You hit the nail on the head - patch days and production days.
It just all depends. If I’m in the mood for learning, I just start fooling around from an initialized patch. With no goal in mind, I try to figure out how all the things work (LFOs, modulations, etc).
Then I pick a random preset, and because I spent some time learning to use the synth, I tweak the preset until I come up with something I like.
But what I’m learning is I can start with just a INIT saw tooth and stack a bunch of FX on the top of it and make some compelling sounds for myself. When the FX become a part of the sound design, anything is possible and it doesn’t matter where the base material comes from.
INIT all the way. I know what I want and I know how to make it. It annoys me that so many synths will have 2 or 3 thousand presets. Every Virus TI patch begins with a default wave and many of the other synths I use don’t have memory so it’s 2nd nature to just build something as I need it.
I don’t really have anything against presets, but I find that I can get to “that sound” faster on my own from an init patch rather than scrolling through thousands of presets in order to find the 4 that are 80% of the way there, all in different ways, and then compare them to death before finally tweaking one of them to get to the sound I wanted. Its the same with presets I’ve created. I have one clap sound I really enjoy that I created on my A4 and it’s the only sound that lives in my sound pool, I just p-lock any other radical changes I want to happen. The only other presets I have saved on it are just some sounds I made when I first got the device as more of a learning tool when figuring out it’s capabilities.
For some ultra cliché sounds I’ll still start on a preset though for further tweakage. No sense in recreating my own hoover-esque sound when nearly every softsynth comes with a pretty close recreation of the sound that I can fine tune to my liking.
I like random buttons on synths for coming up with weird sound effects though. Kind of a preset in a way since I didn’t set every parameter myself.
I find patch-scrolling extremely mind numbing and killing my creative proces. So I mostly dial something up from an init or take a patch I very recently made and saved.
I usually start from init, although I sometimes tweak the patch, that just happens to be loaded and continue from there. Sometimes, when I already have some stuff going and I need a bassline, lead or whatever, I go to a synth and it has a patch loaded from a program change that was sent earlier or my AK has still the kit loaded from the pattern I used before on something else. Initializing it might destroy the mood, so I quickly tweak that patch which might influence what I’m working on.
I’m much faster starting from init anyway. It’s what I’m used to.
Looking for a patch that I’d want to use would take ages for me.
For experimenting and creating heavily modulated tones, I find starting from an initialized patch much easier. That way I know what’s doing what.
If I’m just trying to finish a song, I’ll preset-surf, especially on deep-menu-dive synths, and tweak it a bit, turn off FX, mess with the envelopes.
Plus I’m getting old, and there are plenty of better sound designers than me. Randomizers are a nice touch nowadays. Love them, especially if they are per block.
Used to go init for years, even deleted all the soundbanks from my synths.
Presets that meet my taste are generally hard to find (Repro 5 has the best factory presets in that regard)
I lately enjoy having presets as starting point a lot though with Komplete 13 and also with the MC101. I got caught up in sound design too often, which is fun in its own right, but I don’t have the time for that these days I prefer making tracks.
Still there is something magical about preset-less synths, like modulars, semimodulars etc.
I never use presets and never save my sounds. Creating new sounds from scratch is a fundamental part of my pleasure of playing synthesizers. The gear I love the most is eurorack stuff: no presets, no sound saving. Every day a new journey in sound.
Never listened a preset on Elektron gear: are not my sounds!!!
Off course, I can do it because music is my hobby. A real pro, who play live, needs to save and recall his sounds.
Presets are a good source of knowledge, but i start from INIT 99% of the time.
The One percent left is for unique and micro events.
Most of the time, my best patches come from “failure” :
Let’s say i want to make a particular bass sound, loosing myself in tweaking, i end up creating a very singular pad that i may never had the idea to make.
That’s one of the things i like the most in any creative process :
The infamous “Happy Accident”.
I’m happy to achieve something i was aiming to complete, but the “Happy Accident” always feel like finding a treasure.
I have so little time to play that presets are gold to me as is or to tweak in the DN. Why I purchase sound packs, I greatly appreciate people taking the time to create sound for me to work with.
Explore the presets and dissect what you find interesting. The virus is an amazing sculpting tool.
I used to get lost in sound design by evolving patches from lead to bass to fix to pad.
Listen and experiment, over time you get a feel for “how things are done” and it becomes easier to make a certain sound.
To topic: Init patch. If I use a preset it’s not my creation and someone else might have or will use it too. Sometimes I tear patches apart and only keep one aspect.
I’m not very good at sound design, but I, too, am finding the answer is “depends on the synth”
On the Roland MC-101, I just try some presets until I get tired of scrolling and just settle on one. There’s over 3000 presets for it.
On the Moog Matriarch, there’s really no preset or init patch. I’m still exploring what sounds can come out of it, so it’ll be a while before I make up my mind which sounds I want to incorporate into a production.
Lyra-8 is an even more exploratory synth, in that when I turn it on, I’m looking more to explore what noises it can do than trying to dial up a specific sound.
I wonder, to all the folks saying they start from init, is it really just about the joy of tweaking the synthesizer and crafting a sound? More than the actual making of music or writing a song?
Building a patch from init every time feels like more of a technical endeavor to me. I do that if I want to learn about the synthesizer, but after getting to know her, it’s way easier to just find a preset that’s close and use the knowledge to dial it back to what’s it supposed to be.
I’m just curious how much time you guys have for making music?
As a songwriter/composer, my life relies on templates, organization, presets and libraries. If I spent all my time building everything from scratch everytime, it would really eat into the time spent on writing. And I’m working full time at it. That’s a loss of income.
Is the patch building more of a hobby?
Really curious here, this just makes me feel like everyone has more free time than me, I’m jealous.
I do a lot of this as well with all my synths, whether they have presets per se or not. The Moog Subharmonicon, for example, I start with a “preset” and set the intervals to something I’m feeling that particular day, then start tweaking and turning knobs, improvising in general. Or with the Peak, I’ve started a whole lot of songs by going through presets and just playing/toying around with them.
I find this is a good way for me to make music, since I spent 2009-2018 basically waiting for inspiration to happen. Turns out, I feel inspired more easily when I actually PLAY my instruments and not wait for an awesome idea to enter my mind out of nowhere.
The only downside, although I wouldn’t call it that, there is to this kinda process is that the songs I write tend to be all over the place stylistically. I don’t mind that either though.
For some, the sound comes first and the composition is a secondary product of the sound design Just how you set your priorities.
For me a reason to start from scratch might be, that I have a specific sound for the track in mind, and there is no preset that comes close, or that I’m way faster making the sound from init myself, than scrolling through presets in order to find something in the ballpark. Scrolling presets can be really tiresome. Some sounds are simple to dial in, or I just did them so often, that I know exactly how to achieve them.
Using presets can also feel like using pre-made samples… like someone else did it for you, and it doesn’t feel that personal due to that. For a while, I even didn’t like to use one shots, but rather make my own drums with synths. But that was mostly part of my learning synthesis journey.
Anyway many reasons to start from scratch.
The less free time I have, the more I value presets and good samples. My main focus is still making tracks after all. But many people just want to turn knobs and make funky noises, and that’s totally cool
Both. I make music, and I make the sounds. Because I like doing that. I like writing tunes, I like tweaking synths. Both the same.
Sure I could scroll through presets and then tweak them to my taste, Or I could just do it myself. I prefer the latter. It gives me my sound. Not someone elses.
It doesnt matter to me how long the process takes. I dont have any deadlines. I dont make a living from music (I do get some income from it) but the main focus is making music just for the enjoyment of it.
I prefer making tracks.