by Christian Van Antwerpen 

Can you trust your gigs to a budget Windows laptop and a slew of freeware soft synths? With this guide — yes, you can.

Your story may be similar. On my lunch break, I got a call asking me to play keyboards in an established cover band. They got regular regional gigs, made good money, and played lots of great songs. After multiple rehearsals and a very stressful first gig, I knew I needed more sounds. A new workstation, analog synth, and clonewheel organ would have been nice — so would a new Mercedes SUV to carry them, which was about as realistic given my budget. Likewise for posh soft synth hosts such as a Muse Receptor, Open Labs NeKo, or Mac- Book Pro running MainStage.

Welcome to freeware, the economic stimulus package for musicians. A year ago, I played only hardware keyboards. These days, I gig almost entirely on free soft synths. In this article, I’ll explain how I went from thinking that off-the-shelf Windows laptops were only good for running Microsoft Office to confidently using one as the main sound source in my live rig. Then, we’ll round up 25 free software instruments I’ve found to be the best-sounding and most stable for nailing any sound a plays-it-all cover band might call for.

Update:  I've supplemented this story with a playlist of two videos wherein I walk you through exactly how my rig is set up. I hope you benefit from these, and if for any reason you can't see them in the window directly below, click here to open them separately.

FREE HOSTS FOR WINDOWS

Savihost turns any single plugin- only VST into a standalone version, and adds an onscreen keyboard to plugs that don’t have one. Get it by browsing to http://hermannseib.com/english/savihost.htm.

THE LAPTOP

Buying a computer on a limited budget is a little crazy. I chose an Acer Aspire for about $550. If “you’re a PC,” you can actually hit pretty sweet specs for between $500 and $600 — a dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM (investing in 4GB is better), and a 200GB hard drive is within the realm of possibility.

Out of the box, make sure everything is updated, then have a guru remove unnecessary extras that slow it down. These include those pop-up reminders in the lower right of your screen, any special deals that came pre-installed (e.g., consumer-grade photo or website-making apps), anything that periodically asks you to register, and other non-music-critical programs. Have few if any startup items (programs that launch automatically when you power up) beyond your soft synth host and anti-virus software.

Live Professor hosts VST instruments and effects in a virtual rack, flexibly routes audio and MIDI, and is very stable. Get it at ifoundasound.com.

Speaking of which, you’ll be surfing the web a lot for free synths, so a good antivirus is a must. If one came with your computer, it’ll expire at some point, so either pay for a subscription or go with a reputable free option — I’ve gotten great results from Avast (avast.com). You don’t want expiration pop-ups from your antivirus (or anything else) during a show.

As to the OS, though Windows 7 or XP will start you off with fewer annoying things to get rid of, don’t rule out Vista if a computer on which it’s installed is an especially good deal. I’m still on Vista, and get through my gigs with no problems, thanks to following the above guidelines.

THE AUDIO INTERFACE

The gigging mission is to get clean stereo sound out of your laptop with as little latency as possible, not to have lots of inputs for multitrack recording. For this, many of today’s least expensive ASIO interfaces perform with flying colors. I use a discontinued TASCAM US-122. It and the current Mk. II model (approx. $130 street) have 5-pin MIDI ports, so if a new USB controller keyboard isn’t in the budget, your old Korg M1 can pinch-hit. Many interfaces come with a “lite” edition DAW (Steinberg Cubase LE4 in the TASCAM’s case) — but we’ll address the topic of the ideal live host program below.

Keyboards that have a built-in audio interface cost more initially, but having the ASIO driver, keys, and interface in one unit saves money and space. I’m a fan of the Novation X-Station, which combines an interface, MIDI control mapping, and even a virtual analog hardware synth in one box. Since it too has MIDI in, you can cascade an older keyboard, set to send on a different MIDI channel, as a second manual.

INTERFACE CHOICES

Novation’s X-Station (25, 49, or 61 keys) packs an ASIO audio interface, MIDI controller functions, and a virtual analog synth into one keyboard. novationmusic.com

THE HOST PROGRAM

The most powerful live-oriented host you can get for free is Live Professor, my go-to program for gigging. The catch is that it’s a public beta, but the latest version is quite stable. MIDI and audio routing is flexible, it handles tons of VST plug-ins, and mapping MIDI controllers is easy as pie. Its strongest feature is the Cue List, which lets you turn synths on and off, change presets, and do other MIDI functions, PowerPoint-style. Meaning, you can pre-program events and cue them with a keystroke, e.g., programchanging your entire virtual rack for the next song by hitting the space bar. Just don’t hook up different controller keyboards for the gig than what you used to set up your patches. Not that you’d have reason to, but if you do, you may get weirdness with default programs and entry values of certain settings, and the occasional crash. Otherwise, Live Professor is highly stable.

TASCAM’s US-122 Mk.II is an affordable, stable, and greatsounding choice for getting stereo audio from your laptop, and includes MIDI in and out ports. tascam.com

It’s not free, but kudos to the first program I ever used to host freeware: Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio XL (approx. $160 street). That it can host up to 32 VST instruments while adding negligible CPU overhead of its own made it very robust. Since it’s primarily a multitrack DAW, the drawback for live use was complexity. Still, it’s stable, low-latency, and a great choice if you’re looking for a single program to handle both recording and live hosting duties.

THE HUNT

Free soft synths come in two broad categories: emulations (pianos, B-3s, analog synths, Mellotrons, etc.) and more experimental original ideas. Sailing the vast ocean of the latter category is fascinating, but it’s also a time hog when your wedding gig is next weekend. Emulated sounds, on the other hand, are more to the point. Mapping is generally easier, you get more usable presets, and intuitive user interfaces make these the meat and potatoes of your live VST rig. The one area where some freeware developers struggle is latency — so make sure that great piano plug-in can keep up with your hands.

Sometimes, a commercial developer drops a synth into the freeware bin. These tend to be the easiest to use and map, and to have better sound quality, since they were originally developed for sale. To keep on top of this, you can follow developers at kvraudio.com, which also happens to be one of the best clearing houses on the Internet for info about free and paid plug-ins alike — it’s like Yelp for synth players.

Two important points: Free demo versions of paid soft synths aren’t for gigging. Often, they have an intentional audio dropout or noise every so many seconds. Cracks of paid software are notoriously problem-prone, so if guilt about being a schmuck doesn’t keep you away from them, fear of a mid-set meltdown should.

THE DRY RUN

Since freeware comes mainly from indie developers, many of whom do it as a hobby, it’s crucial to test every plug-in you download, first outside your host program, then inside it. How do you test something outside a host if there’s no standalone version? Download Savihost from hermann seib.com/english/savihost.htm. This gem of a utility hosts exactly one VST instrument, turning it into a standalone soft synth — you just have the slightly fiddly task of renaming the Savihost.exe file to match your plug-in DLL (but keeping the .exe file extension) each time. Savihost includes a CPU monitor, and tacks a mouse-able onscreen keyboard onto synths that don’t have one. Here, I check for CPU usage per instance, MIDI mapping issues, unwanted sonic surprises, and crash-proneness — and troll for favorite presets.

When testing within the host, “save as” a new copy of your project, with a new name, each time you make a significant configuration step. If a problem with host/plug-in/controller interaction shows up, you have a better chance of isolating it, and can revert to the last file version.

Finally, save everything as you’re going to run it, power off, restart, and run a “dress rehearsal.” This should include every possible program change and performance controller move you’re likely to make at the gig. Don’t get surprised onstage if you can help it!

THE TOP 25

Over the past year, I’ve extensively vetted, tested, and played live with all 25 plug-ins on the next two pages. They’re certainly not the only freeware synths you should try — just the first 25. One last thing: Many freeware developers rely on donations, so if you like a plug-in and are able, please do so. Get involved in their user communities, share your own knowledge, and you’ll get back what you give many times over. Just click the thumbnail image below to see all 25 in a PDF...

Click to Download a PDF of the Top 25 Free Windows Plugins for Laptop Gigging.

WHAT IF I HAVE A MAC?

We’ve focused this roundup on gigging with laptops in the $500-$600 range, and unless you’re a Linux DIY’er, that means Windows. That said, Big Tick Ticky Clav, all the Genuine Soundware plugs, Greenoak Crystal, and Ohmforce Symptohm Melohman all offer Mac OS X Universal Binary versions as well as Windows versions. The rest on the next pages? They’re PC-only, and run fine on XP, Vista, and Windows 7.