Plugin Boutique offers Steinberg’s Backbone drum designer (normally €149) for free with any purchase in February 2025. 

Backbone is a 64-bit-only release for macOS (VST3, AU, AAX) and Windows (VST3, AAX). 

The plugin is free with any paid purchase on Plugin Boutique, but free products don’t count for the giveaway. The promo ends on March 2, 2025.  

Steinberg initially dropped Backbone in May 2020. The plugin is made to design snares, kicks, percussion, risers, hits, and more. 

Backbone allows you to layer up to eight samples and alter them with subtractive synthesis. 

You can also decompose samples into noise and tonal elements, resynthesize sounds to manipulate them, as well as apply the eight effects with two routable buses. 

In 2022, Steinberg integrated Sony’s DrumGAN drum generator AI with the release of Backbone 1.5.

DrumGAN can rapidly create snare, kick, and cymbal sounds from scratch. It can also analyze and recreate samples and create variations. 

The 1.5 release also introduced 250 new presets covering various percussive instruments. 

Upon release, Steinberg uploaded a nine-minute video to show off what Backbone 1.5 and DrumGAN can do. 

I can see that the DrumGAN AI can indeed very quickly generate snare, kick, and cymbal samples.  

There are three sliders to work with for these three types of percussion, and you can create sounds of different intensities with the slider. 

Once you have a good starting point, you can tweak the numerous parameters to take it in any direction you prefer. 

An interesting feature is that the three sliders interact, allowing you to quickly layer kicks, snares, and cymbals to create new sounds. 

Plugin Boutique detailed the six-step process for claiming the freebie at the bottom of the announcement page for the Steinberg Backbone giveaway,

However, you should note that after accessing the freebie, you’ll also need to complete Steinberg’s license activation for Backbone, in addition to the installer download and an account sign-up and product registration. Yippee! 

I think Backbone would be a handy tool to quickly create unique sounds for productions instead of using premade samples that people may have already heard on other tracks.

Additionally, if you have pre-made samples that you like, Backbone is a fast way to improve and customize them to really make them your own.

Check out the deal: Backbone (FREE with any paid purchase in February @ Plugin Boutique)

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