So here’s something new that I’ve never done. A follow-up This Thing Rules about something I’ve already discussed before. It’s time to revisit u-He’s excellent synth Hive.
After my initial review of Hive (which is a much more in-depth review and I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already), it became something I’d go to every so often for really nice, juicy synth sounds. But not something I used on a really regular basis. As I started adding more synth-heavy sounds to my new album, Head Like Fire, however, it quickly became my go-to for all things synth. Check out my newest music video, “Butterfly” (created by Tobias Steiner).
“Butterfly” is a song that really came to life thanks to the sounds and features of Hive. It should be pretty obvious to anyone who has used this synth before that that huge arp that takes over the song half way through is from Hive. There are also multiple other instances of Hive, some subtle, and some bigger that come in throughout the track. I’m also using automation on the filters to make the sounds grow and change as the song builds, and the smoothness of this software really lets you do just about anything you can imagine (and all with very low CPU usage).
Hive has a ton of well laid out knobs for adjusting and effecting the sounds you’re using to get things tweaked exactly how you like it. We all have tons of synth VSTs, but I can’t think of one that’s this easy to get results with. And for inspiration, there is a community of people out there making incredible and varied presets that you can load in as simply as dragging files to the Hive folder on your hard-drive. I literally have installed 100s of presets… Maybe even 1000s, all for free. And there are amazing sound designers making paid content packs as well. Those preset starting points not only help you get where you need to be, but can be used like a roadmap to find out how a sound was dialed in so that maybe you’ll know what to mess with when you need to edit a sound. It’s all just incredibly powerful and easy to use.
All of this is to say, if you skipped Hive before, I think it’s definitely worth another look. My review was pretty glowing in the first place, but as I began the finishing stages of building up the songs that would become my new album, I found myself finally returning to Hive and really making use of it in a way I thought I would, but didn’t at first. I’m really glad to have pulled myself back in.
Hive is available from u-He directly for $149.
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David Rosen is an award-winning music composer. He composes original music for films, commercials, jingles, video-games and all other kinds of media projects. He has a vast music library of original tracks available for licensing and is also available for custom compositions. Contact him on the ABOUT page for pricing and availability for your next project.