My primary musical activities are songwriting and live performance. In general, I choose one of my favourited presets (factory or third party) and then tweak it to fit the song. If there is nothing I like among those, then I will design my own patch.
You did a better job of stating basically what I would have attempted to express.
The synthesis is what I’m in it for as well. That feeling of a sound turning into something you’re really happy with is so nice.
I’ve also used presets to basically reverse engineer certain sounds too, in particular some of the various percussion sounds on the digitone.
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Pfff…
Samples, Presets or SoundDesign-ing is the same if you still use that outdated, hear a zillion times before, tempered scale.
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I was about to start a thread called something like, “Confession: I really like messing with presets,” but then saw this topic, so thought I’d just add my thoughts here.
I have come across many posts on different forums, including this one, that denigrate the use of presets for song creation. I can totally understand this, and for some reason, tend to feel the same way with anything pattern-based (looped rhythm or drum samples and pre-created sequences and arpeggiators). I think I sort of feel like a basic sound isn’t what creates the music (like I don’t give Gibson or Fender credit for a good guitar riff), but the way the sound emphasizes a certain rhythm or sequence is part of the “music.” When I say it, it sounds arbitrary, especially considering that much of the electronic music I listen to is full of this stuff, but it’s a pretty strong prejudice for me.
On the other hand, just this morning I was messing about with Arturia’s V Collection (which I love having but almost never use), and was kinda floored by the amount of programming that must have gone into, not just the creation of all these different plugins, but the enormous amount and variety of presets inside each one. I get the same feeling when using Omnisphere or the Korg Kronos. I am impressed and grateful that the creators of these instruments, who know them much better than I ever will, give me such an opportunity to explore their offerings and the extent of what these instruments are capable of doing.
There’s something even more basic to my love of presets though. Musical sound hits my ears on a daily basis in two ways–listening to someone else’s music, or creating my own sounds. For someone who loves what kinds of sounds are possible, I am so glad I don’t always have to listen to someone else sounds, or the way they decided to play them. I often much prefer to take a sound, including one already programmed as a preset, and then tweak it and play it, as just another variety of making sound come out of a speaker and hit my ears. This mere exploration, whether it results in something I might call a “song” or a “track” doesn’t matter in the moment. I am just glad I can course through the thousands of sounds I have at my fingertips, whether I am going to spend 10 minutes couch noodling on my laptop or the Ableton Move, or spend several hours in my studio.
So, my two cents: thank you to all of you who create presets for all the instruments I use, whether I bought them as part of the instrument, or paid extra for your pack of presets. Making sound wouldn’t be anything close to as fun and rewarding as it is without you!
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I love presets because they force me to make sure my melody and chords are interesting to begin with!
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Nonexistent
Back in the day, I used to care… now I just use em or, dont, and leave all the idealism/theoretical dimensions of it. Using electronic (which arent even powered by my own DIY electricity FFS) “self playing” instruments already makes me a fraud, what does it matter how much fraud was involved in making a track.
You can make brill music with presets, or absolute garbage with patches made from scratch, that aspect’s not the be-all-end-all some folks make it out to be
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Unless I’m using a rompler, I don’t think there’s a single unmodified preset in anything I’ve done, but not from an ideological standpoint. I tend to start off a track by dialing something in from scratch or from radical shaping of sampled material. Then once I have the bones down it’s quite common for me to do a little preset surfing to find rough sounds that fill an area I want to place something. When I’ve found something it’s about an equal split that I will use it as inspiration for something designed from scratch or I’ll take the sound and shape it into what I actually feel fits.
I think something that would really help my flow on reflection would be for me to go through my gear and delete all the presets that are gear showcase things, like all the silly Digitone ‘press one button and hear the sound of the universe’ things.
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At least for me its easier to develop a synth line, when i understand the patch, and can automate it. If i use something from somone else, its probably only opening the cutoff.
I use a lot of omnsiphere pads, but i tweak it and resample it, or layer it, so its again a building block for something else.
I also think that in my genere, there are some presets overused, and while they contribute to the feel - and make the genere work overall, i use them sparingly - and most artists that are good in their genere do the same.
Dub Techno has its “metal” sounding chord, without it, it wouldnt be codified as dub, but you could tell the listener that this is dub, with playing it once, and then go for other sounds. Instead of bore everyone out with the same metallic chord for the next 5 minutes.
(I love dub techno, no offence, there is good stuff around.)
Couldn’t sgree more.
There is an interesting little book by Stefan Goldmann on the topic:
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I love using presets in the arrangement/mixing phase. For example, I have a song I made from scratch with my own sounds that is 90% done, but just needs a little extra layering or one-time fx, or transitional elements etc…
I’d much rather use presets for these cases then shift gears and try and make something off the cuff.
Presets are like candy, some hand crafted and some produced with little care. The sugar gets me going but I can only eat a couple before I get too skittish to keep making music.
On synths with on-board effects, the presets are often literally bathing in effects. I’ve noticed this for the first time really with the Korg Kronos but it is all the same on more recent synths, eg the ASM Hydrasynth. It’s even true for soft synths: try Roli Equator 2 without any effects for example.
Too much reverb, too many tone layers, too much focus on the stand-aloneness of a preset to impress the potential customer. Is limited tweaking of such parameters still considered as using presets ?
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I bought mine second hand that was loaded up with patches from different sources and overwrote this. You got an example of this patch?
I don’t have a particularly good example handy but just searching YouTube for OB-6 preset 007 brought up this video (jumping you to 2:43 when he gets to 007):
Editing to add — here’s a whole playlist of preset 007 videos, including a gem of a jam from @jayhosking:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1Evwle1deUliJ6YH5FnV4LWZWKFy1g9C
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Presets are such a mixed bag.
I do generally start with things that are in-the-ballpark to get a thought realized and somewhat sequenced. I care about the song. I don’t care about ‘rules’ and such any.
But they always change, usually fairly dramatically and usually by removing bits I don’t like, like extra layers or an oscillator or too much routing.
On something like the OB-6 there are few enough of them that I can go through them and init-out the ones I know I never want to hear again. It’s also such an easy synth that making something from init is really, really straightforward.
But with something like Omnisphere or Quantum/Iridium there are so MANY of them I honestly find them nearly useless. Categories help, but geez. My Iridium Core had like 3200 of them. I’m not going through that.
I like ‘basic’ presets though. I don’t like loops; pre-sequenced stuff or ‘song in a note’ things (Omnisphere has a lot of these; Pigments too).
When I have time, I like to do sound design sessions to make my own from inits and there’s no better way to learn and synth than to do this.
There’s also no better way to finding out the ‘true’ quality of a synth without just getting down to the bare oscillators. Like the OB-6. Man, it has really good base oscillators.
And I almost always try to turn off effects before using things. I don’t think I’ve ever started with a preset’s effects and found them usable in a mix. They sound great on their own though.
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I love to Sample Presets and put them into my oldschool Samplers (Akai S950/ EMUIV6400Ultra) and filter and layer them there. Especially Pad Sounds like from the Korg Wavestation VST. Because of the fantastic transposition of both of my Samplers (Akai= Analog / EMU: Dave Rossum magic) you just sample one note an get fantastic results playing it even octaves down pitched. And the filters do their magic. So basically I treat Presets like salmples. Love it ! Whatever floats your boat ! Aye aye captian ! 
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Man this question messed with my head. The answer surprised me.
- On synths that have fixed architecture and limited modulation options, i go to town trying to make them sound unique. Never leave presets be.
- My modular rig however, has had the same, untouched patch for 4 years.
Its psychological me thinks
Well, I don’t shy away from using them at this moment. It’s less ‘personal’, but the designers of the machine know better then me how to make the device shine…for now. They usually have a lot of presets so there’s a few that are bound to make the sound, or get close to what I want. Once I get to the point where I’m more comfortable with composing, structure, and sounds I’ll surely start creating my own sounds more and more. Sometimes it’s a bit frustrating when you spend hours only to find you’ve created something that basically already exists as a preset, or doesn’t sound like you intended at all. But still, practice makes perfect, so I should keep twiddling those knobs
regularly.
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Sounds similar to a patch I made in my Super 6.