Ok, let's get a few things straight from the start here:

Actually I don't really think presets are evil, many people who use synths have no time or inclination to find out how to program them and benefit hugely from the work done by the many preset programmers out there and just get on with making music. I totally get that. This article is aimed more at the many synth-users who use presets because they are overwhelmed by the idea of programming or just find it's too much effort because they don't know what they're doing.

Presets can be a way of learning how synths work. They can be a way to see how someone may have used part of a synth in a way you may not have thought of and tweaking presets is at least a start towards programming your own stuff and being original.

I use presets. There, I said it. "Hypocrite" I hear you cry. Yeah yeah ok, let me clarify. If I choose to just flick through a few presets it's because I either don't have time to start from scratch right now or more likely I know I have a preset which fits exactly what I want for a track. Often the patch is something I've created at another time during a dedicated sound design session, sometimes it is a preset that came with the synth. Some of the people working on presets for some of the bigger synths are far better and more inventive programmers than me and there are times when their sounds are exactly what I'm looking for.

So, I'm not making any sense, are presets evil or not?

Let's start by saying this: Samplers were designed to sample, not just playback from huge libraries and Synthesizers were designed to synthesize! To create new sounds not heard before, to start from basic elements and craft a noise so devilishly intricate that listeners would wonder if someone had dropped something hallucinogenic in their morning tea. My feeling is that if you have a synth and you are not exploring it, bending it to your will, finding out everything it can do (and then pushing it to do more) then you are missing out.

If you buy a synth, scroll through the presets, get bored and then go buy another one then you are missing out. You're also wasting money. Yeah ok life is short, people are busy, Facebook status updates have to be read, Coronation Street is on shortly and for goodness sake who has the time to read manuals and learn how these complicated things work!? Well fair enough, life is busy but honestly I believe that as a musician you stand to gain massively more from owning 2 synths that you know inside out than 10 that you've barely scratched the surface of.

When you create a sound for a track, especially given the complexity of synths these days, it's possible, likely even that you just made something 100% original. It's possible that the sound you just used on that track has never been heard before.

If you'd used a preset then anyone who buys that synth has access to that sound and could also use it on their track. That's not always a problem of course and with modern DAWs it's possible to layer track upon track ad infinitum so maybe nobody will notice you used a preset but there is something special in knowing you just made a track using 100% or even 50% sounds you created.

There is a lot of music around these days, so much so that getting heard above the white noise of free downloads created in bedrooms world-wide can be nigh-on impossible. But I guarantee that you are more likely to get heard if your starting point is originality and I believe this starts from crafting new and original sounds. You may think the listening public don't identify presets, sure they probably don't know the exact patch or synth it came from but you can be sure that hearing the same sounds over and over will have people flicking to another track before you can say Attention Deficit Disorder.


reprinted from http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2013/07/23/why-presets-are-evil-/

 

End product is important, but if using preset means not tweaking it to fit your mix, than it's evil and should be a law that forbids people to use them, just kidding, or am I?

If something fits and it's good starting point, I'm all for it, worst scenario is you have inspiration burst and you are stuck there finding sweet spots *yes*

EDIT:

I was actually thinking about synth presets only *yes*

But in general, it could be useful as I mentioned if you really know that tool inside out and that preset is actually what are you going to do anyways or just re tweak few things that could take far more tweaking from initial stage, but for clueless browsing *no*

 

I think the end result is what's important. Presets can be good when you're in a hurry and just want to get that creativity out there or you found something that's perfect so why recreate the wheel? Plus they can also teach you a lot about sound design which is invaluable. However I don't think they should be a crutch and any artist worth his salt will create at least some of the sounds that he/she utilizes. In Industrial this is a standard because in this genre first comes the talent and then comes the ego.

PS can I get a copy of the Evil Preset 666 that you used in the making of this transmission?

 

Well there is not a lot of violin "preset" or guitar preset but nobody cares as long as it's good music.
I apply the same logic to presets.

 

I use every single sound if I like it or think it fits in my design, preset or not. And there are a lot of presets I just like and couldn't create better.


Personally I couldn't care less if some audio nerd from the middle of nowhere spots presets in my music - "how lame, he uses the third preset in the Sylenth factory bank".

So what, 99 percent of all the people on the planet even don't know what a 'Sylenth' is....

At least sound is not the most important aspect of my music, it's composition.

"Oh, he uses this absolutely overused preset everyone uses since hundreds of years, I guess it's called 'piano' or something..

 

they're not that bad, are they?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEXeaweJu1E

 

No problem with them.
Good way of hearing what a synth can do when checking out demo versions. A good starting point for sound design.

I used to trawl guitar mags in the 80's to get "settings" of top players from either interviews or pics.
Basically using their "presets" as a basis for my sound way before presets actually came along.

It's good to know your gear and what it does. And it's fun.
But some people get up their own arse thinking they are Jean Michel Jarre.

 

i don't think presets are bad. i think they can be a springboard for new ideas or a scratchpad while getting your track together.

alot of producers spend alot of time focusing on plugins, daws and hardware instead of the music. i think presets are good tool to have in your arsenal to get back to making music in a efficient and enjoyable manner.

i mean take sylenth for example. i could say hey i need a lead. 8 hours later i'm still in sylenth messing about. or i could just use one of the thousands of lead presets out there and have my track at 90% in that same 8 hours. and maybe come back later and replace sylenth with spire or z3ta

 

Presets are really cool with dealing with very complex softsynth (as starding point) or like EchoBoy or really deep effect plugin cause you can quickly found the song you are looking for. but for fixing stuff like eq and compressor from scratch is a lot better when you know what you are doing. cause sometime, those preset are a bit over the top and louder to impress. less is more in this case else it can quickly sound overcompressed. anyway im using mostly Nebula now.so no preset.

 

I LOVE presets because they are a good tool for learning sound design. Presets can be a source of inspiration.
I don't feel there is anything wrong using presets as is or even making an entire track with only presets. As long as you make good music in the end.

However, I personally try not to use presets simply because I don't like sounding like everyone else and I wouldn't want others to replicate my sound. Trade secrets!

 

At the end of the day, it's YOUR music. It all depends on how personal and individual you want your music to be. For me, philosophically speaking, electronic music has an advantage over many other non-electronic forms of music insofar as every single element can be completely original and idiosyncratic. There is no reason to stick to stock sounds or presets. A kick drum, a bass, pad or lead, etc., doesn't have to stick to any pre-conceived blueprint or format. This goes for any notion of sound, fx, mix or master. Every single element of electronic music can be completely individual. ...of course, if you want to bang out a new tune every single day and have each one of them sound like the last dubstep or house tune to play on the radio, then presets may be for you. For me, however, I don't mind spending a lot of time thinking about a sound in my mind's eye and then being creative with sound design to recreate it using synthesis and fx processing. ...It's pretty funny really. We're in a world (especially with electronic computer music) where the creative possibilities are actual approaching the infinite, yet most want to sound like the last big name. So much technology, so much scope, so much time and everything can be tweaked to perfection. ....All depends on how much of YOU you want in YOUR music.

 

Its always nice to see exactly what another sound designer did to engineer the sound but if you are the type of producer who likes to rely on presets, templates and sample packs meaning you have crafted NONE of your sounds, chances are your music will sound amateur at best. Any producer worth his salt would have libraries of their own presets. I like to spend a few days, even weeks exclusively on sound design and once I get in the studio scroll through my own sounds. Not everyone can do this but anyone could learn. How embarrassing would it be to meet some producers you respect only for them to find out that your work isn't truly your own? I personally would be embarrassed to have a track entirely made up from other peoples sounds and have the audacity to call it an original mix . Is there anything wrong with using presets? NO, they can save you a shit load of time and get you very close to the sound you wanted to make anyways so they aren't "evil" IMO. They are there for convenience and to showcase what the synth is capable of. Even IF you rely on presets you could make up for it with a killer arrangement and killer music! Just my personal opinion on presets. A hit is a hit with or without presets regardless of what anyone thinks or says.

 

You can use presets in any industrial music, doesn't matter. There's only standard here, not creative.
IMO, every synthesizer have their own sounds,'infinite creativity' is absolutely a joke. Only if you have your own synthesizer and plugins. So why not use the presets shared by some evil?

 

Out of the 50 or so VSTi synths I have, I only really use 3 or 4 of them regularly, but I know those synths inside out. The same goes with VST effects, but out of the hundreds I have I only use two dozen regularly. The combination of those synths and effects, although not strictly "infinite", is virtually limitless. I know I won't ever exhaust the possibilities within my lifetime at least. I wouldn't exhaust the possibilities with one synth and no separate effect plugins either. With just one synth it's possible to make an almost endless variety of kicks, snares, hats, basses, pads, leads, arps, risers, etc., etc., etc. Some will sounds good, some won't sound so good, but then everybody's tastes are different too. The point is that with today's technology the scope for creative sound design is virtual endless, and that's not even tackling the subjects of composition, arrangement, mixing or mastering!

Regardless, my point earlier was not concerned with what is possible or not. THE point I was trying to make was that it's YOUR music. If you come across a preset and say to yourself "that's exactly what I had in my mind when I began writing this piece of music, that's the exact same sound I thought of, aren't I lucky somebody else out there already knows what I'm thinking creatively," then go ahead, use the preset. For me that's simply not good enough, but each to their own. I don't see the need to rush MY music by using presets. Far from it, I'll spend as long as is necessary to make my music sound like I imagined. That's part of the creative process for me. Fortunately I do understand synthesis though, so I have some idea of how to create sounds from scratch. It isn't such a hard task to learn the mechanics of this artform though, the hard task is to use the artform's mechanics to create art. ;)

ITB electronic music is a different kettle of fish to other music genres with far more scope and far more potential as I see it. It's an easy out to stick to set patterns and presets. Like, if we all did that, we'd all be hearing music using LFO modulated scream filters set at 140 bpm... and that wouldn't get boring or die a death...

 

You have to read the original post and my post. All these post told about [synthesizer's preset]. NO one cares about your creative, arrangement and synth's combination. Read the post carefully.

 

I don't see any problems with using presets. I use presets all the time and then tweak them to my liking and get creative with them. There's a similar question to this one somewhere here on the forums where someone asked "is using loops cheating?" The answer quite simply is no (for me at least). If a preset or loop is able to get your creative juices going then by all means go for it. My only piece of advice though would be to use that preset or loop for inspiration to make something better that's all. tweak the hell out of the preset, or chop up and combine that loop with other loops and create your own. I mean, sampling and presets was how hip hop and electronic dance music were born in the first place.

Some of the guys who replied before me said this as well, if you find a preset that is exactly what you're looking for..would you not use it? Of course you should use, it would be kind of silly if you didn't...but instead of just using it, learn how it was done, learn why it sounds the way it does, try to recreate it on your own from what you learned, and come up with something better.

So yeah, the point is, presets are cool, they get the creative juices going, and are sometimes the reason I create great melodies so..but I tweak the hell out of them later down the line.

 

I gonna qoute an articel made by SOS Paul White he said when they do their Studio SOS visits they often find tracks on the computers with a compressor inserted on say a kickdrum track that have a ready made presets named something like BIG KICKDRUM or something similar..

And they often find that the compressor on that track doesnt compress ANYTHING at all with that selected preset..

The users seems to be clicking on the presets name and expect/believe something is gonna happen and leave it with that..

So yes presets are evil on the other hand they could be useful as a starter "point" where you can further tweak it to perfection..

For me who dont know how to dial in good sounds from scratch on vsti synths they are good just for that..

I have also find ready made presets being exactly what i am looking for in a synthsound and some presets even made me come up with new ideas to a song..

So in that case the presets are not evil they are "shall we say god sent?"..

 

Well, relying completely on presets would be a bit extreme, but look at Avicii or that Angello track where he used a Vengeance bass sample - no one really cared, it's just effective (I'm not saying: good) music.

Concerning crafting sounds: I'm sure you cannot craft a genuine sound on Sylenth which could not be found in it's thousands of presets already available. Or if you want a Moog bass, why not taking a Moog bass preset instead of spending hours to create the sound of a Moog bass which is available as a preset in the first place?

I take a preset I like, tweak some knobs, and it's no preset anymore, it's my sound.

 

A good measuring stick is whether you depend on something or not, if you do it would be worthwhile to find a middle ground. That's not to say that you can't create amazing music without ever touching an oscillator, filter or modulators but if you want to understand how synthesis works then you're going to have to get your hands dirty. It's really all about what you want to get out of your music.

 

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bcIaVOyuSQ[/media]

when i see this, i want to try to not to use presets, making my own "super pad" or super bass
but in the end, just add some good flanger /reverb /auto-filter /distortion with automations on any presets... i think this is enough. there isn't so much differences when the track is builded, because unless the preset is playing all alone in your track, people just won't recognize a over-used sawtooth pad or sine bass when it is well processed & mixed.

i would maybe build something from scrap for ambient or drone as notes are really long, but surely not in EDM or metal arrangement.