Sound Designer or Preset Jockey?

R

rofilm

Member
Hello Future Producers!

Is designing a sound, tweaking a synth patch etc. still necessary at all? Is that still the way electronic music is made? There are uncountable numbers of great presets out there. Why learning the details of the ever more and more complex synths and VSTs and why not simply looking for an existing preset? Is there any sound, which doesn´t already exist as a member of a collection of presets? Why painfully learning how all these techniques like FM/PM/wavetable/PD etc. etc. work and what sound is made from, when I´ll surely find the sound I want or need in the list of factory presets or at least here on the Internet?
Have a great day and a good time!
Rolf
 
Using entirely presets is done by quite a lot of people.

Here are some reasons why people don't use presets:
1) They enjoy designing their own sounds, because its fun and satisfying.
2) They want sounds that are unique or have their own personal twist. No two heavily processed reece basses ever turn out the same, they always turn out slightly different because there are so many permutations of parameters to control.
3) They feel ashamed of using presets (not sure why tbh but some people do)
4) They can't afford to buy presets or don't want to spend the money on them. It's a very expensive way of working if you want a specific sound every time.
 
It's also not an either or situation - I don't really have a problem using presets, even though I usually prefer doing my own. Sometimes you find a cool sound you want to use, or even base a song around a certain preset. Sometimes I'm playing with other people and don't want to waste their time noodling around endlessly building a sound. Sometimes I just wanna play.
 
A Sound Designer is a person who makes sounds by:
Synthesizing<<<<<<
Modifying<<<
Automating<<<
SAMPLING<<<<<<<
Filtering<<<
Shelving<<<
boosting<<<
Creating wavetables<<<
Creating additive partials<<<<
Increasing the amount of phase distortion or changing mod/carrier values O_____O
And modmatrixes are usually XM areas like urs zebra had.
Thor for example has a modmatrix like zebra.
I think sytrus?...maybe harmor.
Not sure if reaper did.
 
to those who want to learn something what I recommend is to not be too hard with oneself. a specially because there are things which are not INTUITIVE to guess by oneself and you cannot even make questions about things you don't recognize

there was a time I did not recognize what CLIPPING is, and how could I make a question about something i do not recognize, I thought there was a problem with my own speakers,

so the best thing that we can do on these situations is to RELAX, take a deep breath

a good idea would be to go take some lessons somewhere that can lead you to information that you may need but videos online, forums like these are also getting better every day and can lead you to good information

about sound-design the first thing you want to know about is to read the manuals and learn what those knobs can do,

when you start to recognize what you can do with a synth you start to become better listener and you can tell better how someone made a sound, and that is cool because you start to learn how to make sounds like your favorite producers, and guess how cool is that

than you may start to create TARGETS what you want to design for example I may want to make a FLUTE-SOUND

why not use presets? you can use presets there is no rule that tells not to use presets

but I may not want my FLUTE to be a 100% FLUTE,
I may want to make the envelope like a GUITAR but sound like a FLUTE, guess how cool is that? we don't know until we design it,

why I may want to do that? nothing MAGICAL, I may simply be inspired to make something with that kind of a sound,
 
if i want to save time & get ideas down ill use a similar preset, then modify or change it once the tracks nearly finished. if the sound isnt available then ill try make it from scratch
 
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