2021, and finally Octoberlist 2021!

Now that the formalities are out of the way, onto the list. Dig in!

Samples - 3 packs

(EXPIRED) @Synami says: Cymatics is offering **11** of their paid packs for free (FX, a multitude of melody loops ranging from gospel, trap, general hip hop to guitar loops, some noise/textures too), if you fully watch one of their videos.

Unison Giveaway - If the endless emails from Sep haven't given you a headache, they're offering 3.5 GB of free samples over at Unison Producer Growth Hub. Caveat, you have to apply to join it, and answer all the questions... And not everyone will be accepted. For Christ's sake, I'm getting tired of Unison and their marketing, if you can call it that.

Max Sansalone - Max released a free drum loop pack. Max is a funky drummer, to put it lightly. I'm talking filthy, in the pocket, booming and bapping, and pretty much sonically destroying his drums. I've been following him for a few years now, and he has a cool little website where he has taster packs and paid samples. Found this in my feed and thought I'd share! (Link is a video so you can see for yourself!)

Plugins by category

Vibe, for lack of a better word

Major cool factor here. Vybe is, well, a vibe enhancer, a purely transition focused plugin that allows you to do tape-stop like effects, low and hi pass, and half time effects with a dry/wet knob.

No more spending 10 minutes setting up a bunch of automations, dropping an octave or rendering a track, then playing it at half speed before crossfading back into the drop. It sounds great to my ears. Check out the demo!

Note: Unstable in Mixcraft 10. Recommend saving a backup of your project!

Guitar Plugins

I was completely blown away by this, but AuroraDSP dropped a plugin I would have DIED for back in the late 2000's, an emulation of the Line6 Pod. The kidney bean amp FX sim that every Myspace band on the planet knew and loved.

You'll have to scroll through the rest of their free plugs and create an account to download, but it's well worth it. Also got a sick little pre-amp over there, a guitar tuner, April Fools' Invisible Reverb (perfect for when your client says the vocal track is just missing something), an IR Loader, and Goblyn, the nasty guitar plugin.

Synths

@Synami says: ExtraBold from nakst is a free subtractive synthesiser with 3 oscillators, 4 filter modes, 3 effect slots with 5 different categories and offers 2 envelopes alongside 4 LFOs for modulation. It has 64 builtin patches and no copy protection/DRM (!!!). CLAP, native FL, AU and standalone formats are supported.

Verbs

Endless Reverb - What it says on the tin, a unique mono-stereo, pitch-bend capable, granular and pre-delay customizable reverb that is sure to make any sound tantalizingly spacious. Something to consider adding to your spice rack if you haven't found your favorite flavor of reverb just yet.

DDMF also has a small selection of other freebies, like a resizable BPM/time-signature display, a 10 band high IIEQ with a hi-lo shelf built in, a beloved tube pre-amp, and a fancy ColourEQ.

Utilities (exe)

Riffstation was made free in 2018. It's a great chord analyzer that unfortunately could be lost forever now that the website is down. You can find it at the link above and preserve a piece of music history uwu

Riff station was intended to help practice any song of your choosing. Pop in an mp3 and you can speed up, slow down, transpose, see analyzed chords, and even fretboard positions/chord shapes for guitar. It also can separate L/R/Center/lo-hi pass to help you hear rhythm and lead at a glance so to speak. Really cool software. But typically I use it to chord analyze loops and melodies I intend to sample.

Loved it for years, and going to continue doing so! Now that it's free, I couldn't resist sharing!

Misc Reading

There is legitimate reason for concern that one of the most popular communication platforms for music producers may be spying on your every move (DISCORD cough)

Friendly reminder you should not use your professional communication platforms for personal purposes, no ASL (90s kids know what this is), and make sure to use a different email for each in case of a breach.

The TLDR for this one is Discord tracks what apps you use, tracks all your communication, and stores it for govt inquiry. Since all of that is searchable don't do or discuss anything you wouldn't want daddy govt to know! And be advised, it's probably best to close it on your browser until you want to use it. Who knows if it's got a keylogger popped in there that we all agreed to in one of their many million changes of terms of use!

Random facts no one asked for

AI generated music - As you know, AI generated music is starting to flood the Audio Portal. It's becoming harder to recognize for the average user due to increases in quality, leaving the task of identifying it up to us music aficionados and otherwise hard nosed snobs.

Mission: You owe it to yourself to get to know SunoAI, Udio, and other AI generation platforms; learn to recognize the signs of their use (not to submit music, because I'll personally ban you lol). I don't want to be the mythical Paul Bunyon against the tunneling machine, and I don't know any other producer who does. This shit is coming straight for our jobs.

Right now, the tracks coming out of these are easily spotted by their 192 kbps bit rate, artefacts in the vocals, hard to hear hihat patterns, and strange pronunciation/song structure/phrasing. I'm sure they'll get better over time as more models come out. Keep your eyes peeled and start a-flagging.

Archive.org - Archive.org is facing some legal trouble after the covid pandemic for their open library's book-lending function violating the copyrights of various publishers. Who knows if the greedy fooks will be satisfied with that portion of the site being taken down, so just a friendly reminder to visit often, back up your favorite content, and potentially move toward more decentralized sources like torrents, especially if you don't want said content to turn into lost media. (not inciting copyright infringement -- there is plenty of user-generated/open-source content on Archive that deserves preservation!)

Power outage prep - You never know when a power outage might be coming to a store near you -- or rather, your house. Since I just went through this myself, I highly recommend a solar phone/laptop charger, a small generator (even a handcrank will do!), tea light candles or your choice of LED flashlight, a battery or solar powered radio, a couple cases or jugs of water, a small gas powered cookstove, and some non-perishable food to survive your trip back to the 1800s! All these can be purchased in due time and will serve you well in case of emergency. Thank me never.

I also recommend an ice maker and several gallon ziplocs of ice or a trip to the store to buy ice ahead of T-storms to keep your fridge from going foul after 4 hours without power. And don't check the temp constantly, or it will go foul faster. Splashing the body with water if it's hot and opening windows is a valid option in the advent of no handheld fans.

Wikipedia - okay, so I don't have a link for this, but some time this month it came to my attention that Wikipedia, or rather the wikimedia marketing side of Wikipedia, is again begging for donations like it's the end of the world. But did you know that wikipedia's donation side makes over 180 million a year in funding, enough to operate in barebones capacity for 150 years? EVERY YEAR?!

This is just a PSA to stop feeling guilty that you don't contribute to them. None of that money goes to the volunteers who make those articles possible anyway. It would be more helpful finding the patreons of the individuals who write your favorite articles and donating directly to them, because the marketing side of Wikipedia literally has nothing to do with the media on Wiki, and without the contributors would be worth nothing. Just my 2 cents.

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And that's it for the list. Short and sweet, but life happens and we make the best of it. Before I catch y'all on the flip side, be sure to check out @Aalasteir's awesome interview series! I just recorded an episode with him these past 2 weeks. It took almost 6 hours to record between two sessions, and I can't imagine how much longer it took to edit. Be out ETA -- actually I don't know because I've been touching grass. Anyway, should be here by the 16th.

Edit it's here!

Anyway, I'll catch y'all later!

Adrean's Music Producer Freebie Mag is brought to you by viewers like you! Shoutout to my amazing supporters: @MATRVG, @MariogD, @Cyberdevil, and @JimmyTheCaterpillar. I appreciate you all so much. Love you!