This time I did it big.
I made my own plug-ins for Mac. Four of them: a synth, a drum machine, a multi-effect and a mastering suite. Me, the guy who makes synthwave songs in Italy. Boh, I still can’t believe it.
It started with bad news. The synth plug-in I use is going to stop working on Mac, one of those things Apple decides one morning. I could have bought another one. Instead I thought, aspetta, what if I make it myself?
Then the synth needed drums. The drums needed effects. You know how it goes, you enter the kitchen for a coffee and you leave with a lasagna.
In 1989 I was six year old.
I was in Potenza, and a real synth cost as much as a car. A real studio, forget it. That sound arrived to me second hand, from television reruns and tapes listened to hundreds of times, and I spent my whole life running after it.
Now it weighs nothing. I open it on the train from Milano Centrale to Potenza Centrale and it’s 1989 again, except now there’s wifi. More or less.
Why the bottles?
Chinotto, Spuma and Cedrata are old Italian sodas, the ones you find at the bar in August, with two ice cubes and no hurry. Lemon you can guess. If you’re not Italian I’m sorry, you missed a lot.
Chinotto.
Synth · Free
Six old machines in one synth. Mini Moka for the fat basses, Giugno 84 for the pads that make you miss someone you never met. Play one chord in the dark and try not to go for a drive.
Spuma.
Drum machine · Free
A drum machine with zero samples inside. Every hit is born when you load the kit, like coffee in the moka. Pick the kit called Neon Boulevard and your neck starts moving alone.
Cedrata.
Multi-effect · Free
All the effects I need in one bottle, plus a bar you slide from 1965 to today. Your song walks through the decades while you watch. I usually stop at 1983, I don’t know why.
Lemon.
Mastering · Free
The last thing you do to a song. It goes last, like limoncello at the end of lunch, when uncle Giuseppe is already sleeping on the chair. Your track comes in tired and goes out awake.
They’re all free, for Mac. No account and no activation, you download and you play. There’s a Donate button if you want to buy me a chinotto.
They are still young, so if something breaks write to me at studio@vincenzosalvia.com.
I’ll fix it. Piano piano.
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