This piece includes several instruments, voices, drums (in red). Software used to mix is REAPER, voice samples and one pad are generated in Reason (visible in the background on the left screen), the rest – including most effects – is hardware. On this particular piece, I used mainly the MS-20, DP4+, TC Reverb, and a bit of the holiest grail reverb. Main software effects are EQ, bitcrusher and a delay, secondary effects are Atlantis VST filter stages, and a flanger.

On a standard track I use around 30 tracks, one of my ongoing projects is currently over the 150 tracks mark and will most probably end up closer to 250 but the simpler pieces use up as little as 6 tracks (kick drum, snare drum, high hats, bass, lead, reverb).
Of course, you can use less, but it is convenient to have more tracks, and mixing on a computer now means there are fewer hardware (and financial) limits on the number of tracks you are mixing.

La fête de la musique electro-industrielle, vidéo par miscere. J’avais prévu pour ce festival une set plus eletro et techno que d’habitude, avec un résultat environ moitié moitié indus progressive et sons plus rythmés.

This is kRap by Bakka

Radio Pulsar est une radio FM indé crée en 1983, qui a toujours eu une programmation assez pointue, émettant sur 95.9 dans la région de Poitiers. (Si vous voulez plus d’infos sur la radio allez sur Wikipédia France, mais c’est plus intéressant d’aller directement l’écouter en ligne ou sur votre poste FM).

This track uses « clear angle » & « exhale », by seek to track zero, released under creative commons license, free for non commercial use. You may re-use it for non commercial use, under the same license.

- Reaper‘s plugins. Reacomp, ReaEQ… can be downloaded as a separate VST pack from their website. Easy to use and extremely configurable.

- Atlantis VST: semi-modular synth with a cool interface (just get the interface pack). Great for basses, pads & effects

- DSK asianZ and indian Dreams. Cool sounds.

- moonoi.tk’s binaural simulator VST.  When panning isn’t enough.

- isotope vinyl. When you need the scratchy feel

- TC Electronic’s Fabrik R. hum… the VST I use most is actually just a controller for a hardware reverb. Still, great reverb, I’ll leave it here. And no, I don’t have any other recommendation for reverbs, this is the best I found so far, and it is so far ahead I barely use anything else as overall reverbs.

- Camelcrusher. Sounds very bad. I mean it is a terrible distortion simulation. Unless you stop considering it as an analogue simulation (just go and buy yourself a real lamp disto, am quite happy with my ElectroHarmonix) and consider it as digital grit. Yup. just when you need that harsh digital grit…. there it is.

I know I do not use that many VSTs on a regular basis.. but then I also make extensive use of Reason for digital sound generation. And when needing more powerful effects, I go back to my hardware with all its noises, internal non-linearities, and all the lofi that makes overall great sound.