An old PC laptop could be relegated to the closet or (worse, since it’s highly toxic) landfill. But filled up with tasty freeware plug-ins, it’s a virtual studio full of tools and oddities. Via the feast of gear that is the CDMusic pool on Flickr, our friend Jumahat Leman aka uncle bigbrown artfully captures his budget software setup, described as follows:
- A 4+yrs old Acer laptop (a desktop replacement to be exact)
- Ableton Live 5.01 w/lots of freeware VSTs
- using same earphones/headphones/ToneportGx for recording
** My observation:
If you’re a “free VSTs/plugins” hunter/user like me, there’s tons of them available for download for the Wins platform in the worldwideweb. That’s where “cheap” Mac users/lovers (like me) are at a disadvantage with our OSX. So its always good to have a Wins machine at your disposal…
The Mac doesn’t get left out either, though. A G4 tower has become a virtual guitar stompbox and recording studio:
- 9 yrs old Sawtooth “Earache” G4 Mac
- Ableton Live 5.01 w/freeware plug-ins
- $80 Toneport GX
- old iPod earphones or $50 Sennheiser Headphones (for recording/monitoring/mixing)
**most times i load the “mixed songs” into the iPod to listen/compare/mix and check eq/volume.
(The guitar is a PRS SE Paul Allender.)
If these visuals got your attention, there’s another lesson to be learned here. Not only does this visual illustration give you a sense of what his workflow is about and perhaps passes along some tips, but he uses photos and illustrations as a great promotional tool. It helps that Jumahat is a talented designer. I love his mini-portfolio, below. He also makes wonderful promotional posters and stickers. As I noted earlier this week, the ability to make something visually expressive that is meaningful to your music can be powerful – starting with album art, but going beyond that.
Or, to make a more important point, Jumahat has one of the only tasteful MySpace pages I’ve ever seen — and that’s a feat.
Happy weekend projects to everyone; hope this provides some inspiration.
drechohead, Jumahat’s MySpace page
echoinmyhead @blogpspot, with more visual goodies
Updated: Plug-in List
Now, the answers revealed. (See if you guessed any of these correctly.)
Mac
- Studio Devil BVC (for my guitar needs)
- Togu Audio Line TAL Tube (to “tubify” guitar or other sounds, or “overdrive” them more)
- Togu TAL Dub (for my delay needs)
PC
- BTE Audio Juicy77 (for most of my guitar distortion needs)
- BTE Audio TSS (tube screamer stompbox simulation)
- Audio Damage Pulse Modulator (for crazy sounds)
- E-phonic Retrodelay (for mild delay needs)
ALL of my plug-ins are freeware coz i’m cheap! ; )