Your favourite free DAW plugins

Vaiai

Ok, I have Reaper, I have my Kemper and an assortment of profiles - what free plugins do you guys recommend for the DAW for mixing, mastering - learning how to produce the music. I am just downloading backing tracks, playing over them, doubling the guitars, maybe harmonising sections etc and then trying to learn how to mix them and pan them then finally master the track to make it sound like it all goes together, rather than me playing over a backing track and it clearly sounding like that!

Obviously Reaper comes with some in-built but when I try to search on info a lot of them are focused towards dance music, although I appreciate some will cross over and be useful anyway.

blobb

I'll start you off with Blue Cat http://www.bluecataudio.com/Download/Products/

Danny1969

You don't really need any fancy plugins to do what your doing as the drums, keys , bass etc are already pre mixed on the backing track. All you need to do is process your guitar tracks a little and the included plugs in Reaper are fine for that. 

  

Use the EQ on the guitar tracks to remove any unwanted low frequencies, use it to help the guitar cut through without using excessive volume, use Reapers automation lane to write volume automation so the guitar track is at the right level.

Set up a channel as an Aux bus and put a verb on it, do the same again with a delay plug. Send some of the guitar to these buses  and automate the amount of send effect so it's more so on some parts than others. Increasing verb on a dying note is a common one. Tempo matched delay repeats of staccato notes is another. Use automation so the effect serves the song rather than being there all the time

Sometimes the backing tracks are already mastered in terms of compression and level so there's little you can do about that but if the BT isn't already flattened then Reapers compressor and  Limiter is fine for the job. In fact you can master stupidly hot with it's inbuilt limiter if desired.