Commodore Remix

Do you make your own patches or do you prefer to rely on the ready made ones?
I find that softsynths and hardware ones these days seem to come with so many patches built in that I don't bother making my own anymore. I tend to dial up a sound and then tweek it a bit. With my TX802 because FM synthesis is a chore to do I load up my patch librarian that contains about a zillion patches and select a sound that's close to what I want and again maybe editing it abit.

There are just SO MANY in these things that you can just dial the presets across the lot. Sometimes I may fiddle but rarely. Just buy one magazine and the disc can be JAMMED with 'em! Well done Future Publishing.

Have your Juno. Have your DJX. Have your B4. Have your Kontakt. And all the rest.

On top of this, you can mix sounds together or just make your own samples to blend. I don't think it's the same ballgame any more. You have DECADES of old sound machines to use now.

I actualy enjoy making presets, but NOT while I'm making music... and thus I use presets as well, simply to be able to have a bunch of sounds at my fingertips to light up my inspiration... Doing every sound from scratch is tedious... some prefer this, but I don't... sounds has to be quickly and readily at hand when inspiration strikes, not having to use hours creating a sound that fits.

So in general I use both... but it's two diffrent creative processes for me...

I know how that goes. I'm far less likely to tinker with 'real' instruments like a miked fiddle when something like the MIDI keyboard or VSTi can be instantly switched on before a muse goes.

I've recently challenged myself to make tunes starting from scratch for all instruments (except percussion). Great learning, even though the tune itself doesn't necessarily end up being all that great.

im moving in the opposite direction in the last 1-2 years.
pretty much being forced of adjusting every bit of a buzz machine before, now as i have access to VST i find myself using presets much more often while just adjusting some buttons here and there.

I do 99% of the time my own patches, and not saveing them so I can reuse them, I do new ones every track I make

On real gear, from scratch, might even write it down on paper somewhere, but otherwise once its done and used its lost. I may sort of remember what I did to get the sound back.

On VST, its very easy to go through a bunch of patches and pick something that's very close to what I want and then, tweak it just a bit here and there and use it, on occasion, the patch
has been lost and I'm not sure if its a bug in FL Studio 10 or I've done something wrong.

I can relate to Analog above on this one. I tend to wade through my thousands of presets in various VSTs and find the closest one to what I had in mind, and then tweak it just right. Sometimes a tweak is not even necessary.

Its the end result that counts, not the approach taken to get there.
But I tend to avoid the most overused saw-leads that just sound to preset.
But the only people who care, is us musicians. A listener only cares about the whole picture.

Making presets can be fun though - especially trying to emulate certain amiga-mod synths.

"Its the end result that counts, not the approach taken to get there."

Funny... cause it's the exact opposite for me... it's the inspiration that makes the creative process fun and interresting that counts for me... when I'm done with a piece (which unfortunately is rather rare), I usualy loose interrest in it.... it's a curse I've been dealing with my whole musical life because you're ALWAYS being told that it's the end result that matters, so that is what you strive to believe yourself.... well... I've learned the hard way, that this is just NOT the case for every musician... at least not me.... I also believe that it's exactly that feel for the creative process that makes people play in bands, because it's a creative process.

Sometimes the journey IS more fun than the destination...

When composing I stick to the basics only as setting sounds during that can seriously decrease efficiency. I set sounds during the mixing stage, with the exception of the guitar. I try to do as many things in the box as possible as proper recalling presets outside the DAW may be a source of problems.