sound design vs preset tweakers

[Ichooselife]

i’m a preset tweaker
and occasionally make my own very basic presets

which are you and what do you think are the pros and cons of both cheers

[Jackjackdaw]

Definitely both. Sound design is an art form in itself but I’m not going to spend ages crafting a sound from scratch if a preset is 90% of the way there.

[selig]

Same (both). I have even done sound design for the FSB 6.5, Friction, Complex-1, and the ART.
And you forgot the third option: pure presets/no tweaking. Just yesterday I was scrolling patches and found one that was just perfect ‘as is’ for the song I was working on. There’s no reason to re-invent the wheel, and I will always tilt towards putting the song above the sound.
That said, for me the primary attraction of ground up sound design is it OFTEN results in a song emerging from the sound design process. Very often, in fact.

The pros of ‘rolling your own’ are bespoke patches no one else (likely) uses, and that fit your track to a ‘T’. The cons can be the time involved, especially if it distracts me from the song itself.
The pros of ‘patch tweaking’ are speed, the cons are possibly compromising the sound for speed or the ‘risk’ of sounding like someone else(!).

None of the approaches are going to get you in trouble, even using straight up presets IMO. I’ve heard Prince songs use D-50 presets (on LoveSexy IIRC), Michael Jacksons million selling Thriller used a Synclavier preset (Phased Gong) for the intro to Beat It, and so on.

And one can argue it’s not a big step from tweaking to building from scratch, since you need to understand at least the basics of a patch in order to even find the bits you want to change. Sometimes it’s easier to build from scratch than to edit someone else’s work (which first requires you to understand the ‘hows and whys’ of the patch before you can figure out how to get what you want). It’s the same reason I prefer to start a mix from scratch rather than try to edit someone else’s mix!

[Rising Night Wave]

why do not you do a poll?

i am a tweaker.

[Ichooselife]

why do not you do a poll?

i am a tweaker.

how

[robussc]

I've done both, but lean heavily into tweaking as life is short and presets are plentiful. My most frequent tweak is to the filter and the ADSR as the general characteristics of the sound are close enough that just adjusting those can do the necessary. I do enjoy cooking up a sound with Monotone though as that's simple enough to be enjoyable and not turn into a job

[crimsonwarlock]

Just today, I went through a stack of old paper while clearing out old archives, and I found a few old DX7 datasheets with patches. Unfortunately, one patch of my own that I would like to recover, a PPG Bass sound, I didn't find

I've always used existing patches as-is, sometimes tweaked existing patches, and also have done a lot of patches from the ground up, including that DX7 patch for a PPG Bass. It has been like that for me when I used hardware synths back then, and it is still like that now with softsynths.

Also, when I began using synthesizers, there were no presets My first real synthesizer was a one-of-a-kind that I built myself, and obviously, I had to do all sound design on that one from the ground up.

[Rising Night Wave]

why do not you do a poll?

i am a tweaker.

how

when you create a new thread in a forum... under the filed where you enter the text... you have three tabs: "Options", "Attachments" and ""Poll creation". select 3rd - poll creation.

[SebAudio]

Same (both). I have even done sound design for the FSB 6.5, Friction, Complex-1, and the ART.
And you forgot the third option: pure presets/no tweaking. Just yesterday I was scrolling patches and found one that was just perfect ‘as is’ for the song I was working on. There’s no reason to re-invent the wheel, and I will always tilt towards putting the song above the sound.
That said, for me the primary attraction of ground up sound design is it OFTEN results in a song emerging from the sound design process. Very often, in fact.!

And the case where a preset just make your « near finished » track to the next level ! Yes Selig your presets for Complex-1 have made some of my tracks far better than without ! I’m glad I can say thank you !

[joeyluck]

how

when you create a new thread in a forum... under the filed where you enter the text... you have three tabs: "Options", "Attachments" and ""Poll creation". select 3rd - poll creation.

I went ahead and made a poll for this thread. Let me know if it is to your liking

[Ichooselife]

when you create a new thread in a forum... under the filed where you enter the text... you have three tabs: "Options", "Attachments" and ""Poll creation". select 3rd - poll creation.

I went ahead and made a poll for this thread. Let me know if it is to your liking

yeah it’s safe mate thanks

[jam-s]

There's also the "mashing the RND button until something nice comes out" "workflow".

[Chizmata]

i create almost everything from scratch, aside from some drum samples

[Popey]

I do a bit of both.

Create patches when not feeling like working on a song and usually my patch creation sessions will create a new song idea themselves.

I do not always recreate the wheel though and a lot of the times I will tweak either one of my own patches or a patch that came with a synth or from another sound designers pack.

It is only very occasionally I will use someone else's patch as it is and I usually find myself changing fx, wave tables, envelopes, lfo's to put my unique flavour to it.

[moneykube]

all three options depending on the day

[thedjjudah]

I'd say I design my own patches about 95% of the time, but sometimes I'll just tweak a preset

[dakta]

I like presets, whilst I can generally get what I want from tweaking having a mash through loads of presets, especially on a new synth generally sparks a song idea

In fact I've noticed that, I generally get the song ideas I stick with when playing with the presets of an unfamiliar device. A lot of my projects seem to stem from that initial pratting about with something new. I believe it to be something to do with you can't be stuck in a rut until you've worn a rut so you are technically free of anything that might bias or limit free creation. For a wee while.

In fact, with that in mind, and the number of available RE's available to me for purchase dwindling, I struggle to create patches from scratch but can generally tweak to hearts content so my mind is shifting to looking for refills that accompany/supplement the patches for existing rack extensions because it might give me a bit more inspiration/stuff to tweak with. If RE developers wanted to sort of keep their products going, give a new lease of life without doing a lot of coding that's a way I'd certainly entertain.

I don't feel guilty about it because how many times do you find some y name did the sound design work for songs by x artist, it'd be nice to be everything, and feel free to have a go but its not entirely realistic

[chimp_spanner]

More presets than tweaking these days. My time to write is limited, and deadlines are often tight. Time spent making a sound from scratch is time NOT spent writing music (with the exception being sound design cues). One thing that I need to get into the habit of doing is using my down-time, or more specifically time when I'm struggling to write music, to curate presets and build a palette of sounds or a sonic vocabulary I can draw on when I DO feel like writing. I feel this would be as useful/satisfying as designing and saving my own presets.

[TritoneAddiction]

I do a bit of all three. I used to use patches as they were a lot more in the past. But over time it changed more to tweaking patches. And nowadays I for the most part rely on my own patches.

[Ichooselife]

More presets than tweaking these days. My time to write is limited, and deadlines are often tight. Time spent making a sound from scratch is time NOT spent writing music (with the exception being sound design cues). One thing that I need to get into the habit of doing is using my down-time, or more specifically time when I'm struggling to write music, to curate presets and build a palette of sounds or a sonic vocabulary I can draw on when I DO feel like writing. I feel this would be as useful/satisfying as designing and saving my own presets.

yeah 100% that is a good idea someone else told me you should spend time finding out all your fav presets

[TritoneAddiction]

More presets than tweaking these days. My time to write is limited, and deadlines are often tight. Time spent making a sound from scratch is time NOT spent writing music (with the exception being sound design cues). One thing that I need to get into the habit of doing is using my down-time, or more specifically time when I'm struggling to write music, to curate presets and build a palette of sounds or a sonic vocabulary I can draw on when I DO feel like writing. I feel this would be as useful/satisfying as designing and saving my own presets.

yeah 100% that is a good idea someone else told me you should spend time finding out all your fav presets

I've done something similar. I've created my little patch library of my own patches over the last 2 years or so. Sure it takes time to dive into a synth and spend time creating new patches. But when it's time to actually write music everything goes so much quicker when every patch you go through has been created specifically to match your own taste. It's very rare I create new sounds from scratch while I'm in song writing mode. But to have hundreds of patches all approved by you really helps when it's time to write music.
I also find patch making a good way to stay creative while taking a break from churning out songs.

[Ichooselife]

yeah 100% that is a good idea someone else told me you should spend time finding out all your fav presets

I've done something similar. I've created my little patch library of my own patches over the last 2 years or so. Sure it takes time to dive into a synth and spend time creating new patches. But when it's time to actually write music everything goes so much quicker when every patch you go through has been created specifically to match your own taste. It's very rare I create new sounds from scratch while I'm in song writing mode. But to have hundreds of patches all approved by you really helps when it's time to write music.
I also find patch making a good way to stay creative while taking a break from churning out songs.

i can never create patches on the level of sounds divine or someone like that to be honest

luftrum decent and a lot of those guys are way better the only patches i can do are simple ones , i like to tweak and put filters i can do a. good poly lead and ok pads but i such at complex pads or basses and it takes a lot of time

but then again so does preset surfing id rather just have a small set of great sounds that i could tweak but preset buying is so hit and miss , most people that sell presets are not much better than you could make yourself and some are just exceptional , you can tell sound design rather than music making is what they have spent there time on

[Ichooselife]

yeah 100% that is a good idea someone else told me you should spend time finding out all your fav presets

I've done something similar. I've created my little patch library of my own patches over the last 2 years or so. Sure it takes time to dive into a synth and spend time creating new patches. But when it's time to actually write music everything goes so much quicker when every patch you go through has been created specifically to match your own taste. It's very rare I create new sounds from scratch while I'm in song writing mode. But to have hundreds of patches all approved by you really helps when it's time to write music.
I also find patch making a good way to stay creative while taking a break from churning out songs.

i can never create patches on the level of sounds divine or someone like that to be honest

luftrums decent and a lot of those guys are way better than me , the only patches i can do are simple ones , i like to tweak and put filters on presets and i can do a good poly lead and ok pads but i suck at complex pads or basses and it takes a lot of time

but then again so does preset surfing id rather just have a small set of great sounds that i could tweak but preset buying is so hit and miss , most people that sell presets are not much better than you could make yourself and some are just exceptional , you can tell sound design rather than music making is what they have spent there time on, so find some good preset designers ( few and far between ) and copy them or tweak them

[Ichooselife]

https://sonicunderworld.com/store/


https://soundsdivine.com/



https://www.luftrum.com/


these guys are exceptional ones i can think of you would have to go out of reason to find designers like these and i couldn’t compete saying that sometimes you just need simple sounds

[mcatalao]

https://sonicunderworld.com/store/


https://soundsdivine.com/



https://www.luftrum.com/


these guys are exceptional ones i can think of you would have to go out of reason to find designers like these and i couldn’t compete saying that sometimes you just need simple sounds

You know what the problem is, until 10 years ago or so you had New Atlantis Audio, Jiggry Pokery, GSX audio, and a lot of other designers doing lots of patches for reason.

Then the Rack extensions came along, and instead of doing patches for Reason echosystem, they had do do patches for px7, or patches for revival or patches for this and that, and alot of times, the re's came with 4000 patches along. I gues the search for refills started to fade (i stopped buying because at some point i had so much stuff that i didn't need to get more stuff, and thens started to learn to create my own patches). But something that was somewhat of a vibrand patch market until reason 6 or 7 faded away really quickly. It's a pitty, is still use sounds from Jiggery Pokery, Nucleus Soundlab, Adam Fielding, Tom pritchard, and so on...