What is Reddit's opinion of
Helm?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
45 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Hitfilm Express on todella voimakas ja monipuolinen videoeditointityökalu. Sillä voi tehdä melkein kaikkea, paitsi 3D efektejä ja ammattitasoista color gradeaamista jotka saa hoidettua saman sovelluksen maksullisella versiolla. (Värihommat saattaa pystyä tekemään DaVinci Resolven ilmaisversiolla, mutta en ole koittanut sitä vielä)
Helm on mukava VST jos on aloitteleva musiikintuottaja. Se on suhteellisen monipuolinen ja parhaana osana siinä on se, että voi tallentaa omat presetit.
RealTemp on kevyt ja simppeli ohjelma koneen lämpötilojen monitoroimiseen.
Tykkään muuten miten aika pitkälti kaikki ovat linkanneet ohjelmat kommentteihinsa.
apologies for all the people who didn't read your post and are recommending $500 hardware synths.
get into software! the device you're using right now can be a synth too. there are loads of great free/cheap synths out there. I tried out Helm recently which is pay-what-you-want and sounds great. TAL U-No is cool too. if you let us know what sort of computer/phone/tablet you're using we can probably give better recommendations.
A saw tooth sound is one of the two most fundamental sounds that exist. You really need to learn about this stuff. I recommend either of the following two VSTs for basis subtractive synthesis:
Spend a couple of weeks learning about subtractive (analogue-style) synthesis. Classic synthesizers like the Moog Minimoog and the Roland Jupiter 8 are subtractive synthesizers.
> Not totally sure what genre I'm interested in making at this point, other than that I want to use synths.
I recommend buying a MIDI Controller like this:
- Novation Launchkey Mini - 110$
It comes with the lite (8-track) version of Ableton Live, which you can learn. That is a type of program called a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), which people use to make music.
You can run synthesizers on your computer. They come as programs called VSTs which you can control with a MIDI Controller. Here is a good free one:
If you want to record real sounds, you will need an Audio Interface and a microphone. An audio interface is a box that gets the sound from an XLR Microphone into your computer. The cheapest one from a reputable brand is this:
- Focusrite Scarlett Solo - 120$
Not sure there's a best vst, as a lot of synths are unique in their own way. Serum and massive are the obvious answer, but I like to use wavetable in ableton. For a free vst option try Helm.
Helm has an excellent interface, making it quite intuitive. I'm not really a fan of the sound, though.
Lokomotiv is extremely simple, so that while it's more limited (1 osc, 1 envelope, 1 LFO), it's very easy to get good sounds out of it.
VCV Rack, while very complex, is a modular synthesizer, meaning you connect individual components of a synthesizer together to use it. If you can figure it out, it'll help you understand why you get the sounds you're getting and how a synthesizer works.
I'd be happy to chat somehow/answer other questions if you want advice (though I'm not that experienced)
Maybe check out the free VST Helm? It's quite visual so can be a good tool for learning what's happening "under the hood".
On Youtube there's Underdog Music School's "Intro to Subtractive Synthesis" which is less than 20 minutes long and might be helpful for understanding some terms.
There might be better videos out there, I just remember liking this guy's content. I've only watched the first 2 minutes of the video but it seems grounded.
In the sidebar there are some links to other subreddits that aren't Reason focused, you're likely to find a lot more useful resources there if you're not using Reason as a DAW or plugin.
I loaded up that VST and went instantly blind: Luckily, I was able to fumble around with the mouse and close the window promptly, and my vision began to come back after a couple of hours (after I had already thrown up all over the floor, unable to locate the bathroom).
If you want to avoid going through what I went through, I recommend trying Tytel's Helm:
Alternatively, if you like the look of old-school analogue synthesizers, I recommend the Tyrell Nexus 6 from U-He, with the Interstellar skin:
If looking for new ones to play with. I like a free one called Helm. That said, I know your poll is about paid software. I am a big fan of the Komplete bundle. I use Reaktor and Massive both. Also a lot of very high quality samples instruments.
You've got yourself a midi controller. It doesn't make any sound, it just sends control signals to your computer via midi.
You need to connect it to something else to use it.
A good start would be a computer with a soft synth on it.
Helm is free and runs standalone, you could start with that: https://tytel.org/helm/
Download it and get it working playing with your mouse.
Then download the driver software for your Keylab from the Arturia website and follow the instructions to install that and connect your keyboard.
Then find the settings in Helm, there will be a way to set the midi controller somewhere, set it to Keylab.
At this point you should be playing a synth with your Keylab.
From there the possibilities are countless. Good luck!
Regardless what one hears, no specific plugin is specific to any genre, you can make anything work with what you're doing if you experiment with knobs/settings in the plugin. A good starting VST that's free is called Synth1, another good one for making bass is called Helm.
As for packs, you can simply google some "hip hop drum kits" then also tweak those with built in compressors, EQ's etc. There's even a reddit for drum kits.
Hope that helps, peace.
Did you look up thoroughly? They may not similar in number. But they do exist. Some plugins are available in lv2 format.
You may find something from the link.
Download helm. It’s a free vst and really easy to use for beginners. Learn some basic sound design on helm. Just search up “[your chosen synth] sound design” on YouTube and they should teach you enough to start experimenting
So with this one i'm exploring the new beta update for Virtuoso, which is free for everyone to try providing they have a VR headset that supports it. If you get sick of the talking, the more musical stuff starts around 20mins in.
The cool thing about this app is that it uses the very capable Helm synthesizer as the main sound source, so you can get quite creative using existing or custom presets to get a little deeper with the sound design :)
If you like the idea of sound design and synthesis within an XR space, please come join us at XR Bounce. This is a discord server I have created to try and bring together people that might be interested in audio production within anything covered by XR. It's still very niche but I think there is an insane amount of untapped potential, and look forward to exploring it as the tech gets better and more people get into it!!
Let's gooooo!
The $200 Producer Edition is perfect if you mostly use third party plugins. I have the $300 Signature Edition but that's mainly so I could get my hands on Newtone, Gross Beat, and Harmless.
With $200 you already have access to Sytrus which is one of the most powerful and versatile synths I've ever seen. If you want to add another synth to your arsenal I recommend Helm which is free.
The Signature and All Plugins editions are just baseline FL Studio with some extra toys to play with, that's it.
I love the helm-synth. It's open-source and has a simple interface. https://tytel.org/helm/
If you want to try FM-synthesis I can recommend 'Dexed'. It's closely modeled on the Yamaha DX7, but a little bit difficult to understand. The good thing is there are a bunch of presets you can work with.
Both are for free, so go get them. They're awesome!
I've been really digging Helm, it's a free VST synthesizer with loads of digital sounding presets, and lots of modulation options.
You should try it out!
Helm by Matt Tytel
I learned synthesis primarily through hardware synths and only recently started exploring software synths; therefore, you should definitely get a second opinion on this. I found Retro Synth quite easy to use, but I didn't really like the sound of it (it was too hard to make the sound beefy enough IMO). Never really took the time to dive into Alchemy, though. However, I will recommend downloading Helm (if you haven't already) which is a freeware/donationware software synthesizer that I find very manageable and quite precise. It features two oscillators with a bunch of different waveforms, a sub oscillator and a noise generator. It also has three LFOs and envelopes, a filter and a bunch of effects. Definitely check Helm out!
Yes! If you are in a budget, as we all are haha. Serum is really good, you can make any sound you want if you learn it deep enough. Also U-NO-LX has a great emulation of the Juno. Those are good options. There are some free synths also and if you learn to use them you can make them sound like vintage...KIND OF.
https://u-he.com/products/tyrelln6/
https://asb2m10.github.io/dexed/ (DX7 Emulation)
I always recommend this whenever people ask about synths. It's versatile, easy to use, and had a bunch of pretty cool presets
Helm is a pretty beasty synth, good for dark/heavy music or FX, with LOTS of options to play with, and like, almost too many presets, but in a good way. I usually pick one of them and news around with it until I get what I was after
That's a pretty easy sound to do!
Open your synth of choice, Harmor and Sytrus can both do this, so can Serum or Helm and I'm sure a plethora of other 3rd party plugins.
Set the waveform to a saw.
Turn on unison. Turn the order fairly high, turn panning and pitch to around halfway for now.
Turn on a filter envelope. Make sure the filter is a lowpass one, and the resonance is turned all the way down. Draw a sharp curve in the envelope, so no attack, very short decay, no sustain or release.
Et voilá! You have a pluck. Experiment with the unison controls to change the tone of it, and maybe lower the filter cutoff to make it less bright. A bit of reverb goes a long way too!
This is a great sampler that I use with my MPD to make beats. It comes with some default drum sounds, but you can also use it to load whatever samples you want.
I can give you some more info on how I've set my MPD up for use with Reaper, if you're interested. If you spend a bit of time, you can get the MPD set up with "Actions" in Reaper so you can use the faders to mix tracks etc.
Also, if you want a synth, I highly recommend this free one (Helm): https://tytel.org/helm/
And here is a good tutorial to show you the ropes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtOB5mTQ5ESwqNBl56jEmLaipToUUXrNT&feature=share
I did this mostly with soft synths in Ableton. I used Helm (https://tytel.org/helm/) and some other free synth plugin I stumbled across. Drums are all samples I found (also free) here and there on the internets.
I usually do have fun making stuff, but I get very nervous when it comes time to let other people hear it.
I'd recommend Helm. It's a free, open-source synth with great visualizations and it's pretty lightweight. Been using it for a while now. The only downside is that there are no panning options. But other than that it's pretty great! https://tytel.org/helm/
I suggest getting a small midi controller with ableton live lite. Ableton has almost everything you need.
Then, you need a very good softh synth, my choice would be either synth1 or helm. I prefer designing my own sounds and Helm is my number one free choice for that aspect. You can make a lot of synthwavy sounds with basic wave forms, subtracting synthesis and some modulation. Helm is good for getting your feet wet with sound design.
You need basic effects:
- Compressors (DAW stock are usually ok)
- Reverb (DAW stock can be good, otherwise I suggest TAL)
- Chorus (idem)
- Distortion, headcrusher free is IMO the best free disto.
You absolutely need an arpegiator if your DAW does not provide one.
Images might help.
By the way, you're not dumb. Midi is difficult to set-up and troubleshoot sometimes. There's more things can go wrong (ie. communication between equipment) than in a good 'ol fashioned audio signal path.
> Can you recommend a vst that has a standalone?
Yeah this is the same Wine, it's really come a long way in it's ability to run Windows software. As for using the RPi as a synth, you're somewhat limited to FOSS synthesizers since there's not really any commercial support for ARM in the music production business. Carla is a relatively simple but powerful stand alone VST host. Helm is a really cool synth that that should work fine on a Raspberry Pi. The same author is also working on another project called Vital that looks to become basically Serum but better, that's something to look out for.
LINK: Helm
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Personally I use the Helm synth. It's a rather basic synth, but I like that you can add envelopes and LFOs to literally every parameter it has. It also outputs much better quality results (IMHO) than any built in synth, save ZynAddSubFX, which is about 100x more complex to use than Helm.
EDIT: If you don't mind getting your hands dirty with compiling code yourself, Zyn Fusion, an updated version of ZynAddSubFX is a good thing to have as well. Functionally it's the same than the built in one, but the UI is more modern looking and, more importantly, not split into a million different popups. I've lost count of how many times I was desperately alt-tabbing through all the ZynAddSubFX's popup windows in the search of the one I needed.
Hey, thanks for the kind words!
I use Ableton as my DAW, and tbh I have just collected a stupid amount of drum samples--I actually looked back at the hihat sample and I have no idea where it came from but happy to send it over if you're interested.
As for the VST's I predominantly use a free VST plugin called Helm https://tytel.org/helm/
I'm a cheap bastard so almost all of my samples were downloaded for free or at a very low price, so there's nothing I use that you can't find.
The one thing I will add is that I've spent a good amount of time getting better and mixing and mastering, and I've found that has made a huge difference in terms of quality.
Thanks again for you time and let me know if any other questions pop up!
for testing midi keyboards download https://tytel.org/helm/ it has a standalone version so turn on your midi device and double click the helm.exe and you should have sound and if not?useless to try it in reaper
https://tytel.org/helm/ and run the presets and look how it changes the sliders and settings, very visual attractive free synth for learning sound design (hold ctrl and draw midi item and double click and use your mouse on the piano keys or drag some midi notes to hear helm playing)
Logic has significantly better stock plugins, for both synthesizers and effects. So to answer your question: yes, it has more sounds, and it has better tools for making your own sounds. Garageband is basically a musical toy; Logic is a full-blown DAW.
However, Garageband has support for third-party AU plugins. If a lack of sounds is your only limitation, it may be worth your while to do some research into free/cheap AU plugins (important note: VST plugins are more common, but Garageband does not support them). Xpand!2, a ROMpler plugin with tons of sounds built-in, is currently on sale for $5. Synth1 is a free synthesizer plugin, and it has a free preset bank with 25,000 presets. Helm is another free synthesizer, which I have lots of experience with. It comes with some decent presets, but it's very user friendly and may make a good introduction to sound synthesis so you can learn how to make your own sounds.
Komplete works just fine in Reaper. And yeah, the NI freebie is pretty sweet, that is a very recent development. Good timing coming back to music.
But to get in the swing of things first, try one of many other free offerings. Something like Helm, a more fundamental subtractive synthesizer: https://tytel.org/helm/
You'll either need to get used to working with Reaper's MIDI piano roll, or use a step sequencer (several freely available as JSFX).
OK. You probably want to stop using that at some point and get a proper DAW like Ableton, Logic, Cubase or Pro Tools.
Anyway... try Helm. This is a free software synth. You can get it here: https://tytel.org/helm/
After you install and run it:
Under Mixer (on the left), turn the volume of Osc 2 to zero. We only want to hear one oscillator.
Under Voices (bottom left), turn the knob to 1. We only want to hear one note at a time.
Next to Port (bottom right), set it to ON, and set the knob to about halfway. This means the notes slide smoothly together when you play them simultaneously.
Now try playing the riff (I assume you can figure out the notes). You can use your computer keyboard, but it's more fun if you plug in a keyboard. If it's useful, you can change the octave by changing the TRANS knob (top left, under OSCILLATORS).
These instructions should get you most of the way. You could also try turning on the Filter (centre) and experimenting with those controls to get you a little closer. Have fun. Let me know if you need more help.
Give free plugins a try before you spend tons of money. Take a look at my list of free plugins. Helm is both intuitive and powerful if you want to get more into sound design, and you can make good sounds fast so it shouldn't slow down your workflow too much.
It also helps if you save all the sounds you make as presets, and occasionally just sit down and do sound design instead of making a beat. You'll gradually start to build up a library of your own presets, so if you want to use a sound you've made before you don't have to make it again.
The thing about plugins is that they don't magically make you better, they just offer you different features that you can use to improve your workflow or your music. An IDM producer who's seriously into sound design might not get much out of Nexus, and a beatmaker who's only ever used presets wouldn't get much benefit from Harmor.
I wouldn't recommend spending hundreds on a plugin until you know exactly what you want.
I’m not familiar with Garageband, but I’m assuing it has VST support. There’s a guy who has a company called Tweakbench and they make a few instruments that I believe are geared towards making chiptune and simple, retro video game sounds. All of these plugins used to be free but now they’re a dollar each (so if you really don’t want to pay the dollar for whatever you want there are probably links online where you can get older versions of them for free). Years ago I messed around with Peach and Triforce and remember the stock patches sounding very similar to old Nintendo games. The link to his site is below.
That being said, you can really use any free synth, (I can suggest Helm and Dexed) load a blank patch, and just change the waveform to get a chiptune style sound. Links to Helm and Dexed are below.
Probably most capable synths, it's a relatively simple sound to recreate. Helm is free and can do it no problem, Serum will certainly do it as will Massive. If you're into hardware synths and have one that supports unison go ahead.
From my longer comment on a thread about free plugins and samples:
Helm : A very visually-oriented and user-friendly subtractive synth. Its biggest advantages are its 3 assignable LFOs and envelopes, its step sequencer, and its keytracked comb filter. You can get sounds out of this thing that'd be impossible with really any other plugin.
Synth1 : An analog emulation synth based on the Nord Lead 2 (popular hardware synth from the 90s). Its greatest advantage is its presets - there's a free bank with 25,000 of them. You can also get the free Synth1 librarian add-on to manage your 25,000 presets.
For those of you who produce music, Helm is a fantastic synth, and really easy to use. It’s probably the closest thing to Serum available for free.
Aside from that, I reccomend things like Audacity, WinRAR, and good old Google Chrome.
>I know most of you have both
€ 399,00 + € 434,00=€ 833,00 for both so maybe they have both but are you sure they own both? and now about your question,they are 2 very different products ,the v collection is a private keyboard museum and Omnisphere the flagship synthesizer of Spectrasonics and house and trap you can also make with free synths like https://tytel.org/helm/ or https://www.kvraudio.com/product/synth1-by-ichiro-toda or https://asb2m10.github.io/dexed/
any free limited version of a daw that accepts vst plugins or Reaper and free vst synths like https://tytel.org/helm/ or https://www.kvraudio.com/product/synth1-by-ichiro-toda and no need for a soundcard to reduce latency and you can use the virtual keyboard to input some midi.
There’s this awesome VST I’ve been using called Helm. How much does it cost? Nada. It’s got the quality and capabilities of a three hundred buck synth, though. Here’s a link
Note: It is a bit intimidating at first. Lots of things. But it has lots of presets to work off of.