A Guide to Beatles-ey Virtual Instruments
Hello! Now while this blog is mostly dedicated to creating album covers in the style of the Beatles, that's not the only thing I'm interested in in terms of creative expression pertaining to the Beatles. So, I wanted to compile a list of plugins that are great for achieving a Beatles sound in a DAW. Also, I just realized the formatting on this is awful, but I have no clue how to fix it... so I guess you'll have to just live with it!
Ample Guitar RB
First up is a plugin I recently got working and have really been enjoying. As you can imagine, this plugin replicated the Rickenbacker sound. John Lennon famously played a Rickenbacker 325 during many live performances and in the studio, and several other models were used throughout the Beatles' career as well. This plugin is made by Ample Sound (who, in my opinion, is the only company that makes actually good sounding guitar plugins) and it comes pre-loaded with several Beatles-ey presets.
EastWest Fab Four
This one is a very large plugin with tons of instruments. The quality of them is very flip-floppy, some of them are good and some are honestly awful (like most of the guitars.) However, the basses, the drums, and some of the misc instruments sound stellar.
Abbey Road 60s Drummer
There are gonna be several plugins from Wave and Abbey Road, this is the first. This is just a fairly standard drum plugin. Personally I suck at drums and I am no good judge of the quality of this plugin, but I think it's a good alternative to the drums in Fab Four.
Ample Guitar SC
Another Ample plugin. This one is based on the Fender Stratocaster. Both John Lennon and George Harrison owned one of these guitars, but was predominately used by George from what I've found. This plugin is modeled after a different model than the ones used by John and George, but it still sounds very similar, and I imagine with some creative mixing you can match the sound very closely.
PastToFutureReverbs Vinyl Hofner Violin Beatles Bass for KONTAKT! & FabBass
I'm gonna put a few Höfner basses on here, although in my opinion basses are one of the easiest instruments to sample, and since the Beatles Rock Band multitracks exist, I imagine you could just cut a single bass note and use that. I have not tested the PastToFutureReverbs one very extensively, so I have no clue of the quality, but FabBass is free so there's nothing to loose.
Ample Guitar M Lite
Wow it's another ample plugin! And it's free! This is a lovely acoustic guitar plugin, and since Ample hasn't made a J-160E plugin, this is probably the best acoustic guitar to fill that void. (again, I think Fab Four has a J-160, but you can imagine how it sounds.) If you have deep pockets (or are a *really* big fan of that one George Harrison sketch, so do speak) then you could also get the full version of this plugin if you like. I don't really know why you'd get that one since this one is free, but the option is there.
Ample Guitar LP
Okay, okay, last Ample guitar. This one is a Les Paul, which George used during a few early live performances and on a handful of songs in the later days. Not terribly useful, but it sounds nice. If Ample ever makes a Gretsch Duo Jet, I would 100% recommend it, but alas. Anyway, there are a handful of other guitars that were used by John and George at odd points that have close Ample matches, but I don't wanna bother recommending them, unless you REALLY wanna replicate the sound of, for instance, George Harrison in October to March of 1965 into '66.
Abbey Road Classic Upright Pianos
This is a collection of a handful of pianos at Abbey Road Studios, including the Mrs. Mills piano used on Lady Madonna. Plus you can just use this for the handful of other times the Beatles used pianos.
Redtron SE
I'm not even gonna put the paid Mellotron plugin here, there is absolutely no excuse for not just using this free one. Tapeotronic is another one you could use. Again, Fab Four has a Mellotron flutes patch, but the Beatles used a bunch of different Mellotron patches so I say you use this one as well.
And now, effects!
Code Red Free or Abbey Road REDD Consoles
Pick a compressor, any compressor! As long as its one of these two options. Personally I use Code Red because it's free and I'm a meathead who knows very little about mixing. All I know is that this was a very heavily used compressor and it sounds neat.
Abbey Road J37 Tape (and really the entire rest of the Waves Abbey Road Collection)
Unfortunately there isn't a free alternative to these. But, they are nice plugins, and they have the legitimacy of the Abbey Road name. I'm sure you could find free alternatives to all of these though.
I will almost certainly make a revised list later on, as I focused a lot on the early Beatles sound here.
