Hey guys, me again. First, thanks for rocking with me through this insane season of my life. As I mentioned, my car situation is under control. No more pesky loans frustrating attempts to keep a roof over my head. That's the best news I've had since 2022, thanks to you, the Newgrounds community!

About $900 was graciously covered by your donations. That's more than anyone has helped me in my entire life. I do still have repairs to make, since the shop didn't fix my original problem, but now I can focus on saving for it while I work on other projects. Oh, and eat more than just $1 macaroni and hotdogs. Wow.

Second, thanks to everyone who has taken time to support @Porter, who recently had an accident and outrageous repair bill. Porter is a fantastic digital artist, open for commissions to make ends meet!

Some of Porter's recent art:

Now for your regularly scheduled programming: Important events and free music producer stuff!

Top of the list, the Re-Remix Me Competition is accepting auditions until May 15th! You may have seen it on the calendar or Audio Forum. Re-Remix Me is a three-round competition, the Top Five finishers of which will receive $225 in cash prizes and frontpages.

I wanted to make the competition more exciting and personal. So, I switched up the format in a few ways.

Besides following Newgrounds Audio Portal Rules to enter, a short introduction is mandatory. Community interaction is encouraged from competitors and spectators, so if you're a fan, root for your team! (And leave some tasty reviews)

Submissions will receive a 4-category breakdown of score as well as personalized reviews from yours truly. Production, Mixing, Mastering, and Style are what I'm looking for. The latter represents concepts that are difficult to define in isolation, such as imagination, cohesion, uniqueness, expression, and wow-factor.

The overall spirit is different by design. Instead of remixing the promo artist right away (me), you'll remix your fellow competitors first (Round 2), after which, all competitors will receive licensed remix stems for this track.

That means, even if you don't make it to the final round, you'll still get to remix me, and yes, distribute the resulting work according to the license provided.

If less than 15 people enter by the submission deadline, May 15, all participants will advance to Round Two, which will mean everyone is a winner.

Detailed breakdown of contest structure and prize distribution lives here. Looking forward to everyone's submissions!

Music Producer Freebies! May 2025

Finally! And thanks for your boundless patience, because I've been swearing I'd drop this for a while now. Let's not waste any time!

Sonixema has released not one, not two, but three free instruments for FREE Kontakt Player.

This is huge, because if you didn't already know, many free libraries require paid Kontakt. And that's expensive.

These libraries are: Delicate Strings, Whispering Woodwinds, and Emotive Brass.

Lancaster Audio's Pulse 2 allows you to load and export your own Impulse Responses

I see massive potential for crafting your very own metal guitar cabs with the blending features described here. Not something I've ever tried before -- I've been using Bass Grinder cab on top of different amps for some time now.

Unison has released 50 free MIDI and sample packs

These include YouTube tutorial presets, as well as some pretty okay samples. If you can tolerate the relentless marketing emails, go for it!

DiscMakers has written a solid guide for successful album releases

Considering I'm writing a book of my own, I'll definitely be taking notes.

Reddit DrumKit - Every 808 You Will Ever Need

Okay, maybe not every one, as I still use a LOT of my 808s from Adreanaline, which you can demo on Sample Focus, but I was certainly happy to find these for my archives.

Reason Recycle is now free!

One of the most legendary tools for sampled beats. Recycle is no longer a relic of the mid-90s but a retro workhorse with a modern facelift. Oh, and it's free for the masses.

Green Oak Plugins releases seriously rad plugins, Tungsten and Cesium!

Author of some of the most infamous plugins in the noughties -- with a hand in modern heavy hitters such as Trilian, Omnisphere, and Keyscape. Green Oak has now unleashed Tungsten delay and Cesium chorus on the world.

Having used the latter extensively, I'm impressed. There's nothing like it I've ever seen. It nukes the competition at frying, baking, muffling, and otherwise blowing your synths to demonic levels of unintelligibility when you need it to -- and doesn't, when you don't.

From delightfully devilish to tastefully tainted, Cesium is the bomb.

SoSouthernSounds has sent me at least 5 more free kits in the mail. They're still kicking. Get them here.

SoSouthern has freebie after freebie in their archives, lots of codes, and lots of hip-hop kits. Simple and light, I have to say, while I might not like the website formatting, I do like their style!

Bloom Drum Percussion Lite is free for a limited time!

Trying to check if this freebie is still good, but Plugin Boutique is offering Excite Audio's Bloom Drum Percussion Lite (regular price $19) free when you enter code g032itmp at checkout, and it sounds pretty awesome!

TugImg synth

How do I even explain what this is without it sounding just as weird as it looks -- this is the most avantgarde, interesting little synth I've ever heard. Make a wavetable out of the Mona Lisa, if you dare.

I can't think of a use-case in my particular set-up, but if you're feeling uninspired, give this guy a shot. You can create and modify wavetables from images in realtime, drag them about and destroy them on the track.

Shoegaze vst

Curious little find I saw this week. It's exactly what it says on the tin, reverse-delay by spelltop! Since reverse-delay is a common effect in many genres, I thought I would leave it here.

And that's it for plugin news! Next up I have some updates and a short snippet from my book!

First off, if you didn't know, I'm writing an OH-LAWD-HE-COMIN sized music producer help book. We're up to 87 multi-page articles, most of which are complete or near complete.

What's holding me back are frustrating bits of hardware lore and plugin-reviews, which need a great deal of research and review. Following that, I have to edit first and second draft articles.

As you know, my content is stupidly wordy hot off the press. So, to save everyone's eyes, I took some advice: let things sit for two weeks, go back, and mercilessly cut things to size.

This tactic has been fruitful, and I recommend it to anyone who struggles to organize their writing.

BOOK SNIPPET -

Crafting the Perfect Bio

A lot of words are spilled into the void for these. Names, places, pronouns, job descriptions, cheeky quotes about how cool we are – expressions of how we see ourselves, and unconscious messaging of how comfortable we are to be ourselves.

How do you define a "good" bio? Is it the laugh or the crease of the reader's brow? How you feel having written such a masterpiece? How many follows you get with a blank PFP and that text alone? (I wish there was a test for that.)

Some bios are good at drawing attention, like a well-placed ad, but they're also personal, like what kind of ugly Christmas sweater you'd rather to be seen in. What good is a bio though, if it doesn't present you in a way that's authentic, or attract people who can relate to your music?

To illustrate, we're going to take a look at some real life artist blurbs.

This one is from Cameron, AKA VenusTheory.

If you’re the modest, underselling type, this is your go-to. Notice how he greets the reader. It’s not the already very low-key, “hi,” it’s “howdy.”

He talks like a regular dude, not “VenusTheory – the visionary sampler, essayist, and sound-designer.” Probably because that’s just not who Cameron is.

Watch him. He’s modest, reserved, and perpetually relaxed. The most exciting developments on his channel drop with all the rush of an old lady reading local news, and that’s part of his charm.

The same cannot be said of our next artist, who is publicly obsessed with teeth.

If you’re a bit of a weirdo, something like this may strike your fancy.

Note the curt text, formatting, nudity, and customized theme, a feature which is unfortunately lacking on most platforms today. 

Theme says more about boypop (and you) than you can imagine.

In this case, the name, single, and bio are supporting details, yet the profile screams an artist that is unapologetically different and proud.

It’s loud. It’s green. It’s abrasive. You can’t unsee it.

In fact, having seen it, I became only more convinced of the failures of modern social media to drive audience retention.

Let’s take a look at the same profile in Tumblr’s new (gross) Twitter-like feed for comparison.

The same profile has been completely neutered. Void of any expression.

Same person, same art, but the essence is stripped away, sanitized for the mass-produced conveyor belt of content.

My point: no biography stands on its own.

Cameron’s is part of his own professional website. Boypop’s is the centerpiece of a carefully selected theme.

Customization will always trump cheeky descriptions of who and what we are.

The further you move away from prefabricated homes for your art like Facebook and X, the better.

Social media is designed to keep you scrolling through mass-produced content, liking, sharing, and swiping – not meaningfully interacting with artists.

If you want to build a fanbase, you want intentional interaction, messaging, and branding.

Inspired, I made my own page for shiggles.

Not a lot of thought went into this tumblr. I grabbed a Windows 98 theme, typed up a shitpost based on the Xena Warrior Princess intro, and added some images.

The style and obvious nod tell more about me than a “cool” bio ever could. You’ve learned: I’m weird, I have history on Newgrounds, I make music, and I’m really into nostalgic 90s media.

All that in a matter of seconds, and it took precious little time to write.

Brevity is something I’m rapidly becoming a fan of. I realized, it’s not that no one reads anymore; it’s that no one has time for useless information. That’s why good bios seem to run short; if we wanted more, we’d check the encyclopedia.

You don’t have to be a weirdo or a drive-by to make a memorable bio, but creativity goes a long way. Give yourself the permission to say more with less, be yourself, and stand out!