On Getting Something For Nothing (Again).

I'm struggling to identify the economics of all the free VST stuff I've downloaded over the last week or so. From an innocuous advert on a local paper website, I have managed to get a VST Host and  myriad instrument and effect VSTs which give me as much functionality as I used to have with a room full of kit and cables. On top of that some of the specialised instruments have sounds approaching the real thing - saxophones with the sound of spit through the reed, cellos with a mis-hit scrape of bow on wood. As an added bonus the single, twenty-year-old keyboard which I kept is still able to keep up and control this studio-in-a-box. .All I need to find now is some actual musical talent to put them all together. And some time I suppose.

Another frightening thing is that even with 10 instruments all with their own independent effects channel, the render is still able to turn this into a single sound file at many times the speed of the actual live music. It seems quite possible to produce a whole album to a high standard using kit that would fit in a briefcase. As none of this has cost any money I can at least spend something on important things like food, and the car, and comics.