Darren, I have a few things to say before giving you a list of plugins.

Basically, I follow the principle of less is more. I believe that in-depth knowledge about a single plugin and its usage at nearly 100% of its potential is much better than having 10 synths and using them only at 10%. With fewer plugins, you save CPU loading and have an easier mixdown. And it saves your money, too.

There is no such thing as a “synth for PsyTrance”. Or for a Techno, or for a House. Plugins do not depend on a music genre. Instead of genres, think about what kind of sound you want to achieve. Let’s say, is it a bass, lead or pad? Then, if you are familiar with synthesis, think of what components you may need to create this sound: how many oscillators, what waveform, LFOs, what type of filters and so on. Only then start looking for a solution that fits your needs.

Another thing: you can recreate a certain sound in many different synthesizers, which means the plugins choice is often made based on personal preferences in overall impression, usability, and user interface. Like in any other subject, the word “good” is fully subjective and varies from person to person.

If you are not familiar with plugins yet and would like to have some names to keep in mind, the few manufacturers to keep an eye on are U-He, Reveal Sound, FabFilter, Xfer, iZotope, Spectrasonics, Rob Papen, Cableguys, Native Instruments. The list of good ones is much longer, but I recommend only those I tried myself.

Hint: subscribe to each company’s mailing list to get plugins at a discount. Usually, manufacturers offer special prices and sales a few times a year: on Christmas, Black Friday, Thanksgiving and other holidays or events. You can easily get most plugins for 30% less or even half fewer prices.

And here comes the list. Again, it’s important: it doesn’t mean you have to get all of them, and they are not “PsyTrance synths”. It’s just some synths I’ve enjoyed using.

Sylenth

Sylenth1 by Lennar Digital. Price — €139. Great, popular, easy-to-use yet powerful synthesizer that I’ve used in many tracks. The only downside of this synth is it seems abandoned by its developer, so no further updates or 64-bit version support. Update: on September 9, LennarDigital announced the beta of the 64-bit OS X version.

Massive

Massive by Native Instruments. Price — $199. Very flexible wavetable synth, you can get totally “out of this world” sounds here.

Serum

Serum by Xfer. Price — $189. Wavetable synthesis with no limits.

Spire

Spire by Reveal Sound. Price — $189. One of my favourite ones, I like its algorithms.

The list of good plugins has not ended here, so I call other producers to share their favourite ones in the comments below.

Read also:
Recommended processing plugins
3 ways to make a kick drum

Basically, there are several ways to build up a track:

Start with a kick and bass. It’s a good way to start if you trying to achieve something totally new. Let’s say, you have produced a couple of tracks with nearly the same kick-bass combo, but now you’d like to create something all-new — maybe a track in a different tempo or even in another genre. I call it “out of comfort zone”. Making everything from scratch, synthesizing kick and bass from a blank page is a good way to learn.

Getting out of comfort zone

Start with a melodic pattern. Go this way if you planning to make a track with a strong melodic accent. I like this approach because it’s absolutely independent of the sound itself as you focused just on a melody. Literally speaking, you can compose a melodic pattern with cheap in-ears headphones with an “Initial” preset of your synth, which obviously won’t work for kick-bass start. So, in general, it’s a good way to quickly transmit an idea from your head into the digital world. It works better with a midi-keyboard.

Start with an idea. The “idea” could be anything: interesting moment in breakdown, vocal sample or a special effect. Something that hooks you up and lays the foundation for the track. It might be hard to find such an idea, but if you did — the track is almost done. Just wrap up it properly.

I can’t say which way is correct, simply because there is no such thing as “correct” or “better”. But I can recommend two things. First, try to keep the entire picture in your head, even if the track is currently complete just on 10%. Think of it as a contour of your drawing sketch. Secondly, make sure that each part — the beat, the leads, the textures and so on — sounds good in the mix as well as solo. Is the melody makes you wanna dance even without a kick? Are the kick and bass “groovy” enough even with an actual groove, like high hats? If answers are “no”, then you’re doing something wrong. For this reason usually I add hats and percussions in the end.

Progressive JPEG method by Artemy Lebedev

Illustration sketch. Although it’s just about 20% complete, thanks to the contour you can see how the final result will look like. Illustration — Tatiana Sokolovskaya

To give a real-life example, last year I remixed the collaboration of Christopher Lawrence and Jonathan Allyn called “The Human Element”. The original track is great, however, I thought would be cool to bring something totally new into this. So I’ve added the new melody, i.e. went by the “start with a melodic pattern” path.

As you can hear, there are only very basic sounds, initial presets.

Everything else was built later once I’ve done with the melody. And here is the outcome:

Also, pay attention to the after-breakdown moment here. Slowly, but surely, special effects and groovy elements were grown on top of the naked kick and bass — I call it a “snowball effect”, where each element brings extra energy. So when you will build up a track, think of it as you rolling a snowball, it might help :-)

Corey, I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you anything specific, as this issue might appear for several reasons. Some of them:

• When the transition occurs, it is actually clipping. Some analogue DJ mixers may not be fast enough to register small clipping on a volume meter.
• Because of the equipment. I don’t know what piece of gear you’re mixing on, but I remember something similar could happen on the old CDJs-100.
• Due to the mastering of a track itself. In this case, whatever you are mixing this track or just listening, such clipping will appear.
• Because of the inaccurate beatmatching. A very small difference in tempo, like a few hundredths, could cause kicks to shift relative to each other which can give such sudden audio peaks. It especially true when we talking about high BPM, like in Fullon PsyTrance. In this case, the actual signal doesn’t necessarily have to be louder (i.e. no actual clipping), but we may perceive it a “louder” sound.

I guess the last option is more possible.

Again, I don’t know the specific situation where you had experienced this issue, but I’ve tried to simulate it in the DAW. I’ve taken two random kicks from the popular “PsyTrance kit” and placed them into two audio channels. Let’s pretend that the channel “B” is a track playing on the dancefloor, and the channel “A” is a filtered track that you monitoring in the headphones:

If the channels are not beatmatched properly, during the mixing you’ll hear something like this:

Have you noticed these unpleasant peaks at the 5th, the 9th, and the 13th hit? In fact, they are even slightly quieter than the normal kicks due to phasing. But to our ears, they might sounds “louder” because they instantly caught the attention of our brain, thus during the mixing we might think it’s clipping.

if this is what you experienced, it’s treatable very easily: just make sure you that have beatmatched tracks correctly if you’re playing on CDJs, or adjust the grid if you playing using the software.

And finally, answering your question, — no, I don’t notice nor experience anything like that during the mixing :-)

A weekly knowledge exchange

I found that most artists, for some reason, do not share any information about music production and music career. And I would like to change it.

Being an artist myself, I want to hear more quality tracks when I browsing Beatport or other musical stores. I want DJs to act more professionally on the stage. I want to let aspiring musicians easier to find useful tips.

With all of this, I’m introducing Advice. I would be happy to help with advice on such topics as production, performance, management, marketing, and design in terms of the music industry and beyond. There is a lot of things I don’t know in music yet too, thus I would be glad to learn it all together and make this knowledge wide open. Ask your questions via Google Form.

The answers will be posted here weekly on Wednesdays, starting on August 5.

I’m trying to use the principle “less is more” and it works great in every aspect:

• In music production: fewer plugins means in-depth knowledge of each device, less CPU usage, and easier mixdown. And budget savings, too.
• In radio show: less periodicity means more diversity in tracks and guest mixes. This is the reason why I’ll never turn Rave Podcast into a weekly show.
• In web development: fewer features mean more attention and polishing for other important functions, and as a result, launch on time with no bugs.
• In food: eat less at once (but more often) to stay healthy.

Do less to get more.

Good points, definitely worth watching. Despite I don’t like the music Laidback Luke plays, to me he is one of the most respected DJ and seems like a nice person. I like that Luke compares DJ set with a deck of cards, pretty accurate. I laugh aloud at the moment at 56th minute about warming up DJs.

Warm-up DJs

“Getting Real” by 37signals is an amazing book that I’ve just read, and I very recommend it whether you are an entrepreneur, web developer, or music producer like myself.

“While this book’s emphasis is on building a web app, a lot of these ideas are applicable to non-software activities too. The suggestions about small teams, rapid prototyping, expecting iterations, and many others presented here can serve as a guide whether you’re starting a business, writing a book, designing a web site, recording an album, or doing a variety of other endeavours. Once you start Getting Real in one area of your life, you’ll see how these concepts can apply to a wide range of activities.”

I’d like to put some of my favourite quotes here in this post.

• A great way to build software is to start out by solving your own problems. You’ll be the target audience and you’ll know what’s important and what’s not. That gives you a great head start on delivering a breakout product. The key here is understanding that you’re not alone. If you’re having this problem, it’s likely hundreds of thousands of others are in the same boat. There’s your market. Wasn’t that easy? When you solve your own problem, you create a tool that you’re passionate about. And passion is key. Passion means you’ll truly use it and care about it. And that’s the best way to get others to feel passionate about it too.

• If your app doesn’t excite you, something’s wrong. If you’re only working on it in order to cash out, it will show. Likewise, if you feel passionately about your app, it will come through in the final product. People can read between the lines.

• Here’s an easy way to launch on time and on budget: keep them fixed. Never throw more time or money at a problem, just scale back the scope. There’s a myth that goes like this: we can launch on time, on budget, and on scope. It almost never happens and when it does quality often suffers. If you can’t fit everything in within the time and budget allotted then don’t expand the time and budget. Instead, pull back the scope. There’s always time to add stuff later — later is eternal, now is fleeting.

• The more massive an object, the more energy is required to change its direction. It’s as true in the business world as it is in the physical world. When it comes to web technology, change must be easy and cheap. If you can’t change on the fly, you’ll lose ground to someone who can. That’s why you need to shoot for less mass.

• For the first version of your app, start with only three people. That’s the magic number that will give you enough manpower yet allow you to stay streamlined and agile. Start with a developer, a designer, and a sweeper (someone who can roam between both worlds).

• Differentiate yourself from bigger companies by being personal and friendly. A lot of small companies make the mistake of trying to act big. It’s as if they perceive their size as a weakness that needs to be covered up. Too bad. Being small can actually be a huge advantage, especially when it comes to communication. Small companies enjoy fewer formalities, less bureaucracy, and more freedom. Smaller companies are closer to the customer by default. That means they can communicate in a more direct and personal way with customers. If you’re small, you can use familiar language instead of jargon. Your site and your product can have a human voice instead of sounding like a corporate drone. Being small means you can talk with your customers, not down to them.

• Don’t waste time on problems you don’t have yet. Do you really need to worry about scaling to 100,000 users today if it will take you two years to get there? Do you really have to hire eight programmers if you only need three today? People often spend too much time up front trying to solve problems they don’t even have yet. Don’t. Otherwise you may waste energy, time, and money fixating on something that never even happens.

• If you try to please everyone, you won’t please anyone. The customer is not always right. The truth is you have to sort out who’s right and who’s wrong for your app. The good news is that the internet makes finding the right people easier than ever. Know who your app is really intended for and focus on pleasing them.

• Take whatever you think your product should be and cut it in half. Pare features down until you’re left with only the most essential ones. Then do it again. Start off with a lean, smart app and let it gain traction. Then you can start to add to the solid foundation you’ve built.

“37signals” is the company that has developed Basecamp and few more web-services.

• Copywriting is interface design. Great interfaces are written. If you think every pixel, every icon, every typeface matters, then you also need to believe every letter matters. When you’re writing your interface, always put yourself in the shoes of the person who’s reading your interface. Do you label a button Submit or Save or Update or New or Create? That’s copywriting. Do you write three sentences or five? Do you explain with general examples or with details? Do you label content New or Updated or Recently Updated or Modified? Is it There are new messages: 5 or There are 5 new messages or is it 5 or five or messages or posts? All of this matters.

• As soon as you can, use real and relevant words. If your site or application requires data input, enter the real deal. And actually type in the text — don’t just paste it in from another source. If it’s a name, type a real name. If it’s a city, type a real city. If it’s a password, and it’s repeated twice, type it twice. Do as your customers do and you’ll understand them better. When you understand them better, and feel what they feel, you’ll build a better interface.

• If an app launches in a forest and there’s no one there to use it, does it make a noise? The point here is that if you launch your app without any pre-hype, people aren’t going to know about it. To build up buzz and anticipation, go with a Hollywood-style launch: 1) Teaser, 2) Preview, and 3) Launch.

• Blogging can be more effective than advertising. Advertising is expensive. And evaluating the effectiveness of various types of advertising can wind up being even more expensive than the advertising itself. When you don’t have the time or money to go the traditional advertising route, consider the promote-via-blog route instead. Start off by creating a blog that not only touts your product but offers helpful advice, tips, tricks, links, etc.

• Get advance buzz and signups going ASAP. Get some sort of site up and start collecting emails as soon as possible. Pick your domain name and put up a logo and maybe a sentence or two that describes, or at least hints at, what your app will do. Then let people give you their email address. Now you’re on your way to having a foundation of folks ready and waiting to be notified of your launch.

• Share your knowledge with the world. And when the subject you’re teaching is your app, it serves a dual purpose: you can give something back to the community that supports you and score some nice promotional exposure at the same time. As a promotional technique, education is a soft way to get your name — and your product’s name — in front of more people. And instead of a hard sell “buy this product” approach, you’re getting attention by providing a valuable service. That creates positive buzz that traditional marketing tactics can’t match. Teaching is all about good karma. You’re paying it forward. You’re helping others. You get some healthy promotion. And you can even bask in a bit of nobility.

Why you should run a blog

• Hire good writers. If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more. That’s because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.