I've only been producing music seriously for 6 months or so and I am currently exploring the jungle of freeware and shareware VSTs available on the internet. For the uninitiated, Virtual Studio Technology (VST) was developed by German company, Steinberg, as an interface between their Cubase digital audio workstation software (DAW) and effects plugins created by third-party software companies. The interface was later upgraded to support virtual instrument plugins (VSTi). In the 10+ years that that VST has existed, many, many thousands of free and shareware (and many strictly commercial ones of course) VSTs have popped up on the internet. There are shitloads of them and it's a little bit difficult figuring out which ones are worth downloading and trying out. One site that makes things easier is KVR audio, which maintains a database of information about lots of VSTs.
Developers: Release your VSTs under the GPL or the penguin gets it!
Now, I'm one of those weirdos that use Linux. If you've never heard of Linux, then you've probably never heard of open source software either. You're probably using it now... (Any Firefox users?). I've used open source software (OSS) almost exclusively for about 6 years now and having recently reverted (kicking & screaming) to Windoze on one machine to get stuck into production, I've found myself disgusted by the disorganisation in the VST world. There are 10 billion VSTs out there that all do the same thing, and most of them want you to cough up decent cash for something that was created by just one person or a small group of people. In the open source world, technology gets condensed, like when you make a stew or something and you chuck in heaps of wine and stock and other crap and boil it, lower the heat and 'reduce' the mixture. Same thing happens with open source software, if 10 billion OSS developers write 10 billion OSS VSTs, eventually some projects will grow larger and start to incorporate some of the other VSTs. Developers will leave the smaller projects and join the bigger ones, which in time 'reduces' the pool of 10 billion good to average VSTs down to a couple of hundred brilliant VSTs with loads of development hours behind it and very few bugs compared to the most expensive commercial software. So anyway... There are 50 VST projects on sourceforge.net but ultimately OSS doesn't seem to have taken off just yet in the VST world and I'm wondering why.
Speak up VST developers of the world, why aren't there more open source VSTs around?
Vivada is an exogenous retrovirus of uncertain origins. Increasingly prevalent and highly contagious, it alters its victims thalamus enabling it to produce large quantities of endorphins inside of the brain therefore bypassing the blood-brain barrier and administering abnormally highs doses of endorphins to the victim.
One common symptom of the disease is an intense increase in the sufferers proclivity to the listening to and composition of music in all its forms. This internet website is a result of and an expression of... Vivada.
The music available on Vivada is intended for promotional purposes only. If you are a reader/listener and you enjoy the music, you should really consider helping out the artist somehow (e.g. buy something that they're selling). If you are an artist (or a record label) whose music appears here and you are not okay with that, then send us an email at admin@vivada.org and it will be promptly removed.
