Podolski

Picking a virtual synth when you’re just getting into music production isn’t easy. Browsing forums and list articles may help a bit, but on the other hand, it can make you curious to just try them all. Now before you go on a hunt that may prove extremely damaging to your bank account, you should keep in mind that you don’t need very complex instruments at the very beginning of your journey. In fact, some of these may very well be beyond your knowledge and comprehension.

So instead of jumping straight to a complicated virtual instrument, why don’t you consider learning to use something easier at first, preferably free of charge? If that sounds good to you, then you could give Podolski a try.

Podolski is created by u-he, the same company behind gems such as Diva, Hive, or Bazille. Fortunately, they also have a bunch of free products, and Podolski is proof that even when limiting the features, the developers don’t sacrifice sound quality.

With Podolski you get one oscillator, one filter, one envelope, and one arpeggiator/sequencer, but these are all pretty solid and can help you generate some very interesting sounds. You can also add a delay and a chorus/flanger into the mix, as well as an amplifier. Moreover, you can use the single LFO for some basic modulation.

Among the many knobs present on the interface you may find some unusual parameters. For example, the WaveWarp is the oscillator’s ability to morph between three waveforms. Understanding what each parameter does and testing different settings will help you create music in no time, but you can also start by exploring some of the synth’s many presets.

Podolski is free, easy-to-use, sounds great, and is quite CPU-friendly, especially when compared to the aforementioned u-he products. I’m not saying there’s no better free synth out there, but surely Podolski has got to be among the best.