Ok guys,
Just to let all those new or newish into the game something that I know you’re all thinking because … well, we’ve all thought and/or done the same thing at one point in time.
DONT WORRY about having every plug in available, you don’t need it.
Seriously, just like the stress of ‘which DAW is best’, you’ll find that really you don’t really need 10+ different limiters, 10+ different compressors, etc, etc.
It’s SO easy to think that to ‘get good’, you need all these plug ins that get mentioned left right and centre, you really don’t.
Sure some of them are cool and ‘do the trick’, and sure some are better than others.
But you don’t want a VST folder ram full of plug ins that you’ll probably never use more than once (or ever at all!)
Lucky for you DAWs now adays pretty much come with everything you possibly need, especially Ableton, the plug ins are really good, sure Phil prefers using an external Reverb plug in now to the Ableton one but it’s really down to preference, it’s not because the Ableton one is crap.
The same can be said for other plug ins too.
I think the longer i’ve been producing now, the less and less i’ve realised i’ve needed any of these 101 external plug ins i was so quick to rush out and get. Some wasted money for sure, but then there are loads of free plugs too which I don’t use either!
It’s so much better to master one, than amature a dozen.
Think of it a tiny bit like speakers (weird analogy), but if you use the same speakers over and over, your ears become acustomed to those and you learn to produce well with them. Look at Seb Leger, he still uses old PC speakers to produce his tunes! If you keep chopping and changing, how can you start to ‘recognise’ it’s characteristics?
Mastering one is honestly 10x better than botching multiple.
I only post this really because A: it’s a realisation I had whilst learning to produce as I too went through a phase of thinking i needed a million and one plug ins and B: Because there has been loads of threads lately mentioning different plug ins.
I hope this helps some of you!
100% agree with this. If I had been given this advice when I started out (and taken it), I know I would have progressed much much quicker.