What's a piece of gear that will get me away from presets?

Matriarch is fun to patch spontaneously and has a basic sequencer.

Only problem is if you make something you WANT to save…

Vermona PERfourMER or Mono Lancet.

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If you don’t mind another mono why not try Erica Bassline or Norand Mono?

Apart from that the answer is always: Analog Four!!

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Harmonix app for ipad (I’m hoping) will make programming original Digitone patches more streamlined and creative. we’ll see

Record right away. Or always record while jamming so you have that glorious bit you can never recreate…

Speaking of which, I’m toying with the Dreadbox Dysmetria that I just put together. Stores 16 sequences but no patch storage:

It seems like there will always come a time to use the presets/patches/samples/sounds that you created during “sound design” phase – there are a lot of posts on here about switching between “sound design” sessions and composition / jam sessions.

But for buying things:

  • M8 starts out a blank song with blank instruments. You have to explicitly load presets/pre-made patches from disk if you choose to use them; often I find I can create new sounds from scratch which I like and can craft whole new songs without loading any presets
  • 303 / bassline clone
  • Yamaha SU-10 (dump & wipe the sample memory every time you’re done)
  • East Beast
  • Volca Modular

^ all of the above have sequencers

Also mentioning Bastl Kastle ARP

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Drambo? The fully open-ended modular setup had gotten me to build a lot of custom sounds.

Expensive Buchla Music Easel
Cheap Behringer Poly D. Both have limited sequencers.

My first thought is to train yourself to use the Init function and build sounds from scratch, buy my habits say get a small Eurorack system that will take you in new directions. My suggestion…

ALM Pamula’s Pro Workout - 8 channels of clocks, lfo’s, etc… This is the heart of all my systems and I especially like being about to set different channels to different time divisions. That allows you to create complex note and effects patterns.

Any simple sequencer - My favorite is Erica Synth Black but it is a bit big and expensive, but it is so easy to use and will do 4 channels. Bloom is smaller, cheaper, and does two channels.

You Need a voice - Easy way out is a clone of the Mutable Instruments Plaits, but the Noise Engineering Basimilus Iteritas Alia will give you a lot of sound variety and modulation inputs.

Effects - Noise Engineering Electus Versio or Strymon Skylab are my favorites. Both do delay and reverb and allow a lot of modulation inputs.

Modulation specialist - Quadrax or Batumi 2 will output 4 channels of clockable modulation. Clocked by various speeds coming from different channels of Pam and things get wild.

Output mixer - Last of all you need a mixer, and I prefer one with a headphone output. Favorite budget mixer for this is 4MS Listen Four.

Plus, you need a case to hold all of this. So, spend a couple thousand+ on the ultimate from scratch mono system, or start using the Init function on your current devices.

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Some synth wizards I learned from back in the 90s would delete all the preset banks off their new synths and start from scratch. Another method was find a preset you like and then create a new init/scratch patch and try to fully recreate it without switching back to the originals settings and mod matrix. Eventually you can hear a sound in your head and dial in a close approximation.

Different type of synthesis have very different approaches to sound creation, subtractive is probably easiest coming from a guitar pedal amp world like I did. FM, additive, west coast filter fold all have some really unique ideas and timbres. Happy explorations! :rocket:

Also, only purchase a modular system if you care more about noodling fart sounds then actually finishing songs :rofl:

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personally I love synths without patch memories. what you see is what you get. simple and fun to work with, and you know you designed the sounds completely on your own.

that said, presets are great once I’ve already got some sounds going on. it’s great to scroll through presets and use a few notes to demo the patch against the other sounds. once I hear something in the neighborhood of what I’m after, I stop and tweak it to fit best. maybe this is lazy, I don’t know… but I usually will work on my more prominent sounds from scratch and those will carry the track (indeed they’re usually what inspired me to start working on it). and then the less-important sounds get the above preset + tweaking approach.

also this doesn’t mean that I didn’t, at some point, write those preset patches on my own. just as the OP stated: clear the preset memory when you get a synth and write them all yourself.

Interesting thread. I’ve faced similar issues myself, in my case with my Hydrasynth Desktop.

The Hydra is super versatile (covers a lot of bases) and has a lot of good presets.

I found myself preset surfing a lot, which in the end became a creativity killer. I also spent a lot of time on sound design and naming and tagging presets that sound great but may or may not ever actually work within any track I make…

My solution was to treat the Hydra as if it is a modular synth where every time I turn it on I start with an init patch and build up from there. When I find something that works for the track (which isn’t difficult IME, the UI and workflow on the Hydra are almost Elektron levels of good), I sample it into my DT, reset the Hydra back to init and start again.

It’s been liberating TBH, so much so that I’m almost tempted to go down into the actual rather than VA modular rabbit hole… oh Lord, yet more GAS…

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i have a minibrute
has no patch memory (except photo), and a rudimentary sequencer or arp if you “hack” it
always fits in a mix, as its not particularly phat, and can easily be quite aggresive, but also smooth if you keep your sliders below 70%
really hands on and unique in a number of ways
also you can overdrive it internally, moog style and for some extra phatness can use the headphone out and rewire it in the audio in.
the filter is not my cupotea, but its multimode…

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303 :slight_smile:

Added bonus - any sound is easy to recreate from scratch.

If you want something a bit more versatile, then 101.

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I have a Minibrute 2S, Neutron and Bro-1 setup for just this purpose… And recently added a tape deck… Once my SQ5 gets repaired and I can route at will again I’ll be running sequences off the MB-2S to all three and tracking the results with added FX from my SQ5 direct to tape when this urge occurs!

Then likely re sample the tape track back to my Force or DAW for loop chopping / further arrangement.

Moog Grandmother ticks the boxes.

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Nope, it won’t work. You won’t build a proper system with the first purchases, you will get stuff you don’t need, you will think you need stuff you don’t need, it will be a while until you get used to what exactly you want out of the Eurorack and try/test enough modules to know what gels with you or not.

Only get into Eurorack if you want to embark on this journey, buying/selling/trading modules for a while until it shapes into an instrument you like and know. It will definitely not help you with the issue you have in the thread :joy:

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Setting aside all of the actually relevant context like what kinds of music you want to make, what types of synthesis you are into, your budget, etc:

An SH101 (or any of the various newer Roland versions of the same, like an SH01) is a nice, great sounding and fairly versatile (mono)synth that really doesn’t need presets or patch storage because all your parameters are right there.

That would be a fun purchase assuming you are intending to nudge your habits with a hardware solution!

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eurorack. Having to patch individual modules from scratch really got me away from presets. You can build your own with a case, power supply and few modules or buy a small preassembled one like the Erica Synths Techno system or Intellijel Cascadia. Plus I find it therapeutic and helps me master synthesis.

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Just use the digitone and dont save any patches.
I dont save my digitone patches, mostly because I can never remember how to do it.

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