A burning question

Sound Explorers Corner Free speech
#21

I barely ever create patches from scratch. I’m more interested in making music (as in composing) than in making patches, so I only occasionally sit down and build from scratch to learn.

What I look for in a synth is a mix of capabilities and ready-to-use stuff. I fall in love with the bells and whistles, but if I can’t find close-to-usable patches, I probably won’t use the thing. (This I learned after buying too many synth plugins…)

So, my workflow is having a rough idea what I want - like do I want it to play fast notes… maybe a preset tagged as plugged will do…? So I go through and try to find something. Either I find something close or better. Then I tweak. Effects, cutoff, envelope settings. How much drive? What kind? Does it bounce or does it sound flat?

I will then likely approximate something but it’s a bit hit-and-miss, limited by what I can do.

Since I divide my time between making electronic music and the guitar and what not, I don’t really find the time to focus only on synths. But for example with guitar it was the same for a long time - I would often use presets, then learn to tweak. These days I often start with an amp and build from there. But for the most part, a guitar signal chain is easier to grasp than making all kinds of synth sounds. Still, it took me years to go there.

(Also, trying to find learning material for synths is… bad. Not what the controls do. But how to make patches, patching strategies, how to achieve certain sounds…)

To give two examples… One of the last synths I tried was Minimal Audio’s Current. Endless marketing, can do this, can do that, they support it with lots of this and that… so I did the trial. I go through preset after preset and hear nothing I like, nothing I can use. Too fiddly, too atonal, nothing simple and straight, too much showcase stuff… so they certainly didn’t make that sale.

On the other hand, I have Reveal Sound Spire. It’s not the most complex synth, but I recently use it a lot because it has a damn good factory library. It loads presets fast, so I can cycle through sounds quick. Tweak the two envelopes, play around with the effects - and I hear what I had in mind. I’m not sure I even touched the oscillators as of yet. I do know my way through a lot of the other parameters, though.

Similar things can be said about SynthMaster, a little less about Pigments (too many over-the-top presets, very heavy on effects). I also like browsing through the Arturia presets with Analog Lab, even though its usability is abhorrent (loads for ages, getting to edit presets is finicky, each session I have to reopen edit mode…). But for browsing the catalog it’s good enough.

When I sit down to make a patch, I often start making something on Pigments or pick a synth and try to learn it. I love modular synths like Voltage and stuff like Reaktor, but I don’t have the time very often…

#22

I was then writing educational programs in C and LISP.

I always smile when I read LISP. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#23

Haha, certainly. I never imagined listening myself all day to Trap music after hating the original gangster rap wave of the early 2000s with a passion. :laughing:

#24

Mostly I’m a tweaker of existing patches. I find something that approximates the sound in my head and mod it. I understand the basics of synthesis because I’m old enough to remember the classic gear being current gear and playing with them in shops (ah remember those things? Actual shops?), but some of the conversations that go on in eg Pigments threads may as well be in Chinese for me. So yeah I’m definitely more of a tweaker than someone who starts always from scratch.

2 Likes
#25

I remember spending many lunchtimes in Rose Morris (Denmark St, London) playing synths I could never afford…many of which are now plugins :slight_smile:

#26

I really like to make people smile DerKastellan! I’m often mischievous or teasing.

I presume it’s close to Slip. Or maybe lisp has another meaning.

#27

No, it’s just Lisp is my kind of Scheme. :wink:

1 Like
#28

Scheme was not available when I programmed in LISP. Then I switched to Prolog (acronym for programming in logic).

#29

Our nearest ‘decent’ music shops were a fair way from here, Birmingham mainly, but yes i remember jumping on the train to Brum to go to Oasis and then Vinyl Dreams to see what weird clothes and interesting import records they had… then off to Snow Hill to Musical Exchanges to lust after the latest, and HIGHLY unaffordable (at least to us poor teenage kids) synths etc, before the management got fed up with us and kicked us out as they knew we had no money. :astonished::rofl::rofl:
It was a different story a few years later when i turned up with a pocket full of cash though! :astonished::astonished:

1 Like
#30

@Funtmaster I just wanted to say thanks for your patches! They’re really good, so good in fact that I’ve featured them on a couple of occasions in my weekly column on Gearnews.com, every Wednesday, where I feature sounds, samples, presets and patches for both hardware and software synths!

By the looks of it, I’ll be highlighting Vol.4 of your Pigments collection and Vol.2 of the JUP-8000 V this week! :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
#31

No straight answer here. Depends on the job (track/piece). I work often with FPO (For Position Only): for example, I think a pad would work really well in this section so I grab a ready-made patch that closely ressemble what I envisage for the final piece. Once the arrangement is done, I then work on the sound and this could be tweaking the patch or re-creating something from scratch.

Pretty sure this is not very helpful for you, keep doing what you are doing :ok_hand:

1 Like
#32

It’s all helpful. I am starting to realise that people approach the use of patches in varied ways from, “straight out of the box” to “tweaking” to “starting from scratch”.

In addition to that, I thinks its fair to say that most people would be looking for a variety of sounds in a collection and not just “64 Pads” for example.

And thanks for the encouragement :wink:

1 Like
#33

WOW!

Thats amazing. Thank you very much. It is much appreciated.

As you may have worked out, I dont make them for the money. However, I thought it was important to attach some value to them and it’s heartening to see I have had several “coffees” to date. I approach it quite seriously - almost like a job and spend a couple hours per day working on them. Of course, it helps that I love the software and derive much pleasure from creating the patches.

PS: Friends are Electric :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#34

In re. to your library, I think it would be very helful for users to have a sound sample to accompany your patches – I know this is tedious work for a cuppa! Also the facility to filter patches would be amazing!

Maybe in Funtmaster V2 :smile:

#35

I’m not so sure about that, again, i can only speak for myself here…
When i’m writing, i’m always looking for that ‘right’ sound for the job, that means i’m usually aware of what i want that part to do, it might be a typical ‘sequencer’ type thing, or an arpeggio, lead or bass sound.
Personally, i’d rather they were grouped that way, as it makes my search much easier.
Often, if i buy a collection of presets, i find there are some i really like and some i’m not so keen on, there are also certain things i’d likely never use, like huge evolving pads (lol i can hear the sound designers hurling abuse at me), but in day to day use, unless you’re Tangerine Dream or the likes of, they’re not really of that much use to me, they take up a lot of space in a mix, they’re not generally that ‘musical’, in the sense of the music i’m making’ either. I can understand why sound designers seem to love making them though, but i wish there weren’t so many in the few packs i’ve bought over the years.

I can see pros and cons to both approaches to selling bundles.
A newer user or someone new to a particular synth might want a broad selection which covers the ‘DNA’ of that particular synth… possibly offer both options if it’s not a major PITA to set up?

2 Likes
#36

You are right - creating samples is a PITA. The collections can be downloaded for free and people can check them out before donating if they wish.

Re 'filter". Can you expand on that. There is already the ability to search by instrument, tag and type in the explorer window.

#37

I can see some might want a collection of this or that.

There is alway the ability to sort the collection by type, instrument or tags - so one can narrow down the search.

Personally, I enjoy creating a diverse selection. It’s horses for courses really.

Oh, and I LOVE those epic evolving TD pads that Pigments, especially, allows me to wallow in :wink:

1 Like
#38

I usually stay away from most complex presets unless I analyze them for learning as I feel it’s now “them” making music, not me. Often the same is true for ARPs.

So I usually gloss over a lot of ARPs and pads and focus on leads, basses, keys, plucks, etc. If the evolving preset is simple enough to sit in a mix I might use and probably adapt it.

If a synth like Pigments gets new features and a soundbank is released alongside, I see these evolving presets as demos, not as something I can use in any shape or form, inspiration at best. So I only browse these usually if I have no specific music-making purpose.

2 Likes
#39

@DerKastellan
That’s not a dissimilar thought process to myself, much of the music done here is highly rhythmical, it needs space or spaces in order for it to work properly, particularly the more funk based styles.

There’s a James Brown Bio-Pic where there’s a scene in which he points at one of the musician’s instruments, i think it was a drum kit from memory, and asks the player ‘what’s that’?
The player replies ‘a drum’.
JB then asks another player, definitely not a drummer this time ‘what’s that’? The player replies, (we’ll say an alto sax as i can’t remember exactly) ‘an alto sax’. JB replies ‘No! it’s a DRUM’!
Moves on to the next guy, ‘what’s that’? The guy replies ‘it’s a guitar’… JB says ‘No! It’s a drum’… this continues for a couple of other people until they get it.
He then says something like ‘it’s not the notes you play that make it funky, it’s the gaps in between the notes’! And there’s a lot of truth in that, particularly for certain styles of music, particularly those influenced by Funk.

The other thing that makes evolving pad type sounds either difficult or impossible to incorporate is that they’re just so slow, much modern music relies on modulation between chords, many of those pads are just too slow to work in that kind of material to have time to ‘develop’ (so you don’t really get to hear the pad develop) or they’re so complex that they interfere or get in the way with other instruments.
They can be useful for intros, middle 8s etc though with the styles i work with personally.

I completely respect the work that clearly goes into them, they’re just not that suitable for the genres of music i’m involved with.

1 Like
#40

In an early scene, James Brown explains to bewildered reporters what his new style of music is all about. Instead of being built on a melody, it’s built on a groove – a rhythmic environment that brings the mind and body to a state of readiness for feeling good. Later, Brown has to re-explain the principle to his musicians in the studio. Their training tells them, “It doesn’t work musically.” Brown insists: “Now we all got our drums.” Some may be guitars, some may be keyboards, but all should be doing the same work as drums: adding to the groove. “And when you’re playing a drum,” he says, addressing issues of music theory, “it don’t matter what key you in, what bar you in, what planet you on…” All that matters is: “Does it feel good?”

  • Every instrument, a drum.

It explains why you play keyboard with boxing gloves. :sunglasses: