So many songs are based on a synth preset and add very little on top of it in the end. A good example is LFO’s LFO. Not only the sound but the notes in the chord come from the same preset. They added drums, bass, the bleep and the speech on top and .. that’s the song. When I get a new, old synth that I’m not familiar with my favourite thing is to find all the sounds I’ve heard in songs by other musicians. I got a laugh when encountering the very same sound that made 808 State’s In Yer Face distinctive while browsing through Roland D-550’s Presets. Jarre also has used many presets in various synths.

I subscribe to this. Nerds might have fun noodling around with synthesizers. But I claim on the side of music listeners you would rarely find a person waiting for any never-heard-before sound. Also, I have serious doubts that one will even design a sound that is not already covered by at least some of the well known flagship synths like Zenology. It's like trying to reinvent the wheel. And don't get me wrong - I'm not a pro and I also used to love tweaking synths myself. But I had to face that by accident and gladly it stopped me from wasting even more time.

@@6079-smithw oh we DO have fun making strange bleep bloops lol. Admittedly most of them aren’t usable in popular genres but great for ambient, psytrance, soundtrack stuff etc. Lots of new sounds left to be made! It’s easier to wind up in unique places with modular synths and certain guitar pedals 👾

So true! I even think that the idea of having to 'design' your very own sound in order to produce appealing music was spread by amateurs only. Browsing Gearslutz back in the days, I frequently red posts along the lines "I never use presets, I always start with init patches". The authors were cheered for it. But whenever I happened to take a closer look at an authors profile it became obvious that he is not a professional. Maybe all that stems from a misconception of what Sound Design is by most practical means: Creating follies for making film soundtracks. Therefore you'd really be challenged to 'design' sounds by choosing the most appropriate material and think of ways to record and edit it in order to make audible what's seen on screen (like frying bacon to fake the sound of rain).

But the same people in EDM want the same kick & snare for their banger. But vomit at preset users 😅 Guitarist here also, hence I don’t care what I use or when either. I agree, it’s amusing to watch. Fwiw, guitarists are equally anal about tubes and cones blah blah. I bought a first release Kemper. Never humping a dusty ass cab around again.🎉

I'm also a guitarist, although since my nocturnal bat-cave has to run silently, I'm stuck with amp-sims (but I digress). I think what is being described here is a universal phenomena: the learning process. Everyone who enjoys music and wants to participate in it will start out wanting to capture the sound of their heroes (guitar heroes or electronica-champs). Just as every visual artist uses references to hone their hand at their craft, so do are the disciplines of guitar tone-dialing or sound-design. Unfortunately, we are inundated with a world where people want instant satisfaction. Now that we are on the brink of an "AI" age (which is not really "AI" at all), we have more and more short-attention-span newbs who never grow past the beginner stage. No, it is not some sin to use presets. Orchestral music composition is a lot like being a champion of existing presets (although a lot more nuanced in scope). However, I would argue that sometimes knowing how to make basic sound recipes can give you results that are quicker if one starts form scratch (initialized patch) than scrolling through an endless library of presets in an attempt to craft the music in your head AND somehow sound like yourself. Most honest preset users end up mangling the preset beyond recognition anyways, so this point may be moot.

…. wait, adding a snippet of JMJ video, saying “here is what my friend JMJ is saying about presets …..” :)

Before it was stupid debate analog vs digital, then DAW vs standalone, now re-spin of preset/sampling vs. design etc. Not your video, which is inspirational and not “we all jump now to splice or smthg”. In fact, technology achieved new heights, I only wish all synths designers have Polybrute like multi-instantiated presets with visual in VST effortless to understand preset better and automate with purpose.

Good analogy

Very wise! I do know the ins and outs of creating patches and even so, many synths are full of incredible sounds that I might not have though of on my own. The people designing them absolutely know what they’re doing, and are creating them with the hopes that they’ll be used and inspire music 🎶

I don’t know. The video isn’t out yet ;)

Yes, yes it is. 😉

Yes, yes it is. Get in there and mess with the guts ‘til it sounds like an alien invasion.

Is buying a 303 like buying a preset? :O

That’s exactly the spirit. A synth isn’t the end product. I’d compare it to a lathe, a CNC cutter, or a 3D printer. Each timbre/ preset is a separate instrument (not necessarily mimicking a counterpart in the domain of classical instruments)

No need for apologies - this video is not anti preset :)

@@JamesonNathanJones thanks… was hoping I wouldn’t get banned :) I guess I always thought of presets as colors of paint… i pick a blue I like and then alter it for my painting. Btw, it’s a great topic for conversation and applies to more than music… I read a good bit and when reading fantasy I see some people hate fantasy’s tropes and others almost feel comforted by them. I guess I am somewhere lost in the middle. I just want my art or literature to make me feel something… if it invokes the response that is what I am looking for. Sorry for rambling on, lol…

Largely agree here. I think it also depends on the kind of music you’re making - if it relies more heavily on the arrangement of sounds or the sounds themselves. Something like drone ambient is going to rely almost solely on sound design, so I feel like some time should be spent there attempting to do something personal.

@@JamesonNathanJones very true! The line of composition/arrangement/sound design/performance is more blurred than ever because of the power of music making tools, which I think can be pretty nifty!

@@bricelory9534 Agreed! I love combining all of it!

I’m really excited to see how I feel about it… 😂

If winning Grammy awards is your measure of achievement as an artist I kinda feel sorry for you, award shows are just an industry circle-jerk

And then they get bored listening to the same old stuff 😂

Because of the dependency between the patch and the playing technique, that could be why reverse engineering patches is useful: you end up rebuilding the patch to work with your technique.

You could also see it as a collaboration between you and the sound designer. I'm pretty sure that i often find uses for sonuds that the designers never intended.

@@ArmageddonPunk I'm not that creative, but I do like the idea of it. :D

You never really create the sounds. you only manipulate the available sounds into something different.

It's wonky and it's for the SY-77, but I found the following pretty good from the perspective of describing what sorts of sounds you can get out of various operator stacks at various frequency ratios. Herbert Janßen: SY Programming.

Absolutely

There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, orchestral music (which I love) is kind of like that mindset.

Same. If the presets are already there, then I don't see what the problem is

And that's how professional musicians work. The advice to start with an init patch is spread by amateurs in internet forums.

Thank you!

You bring up a great point. I got the Korg Wavestate and it's just insanely complex and I think the only way I can learn that is to use the presets and examine them. Whereas my Roland SH-4d is a pure joy of an initialized tone dream machine.

The downside of the Osmose is that everyone is going to be using that deduk preset, and it's going to be everywhere.

@@mickeythompson9537 like how pianos and guitars and violins and clarinets are everywhere? Or hoe sawtooth wave sounds are everywhere? I get your meaning, but people are still figuring out the instrument, and I have yet to hear anyone running Osmose through effects, and only Expressive E's demos really tried to set the Osmose in musical settings. That is to say, the Osmose really blends in well to other settings, and even if it somehow becomes a ubiquitous instrument (it won't, I think), it'll likely feel like it belongs in the same way as piano, guitar, or even analog super saw pads. I think if we grow tired of the Osmose's dudek it's because people aren't being creative about it, but that's true of any sound or instrument. I personally am often ambivalent to the sound of saxophone, but even so there are times when it is used in a way I absolutely love, and it is exciting. I do think the Osmose has enough expressive range even in one preset to have that sort of variety: there'll be lazy ways to use it and fascinating ways to use it, like how there are ways to play piano that feel absolutely tired, cliche, and pastiche these days, but it's far from all it can do. Since it has like 500 presets, people are bound to explore more of those even without diving into the Eagenmatrix. And honestly, I'm okay if super saw swells take a back seat to something else for a while.

Lots of merit to both approaches, and absolutely agree that when working on a tight deadline, readymade tools are extremely beneficial and often necessary. However, there are instances when working on my own projects that the act of sound design itself has sparked the idea for a piece. It can be approached from either direction I think.

I absolutely love your presets for virus ti. thank you for your work!

@@tedandersen5403 Thank yo !! I'm pleased to hear that !

Definitely

Yes, thank you! Hoping to release it later this year :)

Thanks, I had the same question.

That’s exactly how I approach sound design and patch making. Good thoughts 👍

I agree, and it really depends on the track in terms of how to approach it. I typically separate out the sound design so I have a pool of my own sounds to choose from when it comes time to develop an idea. The comparison that many have made to acoustic instruments doesn’t hold for me because acoustic instruments aren’t designed to be sound design tools. They are built with inherent mechanical limitations, so the player has to conform to what the instrument can do and learn to get the most out of it. With a synth, getting the most out of it requires some knowledge of sound design.

@@JamesonNathanJones thanks for your time replying! And I can see what you're saying with the acoustic instruments.

I was referring to using multiple mono sources in a layered approach to provide more clarity in the imaging of a full mix. Helps maintain more control during the mixing process and can actually lead to a “wider” sounding image. :)

@@JamesonNathanJones yeah, but what’s the difference from that and turning down the stereo width?

Still looking the “Bongos Bonanza” setting on my upright piano

not quite, it's just that you have to "complete" their tone with a bunch of pedals and that's where your "presets" go wild.

🙏🙏

I had that same thought about guitar! If presets are cheating, then we're not allowed to use a les paul through a Vox AC30 cause that's Jimmy Page's tone. Or a strat through a plexi (Hendrix) or a martin D-28 (Lennon). What a limiting world that would be 😮

My two cents: the more acoustic a physical instrument is, the less concerned you can be with sound design (unless you are doing some extreme sample mangling). However, the more sample mangling you do, the less the music is about the performance (an art by itself). The electric guitar is probably the closest instrument to being somewhere right in between a synthesizer and an orchestral instrument. The signal of an electric guitar can be filtered/subtracted, distorted beautifully, wah-wah funkiness, ambient with volume swells (almost like a synth pad in post rock like Jakob), and also played with so many variations on clean sounds (whether you use the single coils for bell like chimes, or the humbuckers for a warm jazz tone). The electric guitar is not quite the shapeshifter as a synth, although it is getting close (there even exist synth pedals for it that digitally make it sound like a basic synth tone). However, if a sound is distinctly a synth tone, then it is as complex and customizable as you make it. Sure there are a wealth of staple synth sounds: trance plucks, funky basses, sawtooth leads with mod-wheel vibrato, dirty electro square basses, supersaw pads, dubstep growls, the FM bell, the tb-303 acid line. if you only need these basic General-MIDI staples, then you might only need a rompler and not a synth. I've heard wonderful music made by keyboardists who use romplers, and no one cared that the tones could be lightly modified presets because it was about the arrangement and pianistic performance, not the sounds themselves. But on the other hand, if you are the kind of producer that writes EDM, then you are a connoisseur of (for instance) how many different kinds of TB-303 lines there are. You are such a connoisseur that one day you have a brilliant idea to write a TB-303 style line with a wavetable synth instead of the typical Roland knockoffs and you discover a neat variation. Yeah, its an acid-line, but it morphs into something different. You are a chef of a simple idea and the EDM world is better because of it. Therefore, it's all about the goals. Just remember that while creativity is often the strongest with limitations, there is also such a thing as raising the bar on specific genres.

@@brianbergmusic5288 Glad you brought up limitations and flexibility. The near infinite flexibility you have now with electronic music is a strength and a weakness. Same with limitations. They can hinder you or inspire you to be creative. I like how presets give me the best of both worlds. I can take them, modify them, or leave them and make my own. There’s no point in carrying a banner for one method or the other unless it just suits you better personally.

@@JayM928 100%

GREAT stuff! 👍

That’s true in a sense, but I don’t think using acoustic instruments is exactly a one to one comparison. Synthesizers and sound design tools are typically made to create highly variable, moldable sounds. Acoustic instruments have inherent limitations in that regard, so the player has to learn how to conform to what it does best. Neither is better or worse, but they are made with different intentions I think.

@@JamesonNathanJones Of course, we have different expectations from instruments that are highly variable, and I agree. I am not saying I go with ONLY presets. I'm always tweaking little things, like envelopes and filters and modulations to make it 'my own', and to serve the musical passage better. I'm just saying that, now that I have Arturia's synth emulations, and Omnisphere, and Pigments, and Diva, and Zebra, and Vital, and Massive X, and and and (lol), and.... a zillion 'pad makers', I don't feel really guilty for starting with a preset. I don't often start with INIT, though!

Remember, listeners don’t care. Like in any way whatsoever! They just like music. Have fun and they will 👍

@@vaiman7777 thanks, you are right