Without presets, I would have no song.

Still, sound design feels like a waste of time.

But someone said I was the one wasting time searching for presets, when I could've easily designed my own. But that's the problem! Most times, I don't know what I want. Presets give me ideas and inspiration.

 

Many of the serious sound designers who make presets do a lot more than those people who tell you to make yours ever do.

It helps to be able to make your own from scratch, so they aren't wrong in saying you should learn it. But there is also no reason to re-invent the wheel either.

 

I'm 90% preset user, that 10% is just sounds I know how to make because I have strong preference in them, like kick drums, basslines, some plucks and etc, anchor sounds, but 9/10 times sounds that actually give me inspiration are amazing presets, amount of times I started a track because of a preset, amount of times all made sense and started happening because of one preset, I just can't see myself without them.

It's good to know at least basics in order to tweak those presets more and that can take your music to the next level, you can actually automate key aspects of the sound and really go from playing static preset to have complete world of sound. Sound designers kinda give you idea, like map some of those things to mod wheel or write some info. Sometimes what makes preset shine is that you need to influence few things in same time, like move cut off, resonance and one effect amount in order for that sound to have throat and sing and etc.

Most of the times our mixing problem is rooted in our sound design or lack of it, we have too much mixing engineers and mixing plugins around, so we went with their mentality of solving problems that we can actually prevent. Just few tweaks on the synth, mapping some things to velocity/volume and stuff like that can save us from using so much plugins later on or go ballistic with layering.

This is kinda great video that goes about that, so yeah, more you know about synthesis will reward you more on long run, even if you don't exclusively make all your sounds.

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2026

I tend to create my own patches on hardware synths and tweak presets on the soft side. It's down to hands on knobs, sliders and buttons right under my nose, I'm sure.

 

That's the advantage of holding a real instrument, like a guitar, which you actually have to learn to play.

If you're interested, you can also learn synthesis, or sound design, but that requires some talent and a willingness to learn.

Try to identify your strengths and weaknesses in music production and focus on your strengths—or, in other words, do what you're passionate about and what comes easily to you.