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 How to use VST in MPT |
Written on 21 February 2004 by vitaliko |
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VST is what you use to apply effects, such as Reverb, Flanger, Filters, etc. on your samples to make them sound different and usually also better. How do you use it in MPT? I suggest you to read and try it out at the same time by yourself.
For this demonstration you must have one of the latest DirectX enabled system and at least one VST effect, in my case, Waves reverb.
Open a song you've made with MPT and solo a channel which contains some melody (for demonstrational purposes). Now leave the Pattern window and go to the General window. Scroll to the bottom of it, you will see a small subsection named Effect plugins.
This is the place you load your VST`s.
You will also see a small dropdown window named Effect and inside it FX1:. Near it there is a button called Select plugin. Click it. A small window will appear with the title "mix plugins". Go to the "directX media audio effects", those are effects, or VSTs` if you like, that come by default with directX, if you have directX you are supposed to have them, other VSTs`, however, you will have to download and install. But all that later. Anyway, now that you have entered the "directX media audio effects" folder, you can see several items like compressor, echo, wavesreverb etc. Choose "wavesreverb". Now you have successfully loaded a VST!
Now try playing your solo channel. Do you hear any difference? No! Of course not. Because we must tell the tracker where we want the VST to effect. In the General window you have small subsections Channel 1, Channel 2 and so on. Go to the subsection which belongs to the channel on which your melody is located (for example, Channel 1). On the bottom of the subsection, you have a small dropdown window Effect. Click on it. The dropwindow drops and shows you two options: No effect and Waves reverb. Choose Waves reverb.
Now, that channel is outputed to the Waves reverb VST. Go back to the Pattern window and check out how it sounds. You can hear the difference, right? But what if it sounds worst than before? In that case, I bet you would want to improve it, right? Go back to the General window, and go to the bottom, back to the Effects plugin subsection. You will notice a small dropdown window (yes, yet another dropdown window) called Parameters. When you click on it, you see 4 options: In gain, ReverbMix, ReverbTime and HighFreqRTRation. Each of those parameters represents a Value that will change the effect of the VST. Each VST has its own parameters. Let us play around with them. Click on the "In Gain" Parameter. On the right appears a small slide. Move it till the value says 14 or near it. Choose the ReverbTime Parameter and move the slide till the value reaches 3000.
From experience I know that this reverb should sound good. Try playing your melody now. Sounds too quiet? That is because its a Wetmix, which means that it is an 'add up' to the overall sound. To make it sound louder, check the DryMix checkbox.
Now play the channel. Sounds much better doesn't it? That is because the Drymix turns on the channel itself (what you might call "usual" sound) and the effect of the VST together. To see how it sounded before, go to the General window, and check the Bypass checkbox. This will stop the effect of the VST. Try checking and unchecking it a couple of times just to understand how it works. Fool around with the parameters to get the feel of it. Nice huh?
Now, what if you want to add another VST effect? In order to do this, you must go to Effect dropdown box and choose FX2 (the one which comes after FX1). Now you do the same process as earlier: select plugin, apply it to a certain channel, mess with the parameters and so forth. I suggest you try playing with those things for a few minutes or hours until you know what to do perfectly well. Now after you pretty much understand the process, you may find it slightly limited. What if you want to add two VST effects on the same channel? This too was thought out before! Suppose that your second VST effect (FX2) is Flanger. If it isn't, I strongly suggest you to change it to Flanger, it might sound weird otherwise (again, for demonstrational purposes). You go to your first VST effect FX1: (wavesreverb) and you will find yet another dropdown box called Output to:. Click on it and choose FX2: Flanger. Now the Waves reverb VST is outputed to the Flanger VST. Try playing your channel. Sounds different, right? Try bypassing the second VST effect, again, by checking the Bypass checkbox on the second effect. Click it a few times to see what the new VST does.
You can also apply a VST effect to the instrument instead of the channel. Choose some instrument with a synth sample on it. There is a small dropdown box on the middle left called Output. When you click it, choose the FX1. It's important that you choose FX1 and not Midi ch1! Now try playing the instrument by clicking the A button. You hear how it has changed? The instrument itself is now imported to the VST.
"Knowledge comes through practice", try different FX and click whatever you can, wherever you can. It will sound bad in the beginning, but in the end, it will be worth it.
I hope I have helped someone.  |
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