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The best free VST plugins 2020: must-have freeware synths, drum machines and effects By Si Truss ( Computer Music, Future Music, emusician ) 20 November 2020 Make music for nothing with our pick of the finest free sound makers and processors.
Have you ever wondered if you could create drum patterns yourself without scrolling through thousands of sample libraries? Yh!
Drum Vst Plugins For Cubase Plugins
With the advent of different drum VST plugins, it is possible to create percussion sounds, drum beats, rhythms, and even patterns without the need of buying any audio samples.
Basically, you would have different stock samples (Kick, Hats, Snare, Claps, Bongos and so on) in the drum VST plugin, and with that, it is possible to program your own rhythms and beats. Most of the time, I program my own loops and I export each and every loop created, this way, I can reuse it easily without opening my drum vst plugin every time plus this also saves your CPU load
That out of the way, let us look at some of the best free drum VST plugins for your music production toolbox.
Let’s dive in…
1.) Manda Audio – MTPower DrumKit 2
MT Power Drum Kit is a free drum sampler by Manda Audio that offers powerful, high-quality sounds of a real acoustic drum kit, one of the good thing about this free sampler is that samples have been specially recorded and carefully processed to make them suitable across genre of music such as pop, rock, metal music and more.
One of the tip I would give anyone utilizing this Drum VST is to carefully play with the varied collection of samples, and you could either save a preset of the one you like or if you are like me, you would render the collections you want, that way it would be reusable across multiple projects without pulling an instance of MT Power Drum Kit every time you wanna work on a project.
Another good thing about this plugin is that the samples are well compressed and Equalized to make them glue to your mix, moreover, you can choose from thousands of assorted rhythms in the comprehensive Groove Library and compose your own drum accompaniment. In particular, the innovative functions for creating fills generate very smooth and realistic drum tracks.
Lastly, On the right-hand side, you can listen to demo tracks to hear what you can make with it.
Video Walk-Through:
System Requirements:
- PC: Windows 10 / 8 / 7 / Vista / XP
- Mac: OS X 10.5 or higher, Intel processor
- Linux: Wine + VST bridge
2.) Audiosonic – DigiDrum Pro
DigiDrum looks a bit hard on the eye but it is more powerful than you thought, it contains a five-part drum and percussion VST plugin suitable for a diverse range of genres be it Afro beats, House Music, Pop and more.
I’ll say this again, the interface isn’t really intuitive but otherwise, it is packed with loads of sound editing parameters that can be processed as you see fit. I should also mention that you can use the Velocity section to give the sample some cool vibes.
Features:
- 5 separate DigiDrum parts with 5 user definable audio outputs
- 27 classic drum and percussion waveforms
- User wave file import
- Parts can easily be layered to create even more complex sounds
- easy sound preview ensures intuitive preset programming
- A Versatile filter setup capable of many different timbres
- Velocity modulation of the amp, pitch, and filter to ‘humanize’ the feel of the beat
- Full VST automation of every sound editing controls
Video Walk-Through:
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3.) TromineGT
Tromine GT is a TR-808-style analog drum synthesizer. It features:
- 16 Analog drum synthesizers: Bass drum, Snare drum, Low tom / Low Conga, Mid tom / Mid conga, High tom / High tom, Claves, Rimshot, Maracas, Handclap, Cowbell, Crash cymbal, Closed hi-hat, Open hi-hat.
- 9 outputs.
- MIDI CC support.
- Automation support.
Video Walk-Through
4.) DrumTroop
DrumTROOP is a drum kit rompler coming with 20 free drum kits. It features:
- 20 free drum kits.
- 128 triggers on every kit.
- 16 outputs.
- Universal drum placement on the first 8 pads.
- Vol, Pan, Attack, Release per pad.
Video Walk-Through:
Download Win 32 VST / WIN 64 VST / Mac OSX VST / Mac AU
5.) Ugritone – Anarchy Drums
Anarchy Drums is a virtual drum sample library or an instrument that emulates the sound of the 1990’s California Punk. It was recorded with a handful of mics at a DIY environment on tape. According to Ugritone:
The idea was to capture nothing but the drums, the room and the preamp.We left the tweaking to a bare minimum so you could tweak more, or not tweak at all (insert a famous punk band name here, ha) Relive the golden days of never-ending skate parks with Anarchy Drums.
Video Walk-Through:
Download Ugritone – Anarchy Drums
6.) Rhytmus
If you’ve used an old rhythm machine before then you should definitely love this plugin, it is based on an old rhythm machine and features ten buttons. Each individual button can play two different rhythm sections, so basically you can play 20 different rhythmic loops such as samba, mambo, tango, waltz, rumba, tango, bossa, rock, etc.
When you click “open”, you can change the tune, volume, pan of each rhythm component such as snare, bongo, cowbell, hi-hat, etc. That’s not all – you can mix these rhythmic sections with Tambourine, Guiro, Quijada sounds.
7.) Junn
Junn is the virtual Linn drum machine and is only supports VST
8.) Arex2011
AREX 2011 is a free VSTi drum module based on a hardware drum machine from the early ’80s.
Features:
- 16 pads.
- 29 embedded drum samples of RX11.
- 12 individual/group outputs.
- Individual volume, pan, accent.
- Assignable MIDI note within 36 – 99 range.
- VST automation.
- MIDI automation of essential controls.
- Assignable MIDI CC#.
- 16 part multi-timbral MIDI Outflow.
- It can be used as a MIDI control surface of sorts.
Bundled with RX11 MIDI swing templates and 55 demonstration patterns.
System Requirements:
- Windows XP SP2 and higher
9.) Lel UDS Drums
LEL UDS Drums is a free VSTi by Softrave that has 140 stunning samples of the famous vintage analog drum module Lel UDS. One thing I love about this plugin is the option to filter the high frequency of any bank and to also mix sounds to create the sample I want.
The idea behind this is to put all analog sounds together to save time for creativity and to have easy access to the best selection of LEL sounds, essential for techno production.
What really makes this instrument different from just samples is that you can tune individual analog drift to every snare. That makes snare lines less mechanical/repetitive and makes it more analog.
Video Walk-Through:
10.) AFX
AFX is a drum machine that is designed for 32/64-bits VST2/VST3 versions for Windows! It also supports .sf2 files.
According To beatassist:
We got some acoustic samples and we have transformed them in the digital world in order to create unique sounds for you to include in your productions.
The Drum Machine has 8 slots that load the soundbanks, such as:
- bassdrums
- clsHats
- cymbals
- digital snares
- opHats
- snares
- toms.
Each of these slots also has a distortion station and a state variable filter. Free leveler vst.
Useful Related posts:
Why even use a drum map?
When you open a MIDI event with the MIDI editor in Cubase, you will see the piano roll on the left side. The C keys and their octaves are all labeled, which is sufficient if you just have to deal with melodic MIDI events. But as soon as you want to edit or create drum grooves, only seeing the keys and notes is not very convenient. That is why some DAWs like Cubase support loading up external drum maps, which will display every single drum name like Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat etc.. instead of just the notes or the blank piano roll (see right image).This obviously makes drum programming much more convenient since you are going to actually see which drums you are about to draw into the MIDI editor. The guessing game will be over.
Step 1
Extract or copy the drum map file, which comes with the plugins zip-file, to whatever location you want on your drive.
You can also directly download the drum map file of our plugin for Cubase HERE. Unzip it to a location of your choice.
Please note that this drum map file only works with Cubase. Other DAWs like Reaper and Studio One have their own drum map file format. You can find drum maps and instructions for these DAWs within the help section of this website as well.
Step 2
Open Cubase and create a MIDI or an instrument track. See if the drum map button is available. If it is, you can skip Steps 3 and 4 and jump directly to Step 5.
Step 3
If you can't see the drum map button marked red in the screenshot above, go into the Track Controls Settings. The button for that can be found at the bottom of the tracks column.
Step 4
In the Track Controls Settings window, select the MIDI tab. Then select Drum Map from the left side and add it to the list of visible controls on the right. Do the same thing on the Instrument tab. Confirm with OK.
Step 5
Now you should be able to see the drum map button on the track. Click it and go into the Drum Map Setup.
Step 6
The Drum Map Setup window will open up. At the top left, click on Functions -> Load.
Step 7
Select and open the previously extracted drum map file. You can now close the Drum Map Setup window.
Drums Vst Plugins Free
Step 8
In the last step, you have to click the drum map button again and actually select the new drum map file.
That's it! When you double-click on the MIDI events of that track, they should now display drum names instead of the piano roll.