[BILL DEMONSTRATING USE OF THE LINPLUG ALPHA 3 FREE]

BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. My name is Bill Holland, and this is the Linplug Alpha 3, a free plugin from the people at LinPlug. This is a cut-down version of their Alpha series of synthesizers. This is the free version of it. So, it's cut-down a little bit but it's a pretty powerful synthesizer for being a free VST. Check this out: We have oscillators 1 and 2, both of these with an A and B oscillator so really you're getting four oscillators overall, filter section, amp section with amp envelope and filter envelope, a variety of presets, save options, a signal flowchart, a matrix for setting your values, and LFO, glide, and chorus.

Let's start of from the beginning. Let's take a look at some of the presets real quick, just see what we're looking at here. If you go down here, you can select your presets. I have stage piano selected right now [BILL PLAYS SEQUENCE WITH STAGE PIANO PRESET], I can do a funk swell [BILL PLAYS SEQUENCE WITH FUNKSWELL PRESET], the Xip Decay [BILL PLAYS SEQUENCE WITH XIP DECAY PRESET].

So, if you look here, we have oscillator 1. If I click here, you'll notice I have a variety of oscillator waveforms to choose from, quite a lot, again, for being a free synthesizer. I can choose a saw wave, I can do triangle, vintage saw, they have like eight different saw bass waves, spectral waves.

[BILL PLAYS SEQUENCE]

The filter is pretty self-explanatory. If I go here, I can adjust my cutoff and resonance. Let's select the "Fullswell" again. [BILL PLAYS A SEQUENCE WITH FULLSWELL PRESET] I have it set to a 24-dB low-pass filter right now [BILL APPLIES FILTER]. I can set it to a 12-dB low pass, band pass, or high pass. I can also control the envelope filter, and I can also control the filter envelope here, [BILL MANIPULATES FILTER ENVELOPE SETTINGS] sustain and release, fade control, and depth.

Then there's the amp control, which includes the amp envelope [BILL MANIPULATES AMP ENVELOPE SETTINGS]: attack, decay, sustain, and release, and again fade control for the amp.

Now, into the matrix I can assign various controls to any oscillator or filter parameter I want. For example, in this situation, I can assign, say, velocity, so however high my velocity is set to also control pitch, and then I could play that back,[BILL PLAYS BACK SEQUENCE] and I could assign it to any of these parameters like LFO speed. I can also use the filter envelope to control, in this case, oscillator 2's pitch. Now if I switch my patch, I can also control LFO, change up the waveform of the LFO and the rate. I can change up the waveform and rate of the LFO. For the LFO, the frequency and attack and the rate.

We also have glide control which is essentially the portamento of your oscillators, and finally chorus control with wet, time, and rate controls. Wet is your dry-to-wet signal; dry is your initial signal going in and wet is the effects signal for the chorus [BILL APPLIES CHORUS TO SYNTH].

[BILL PLAYS SEQUENCE WITH ALPHA 3 FREE]

Well, that's the free Alpha plugin from Linplug, a cut-down version of the Alpha 3. For now, this is Gearwire.Com and my name is Bill Holland.