Hi,

I guess most of you know the problem of getting lost in too much setting up, searching for a sound, looking for a beat etc.... Once you are done, the mood is often gone.

How do you prepare so that you can start playing/recording RIGHT AWAY in case the composing/jamming mood hits you - and have all the good sounds, beats etc. right at your fingertips instead of digging through 100.000 presets first?

Have a template file which has your instruments and effects chains, pretty much the way you want them.

Another good trick is to sketch out your ideas with just a few midi tracks, a virtual piano and kick/click track, and arrange it later. Bass parts, chords, leads, all separate passes on separate midi tracks set to the pianos midi channel.

I found that my arrangements "naturally" got better as I learned to keep parts out of each others way pitch and rhythm wise, too. And by the end it's a really NICE piano part!

Something else I've done to get thru the literally thousands of patches I have now, is on days when I'm NOT feeling really inspired, is to go thru and make some "best of' folders for that sound set or VI. They'll be there when I do get the vibe again, and then I only have to go thru HUNDREDS of patches!

KVR/esoundz: Xenobt
Last edited by Xenobt on Thu Aug 18, 2011 8:58 pm; edited 2 times in total

When I worked with hardware synths, I created all patches from scratch and knew all my patches inside out. When I had an idea for a track, I knew exactly which sound to pick.

Unfortantely this has ALL changed with a gazillions of choices and presets and VST's. It's overwhelming - but my fault for not spending enough time with each synth and create patches and know it's sounds inside out. Instead, I'm like you, searching for hours for the right sound and then get frusttrated. DAMN you, choice, damn you!

Spend alought of time listening to music and sounds you like. From there narrow things down.

A wise visual artist once told me something that clicked. He had the same problem, way too many options in his media. But he had an instilled and trained art technique of limiting his palette, and he naturally suggested this for music composition as well.

It doesn't matter that you have 16.8 million colours. What matters is, you have 4 or 6 colours that are going to contribute to some specific component of your creation.

I have 5 project folders in EnergyXT that I setup in 2008, called Loops, Percussion, Riffs, Scapes, Sequences and Combos. I used to spend hour upon hour going through my patches and when I found one that I particularly liked I would write an instrumental part (between 10 seconds and 60 seconds) for that patch which I then saved along with any modifications to the patch itself. At a later date I could pick through these folders and then use these pieces as building blocks to make longer or blocks, short combos or in some cases, entire tracks.

I have approx 2000 of these on my computer at the moment in varying stages of development, although nowadays I find that I tend to use these building blocks less frequently and compose from scratch using one particular patch and just flesh things out as I go.

THANKS - for everyones reply.

it's funny how it all seems to boil down to two choices.
- either limit yourself to using a "basic" setup that WORKS
- getting well organized and prepare the more advanced stuff in your sparetime.

i already tried both options - and also had my problems with both.
- working only with the basics is great for a certain type of music and mood. but after a while i tend to miss the "inspiration" that comes with certain sounds and beats...
- preparing sounds and setups. well, i think this is a personal weakness of mine... i don't know when it's time to stop and let go. with the increasing amount of avaiable possibilities it becomes even more difficult.

i guess the solution is somewhere in the middle.
- trying to make a "basic" setup which is fast but still inspiring.
- preparing some stuff in advance, knowing my sounds etc... but know when it's time to stop.

If anyone does something that doesn't fit in those two categories... please let us all know ; )

"- trying to make a "basic" setup which is fast but still inspiring."

I'd say that's the most important. A few sounds that you are really familiar with are like old comfortable slippers!

Also, I found it helped to develop almost a ritual of switching on and starting things up in exactly the same way each time. For me, this sort of preparation works in the same way as an athlete limbering up before a race. I find that 'instant on' actually leaves me floundering for a while.

my palette is something I'm choosing for the idea, albeit nebulous oftimes, I'm after. When I have completed a project, I should save the whole template, and the components of the template as instruments, channels, channel sets. with descriptive names.

it just depends on the thrust of the idea, what happens next.

I may have a solid idea of a solo over a scratch basis; the lead tone is there and inspiring to work with and I'm rearing to go and as long as the time and the basis is solid, what that arrangement would be is yet to be determined. Or, there is a 'pad', with the colors to inspire me it might be enough to create that event and fill in details of the 'painting' once I've got the main 'figure' explicit.

OR, it could be built from soundscapes, which is something I do from my own patches and templates built on a combination of these; I know what these things do and new combinations are there in potential out of the mind's muscle memory of these and that is inspiring; then the choices of the instruments to decorate and articulate these worlds are timbral choices implicit in these worlds I built to do just that, implicate a kind of orchestra.

OR, the inverse of the idea of building a scaffolding after the inspired solo, building the thing from the drums up; from there I find that the coloring, the further decoration of the rhythmic idea results in a 'performance' with the effect of, say the drummer responding to the soloist because everything is integrated, owing to the fact of all the implications are there from the ground up.

In any of these scenarios, I am intimate with my instruments; it's all out of experience building the sound myself. When I have tried to search for a sound out of (other people's) presets was the slowest going imaginable for me. I think that identifies a problem that is common to all of us.

So, there is a division of labors implied here: 'jamming' vs building templates and sub-templates. Starting as though from pure scratch is a blank page and a challenge. The more you work, the more you have to work with.