Useless Plugins For Your DAW

There are many plugins freely available that add useful functionality to your home recording studio. Sonicfinger have produced none of these, but instead focus on alternative studio tools such as the ‘Virtual Studio Visitor’ plugin, which digitally emulates the effect of a visitor’s presence on the performance of the musicians…

Creating The Perfect Take

As any musician or recording technician can tell you, the presence of certain people in the studio during a recording session can drastically alter the mood, accuracy or intensity of an artist’s performance.

Legendary producers have often gone to great lengths to bring visitors into the recording booth to get that extra edge into the song (for example, Jim Morrison’s vocal on LA Woman).

Sonicfinger have now created a plugin that allows you to recreate the effect of visitors being present in the studio, without having to go to all the hassle and expense of actually physically bringing them in.

Visitor Modulation

There are a number of presets available, ranging from Stephen Hawking to Ex-Boyfriend/Girlfriend. If you would like to create your own customised influence, there are additional controls for setting how much the artist hates, fears or respects the visitor, as well as a slider for determining the levels of sexual involvement.

Keeping It Quiet

Sonicfinger have other plugins also, such as the Quietenator, which digitally recreates a range of silences, including “highly sought after vintage silences previously unattainable”.

For those of you who feel your recordings need a bit more space, this plugin transcends gate technology to create new levels of resolution in transparent silence. If you really believe that great music is about the spaces between the notes, then I doubt you’ll be disappointed with this one…

PS: Although Sonicfinger is very entertaining, it’s probably the most SEO-unfriendly site I’ve ever seen. There’s no text content whatsoever – although the search engines have recently begun to index text within Flash sites, it will be a long time before this is as effective as properly optimised semantic HTML. For some tips on making your music sites findable, check out the free ebook on seo for musicians at Linkdisco.