RESOURCES

• ambiVAC by Comet's Tail Toybox // Specialized mono synth made up of several modules, all of them coming together to make some PHAT leads, arps, basses and what have you.
  
• damascus by Comet's Tail Toybox // Another mono synth made for a special purpose, to create wall-of-sound type rave stabs. It works in a rather peculiar manner so I sugest you just RTM instead of reading this.
  
• Dexed by Raph Levien, the msfa team and co. // An emulation of the classic Yamaha DX7. So good at it's job that it can even load presets for the original synth it's based on. There are tons of cartridges online and I sugest you look for them, might make list with my favourites at some point.
  
• psykic by Comet's Tail Toybox // Kick maker, specially good for those high resonance kicks one usually asociates with Trance music. It can do other kinds of kicks as well of course, or even snare tones. I prefer to make my drums with Sytrus but if you want kicks this will get ya there faster.
  
• real animal by Comet's Tail Toybox // PM/FM analogue flavored synth. All four operators have a noise generator that can modulate their pitch, which is great for giving a bit of organic wobblyness to the sound without it feeling mechanical and predictable like it would with an LFO.
  
• Synth1 by Daichi Laboratory // Compact all purpose FM Synth, whatever you need it's got you covered. It doesn't give you absurd ammounts of control over every parameter like say, Sytus or Harmor, and it does have some quirks to it, but the sheer speed at which you can make great sounds with it is well worth the sacrifice.
  I highly recommend you watch "Synth1: tips & trixxx (disguised as a beginner's guide)" by emma essex, it's what got me into it and I've used it a bunch since then. It is the only synth I used in my track C17, for reference of what you can do with it. The official site is in japanese and I don't even remember how I installed this one, but it's well worth your time and effort to set it up.
  

• ambiFX by Comet's Tail Toybox // The effects from ambiVAC in their own little box.
  
• BrightAmbience2 by Airwindows // Gated reverb kinda thing, great for giving drums some space.
  
• Channel9 by Airwindows // Not gonna pretend to understand this one, just put it in the master.
  
• Classic Chorus Kjaerhus Audio // It's a chorus.
  
• Classic Phaser by Kjaerhus Audio // It's a phaser.
  
• ClipOnly2 by Airwindows // Safety cliper, no controls, 'cause none are needed.
  
• DeEss by Airwindows // Decent deesser that doesn't destroy your vocals.
  
• DustBunny by Airwindows // Anybody? No? Dust!
  
• ElectroHat by Airwindows // Makes a noisy synth hat sound out of whatever you give it.
  
• EngineersFilter by Robin Schmidt // The steepest filter in town.
  
• Fracture by Airwindows // Wavefoldy, rubbery distortion, great for reese basses.
  
• fuzzbuddies by Comet's Tail Toybox // Distortion + delay combo, great for ambience.
  
• Galactic by Airwindows // Ultra long, potentially infinite blurry reverb.
  
• GuitarConditioner by Airwindows // Chuck it on your guitar input, see what happens.
  
• MackEQ by Airwindows // Ridiculous distortion, with Low and Hi knobs.
  
• Mackity by Airwindows // Ridiculous distortion, slap it on the amen for instant gratification.
  
• MatrixVerb by Airwindows // Weird reverb, lots of range/different sounds.
  
• Pop by Airwindows // Exagerated compressor, nice on breakbeats.
  
• SPAN by Voxengo // The spectrum analyzer that everyone uses.
  

I operate on a small budget and these free VSTs are pretty much all I use, with the notable exception of all that comes with FL Studio Producer Edition, of course.
The only premium VST I own is Image-Line Harmor, highly recommended, but not needed.

• "Bruh, Do You EVEN Melody?" by Aimee Nolte Music // This is mostly a wake up call for theory nerds (like myself) to train their ears. Music Theory is fun and all but the point of it if you ask me is to be able to recognize the sounds it describes. It's cool to know what a Tritone Substitution is, how to build a nonatonic Blues scale, or how to describe the Andalusian Cadence using Roman Numeral Analysis, but can you recognize any these sounds when you hear them? Can you imagine what they sound like? Could you come up with an idea in your head without the assistance of a musical instrument or a Tracker/DAW? 'cause that's a really important skill for any musician, one you're not gonna get if you don't train your ear. That's why when I mention "Music Theory" I often append "Ear Training" right after, specially when recommending people to learn these skills. They go hand in hand, you are doing youself a disservice if you learn one without the other. I say this as someone who was real proud to have learned a lot of Music Theory in a short ammount of time all on my own, but didn't realize until later that I couldn't recognize any of the sounds all these fancy letters and numbers were describing, I had a ton of trouble coming up with musical ideas, I knew a lot of theory and yet there was still a great deal of trial and error involved in my process. Do yourself a favor and learn both together, don't rush through theory without first being able to internalize the sounds. If you can't yet recognize the sound of a dominant chord you probably shouldn't be learning about altered dominants or tritone substitutions. If you aren't able to sing the mayor scale and come up with a simple melody you're not gonna benefit much from learning how to describe the Harmonic Minor Scale using intervalic notation. You get the point, take your time to learn to recognize the sounds that theory describes before moving on to more complex ideas that build on top of the ones you should know first. That's what I get out of this one at least.
  
• "Diatonic Mediant And Submediant Modulations" by Aimee Nolte Music // To fully understand this one I recommend you at least know about: Intervals, Circle of Fifths, Chord functions, Modulation. And maybe also: Secondary Dominants.
  
• "Choosing Dominant Alterations" by Aimee Nolte Music // To fully understand this one I recommend you at least know about: Intervals, Circle of Fifths, Chord functions, Modulation, Secondary Dominants. And maybe also: Chord Substitution, Tensions/Extended Chords.
  
• "Extreme jazz fusion reharmonization" by Adam Neely // A lot of increasingly complex harmonic techniques are displayed and discussed in this video, if you watch it without knowing much theory you won't be able to understand most of it, but it will expose you to a handful of really interesting sounds. I recommend watching this one regardless of your theory knowledge just for that purpose, and I highly encourage you to rewatch it many times during your Music Theory/Ear Training learning adventures, as you'll be able to understand and incorporate more and more of the concepts presented in the video, and it will serve as a decent way to measure your progress.
  

• "How To Synth" (series/playlist) by SeamlessR // Lorem ipsum something something I'll write this one later.
  
• "Synth1: tips & trixxx (disguised as a beginner's guide)" by emma essex // Most likely the best resource there is for learning Synth1. It not only covers all the controls (and quirks) of the synth but also demonstrates how to make a wide variety of classic electronic sounds with it, from harsh basses to ambient pads and percussion.