It’s funny because I’ve done sound design professionally and those gigs are really the only time that I use patch memory consistently, you’d think as a sound designer I’d have thousands of patches stored across all my gear but really I only save the most outlandish ones. Generally when I work I just get to where I’m going and can get there consistently and I can call up whatever sounds I’m looking for fairly quickly from an Init patch across any synth.
When I first started around 2004 most of the synths I picked up at the time were vintage and didn’t have patch memory and that’s what I learned on so that discipline of creating from a blank slate started then as well.
Personally I despise presets for anything else other than demoing some of what a synth is capable but I hate the idea of using someone else’s sound in my own work so coming up when I did and how I did is why I don’t necessarily need patch storage.
It’s not by preference it’s by habit I actually try to keep getting after myself to save patches and even to just sit with a synth and create tons of patches to save as if I were doing it for a gig but for myself just to have on hand but generally what I end up doing is playing, exploring and experimenting so when I’m just playing a synth I’m never in one place long enough to think to stop and save. I can’t say that it’s better or worse it’s just how I work.
In one sense I do think it’s a good thing though because it’s made me comfortable and proficient on pretty much any synth that’s in front of me but on the flip side I wonder if I’d get more done if I spent less time programming and more time writing…who knows but it’s just not how my brain wants to work
I need patch memory to be able to make music. As the topic starter, I don’t finish every project, before I start the next. As I work a lot on modulation lanes in a DAW or, if possible on a sequencer. As the tracks change, I need to modify the modulation. Not beeing able to do so, because I recorded some audio and that’s it, wouldn’t be for me.
That all isn’t just a deal breaker for a lot of synths, but for a lot of sequencers / groove boxes too. As much as I love the Elektron Sequencer, beeing restricted to 64 steps, breaks it for me. not because of the notes, I am totally fine with 16 steps most of the time, but because of the modulation. than there are those, that don’t let you modulate that granularen (MC707,Deluge, Machine+), there are some, that are not able to send Program Changes correctly (Maschine) etc.
i started to build my own sequencer, because I wanted to be able to have modulation lanes like a DAW without using mouse and keyboard to make music.
At the end, I think it highly depends on the music you make. There is so much going on in my tracks, that I am not able to do all the modulation live with knobs, like a lot of other people do. on top of that, I am not as precise in turning knobs and on point with the curve and the destination of turning, that I would be happy with the result. I fine-tune a lot here, nothing I would commit with a few audio-recordings.
I am fortunate to have synths with and without patch memory. So I use the ones with patch memory for the sounds I’d like to recall with a button press or MIDI command.
In the case of a synth that doesn’t have it, I either try to recreate the sound on a synth that does have it (eg. iMS-20 app for hardware MS-20 Mini patches) or I just record it or take a photo.
I have an Ambika and use a BCR2000 to control it. Works great.
When I change patches on the Ambika I need to push a button on the BCR2000 which interrogates the Ambika and pulls all the current CC and settings values to update the LED rings on the BCR2000 to reflect the current patch.
So - to my main point:
Why don’t manufacturers of hardware synths with no patch memory but extensive midi implementation put a function onto them that sends all current parameter values out as midi data, so it can be easily recorded into an external sequencer as automation data? Or maybe some synths do have this. It would make pseudo-patch saving by CC / midi data easier.
Or maybe if they had such extensive midi implementation they’d probably have patch storage anyway.