New here, looking for preset resources.

[Pinkycramps]

Hi everyone,

Well, this is my first post, on day one here at the newly discovered (for me) KVR. I'm a music veteran, a 30 year guitar player with some experience in recording and DAW's, live sound and other things. Now I am the owner/band leader of a party/dance/variety cover band that plays a ton of 80's stuff along with new dance music too.

My quest revolves around creating the most legitimate and authentic backing tracks and keyboard sounds I can find. I'll list my gear, and some songs we are doing, and my question is if you can point me to resources where I can buy or download presets to nail sounds. The band is a drummer, bass player, guitar( yours truly) and a vocalist/frontman. We hope to employ a keys player, but until that day, it's backing tracks for us.

We use Ableton Live 9, through a Macbook Pro (new, and with all the upgrades. It's a beast.) This runs via USB into a digital board (Allen and Heath QU-24) so we have the ability to mix separate channels of tracks from Live9. I just bought a Novation LaunchKey 49 to control synths with, and have downloaded a couple of free plug ins that I just found. Synth 1 is one of them.

Below is some of the songs we play that have keys. I'm not looking for anyone to address all of these, but maybe get an idea about my band and point me in some directions. I'm pretty new with Ableton, and I'm learning the ropes. (I just learned how to install plug ins today, and I'm working at warping things to the click tracks) What I would really like is PRESETS, as I have more than enough on my plate, and programing sounds is something that the lords of time are going to frown upon.

ANY help is appreciated. I'm spending many hours searching (it's how I found this place...) and I would just like to save any time I can and fast forward my project.

The Killers Somebody Told Me
U2 Vertigo
EMF Unbelievable
Maroon 5 Harder to Breath
The Cure Just Like Heaven
Modern English I'll Melt With You
Devo Whip It
Duran Duran Hungry Like a Wolf, Rio
Simple Minds Don't You Forget About Me
Billy Idol Rebel Yell
The Cars Just What I Needed
Rick Springfield Jessie's Girl
J. Geils Band Centerfold
Billy Idol White Wedding
Van Halen Jump
Journey Don't Stop Believin, Separate Ways
The Weeknd - Can't Feel My Face
Prince Kiss
Rick James Super Freak
K.C. and the Sunshine Get Down Tonight
Tommy Tutone Jenny 867-5309
Cee Lo Forget You
Robin Thicke Blurred Lines
Montell Jordan This is How We Do it
Nelly- Hot in Herre
Dead or Alive You Spin Me Round
Loverboy Working for the Weekend

Thanks people!

[CC4]

Well, you may want to figure out what synth was used on the original track and then match it to a freeware or commercial VSTi synth recreation. For example, "Hungry Like the Wolf" was originally played on a Roland Jupiter-8 so it may be easiest to find a "Hungry Like The Wolf" preset for Arturia's Jupiter-8V soft synth. You could probably find a bunch of presets for a variety of synths that attempt to recreate the Oberheim OB-X in "Jump," but again it may be easier to start with something like Datsounds Obxd.

That said, there are presets available here at KVR. For instance, patches for the Jupiter-8V can be found here while patches for Obxd can be found here. Patches can often be found on the VST or synth hardware's webpage as well. For example, presets for Jupiter-8V can be found in Arturia's preset forum. The hard part is then digging through the presets to find what you need.

Other places for patches:
http://www.soundlabz.com/
http://www.migmusic.com/
http://patcharena.com/
http://ann.sounds.free.fr/
http://www.vst4you.com/presets.html
http://easysounds.eshop.t-online.de/
http://www.kidnepro.com/
http://www.midimark.com/
http://www.patchmanmusic.com/
http://www.keyfax.com/
http://www.pro-rec.com/
http://analog.no/cms/
http://www.vstsoundbanks.com/
http://www.lelotusbleu.fr/catalog/
http://www.producerloops.com/VST-Sound-Banks

etc.

[Pinkycramps]

Solid response! Many thanks.

I'm doing my research on what gear was used on songs. It's a time consuming process to be sure. I appreciate the links. The more I learn, the questions it generates...

I'm looking pretty hard at the Arturia V Collection 4 right now.. seems to cover a lot of ground...

[waltercruz]

Arturia V-Collection is very nice. Another sugestion: if you're already using Mac OS, why not go Mainstage?

I play with a computer on my bands, and with most of them I use Mainstage. It costs only $29 and has the entire collection of Logic Synths. There's this guy that makes presets for 80s, and I think that it would cover a lot of your needs:

[Pinkycramps]

Well,

I thought about Mainstage, and for $29 I guess I could get it (and should, and will). I guess I don't really understand it that well other than as sort of live synth performance tool... and we are going to use multi channel backing tracks.

But... to answer the question, it's mostly because I spent $500 ( I think, IIRC) on Ableton Live, and have invested a bunch of hours learning how to use it for backing tracks. It seems much more powerful for that purpose. I have it set up or am in the process of setting it up with multiple tracks of backing tracks (synth 1, synth 2, vocals, guitar, percussion, plus a custom click and vocal cues for various things like "bridge in 3,2,1..". or giving me a pitch in my ear only for example of the harmony note I need to sing )

The unlimited channels and session view work awesome with our digital board since it has 10 separate mixes, so each band member gets a completely custom in ear mix. I like being able to recall any track with a push of a button (like with a Launchpad), and eventually I would like to be able to set it up to trigger songs by part, like verse, chorus, bridge, etc, so we could loop on the fly if we want to.

Finally, my plan is to also incorporate DMXIS to run a preprogrammed light show for the set, also run from a midi track in Ableton.

[Pinkycramps]

BUT... thanks for that link. I already have Logic, so I should have those tones. I'm going to look that guy up on Ebay. Thanks!

[waltercruz]

Well,

I thought about Mainstage, and for $29 I guess I could get it (and should, and will). I guess I don't really understand it that well other than as sort of live synth performance tool... and we are going to use multi channel backing tracks.

But... to answer the question, it's mostly because I spent $500 ( I think, IIRC) on Ableton Live, and have invested a bunch of hours learning how to use it for backing tracks. It seems much more powerful for that purpose. I have it set up or am in the process of setting it up with multiple tracks of backing tracks (synth 1, synth 2, vocals, guitar, percussion, plus a custom click and vocal cues for various things like "bridge in 3,2,1..". or giving me a pitch in my ear only for example of the harmony note I need to sing )

The unlimited channels and session view work awesome with our digital board since it has 10 separate mixes, so each band member gets a completely custom in ear mix. I like being able to recall any track with a push of a button (like with a Launchpad), and eventually I would like to be able to set it up to trigger songs by part, like verse, chorus, bridge, etc, so we could loop on the fly if we want to.

Finally, my plan is to also incorporate DMXIS to run a preprogrammed light show for the set, also run from a midi track in Ableton.

Yes, if you want to use multiple backtracks, the workflow on Ableton is better. I play on a Pink Floyd cover band and use Mainstage, but the backtrack is a single wave with everything on it, and there's a click track that I send to our drummer. I use Mainstage where there's no possibility of variation, and the backtrack is played straight from the beginning to the end. But when I play on other projects where I need to have control of the individual parts, and need to loop on the fly, Ableton is the way to goo, without doubt!

Xenos has done some 80s presets for several synths.
Here is one for Zebra: http://www.adsrsounds.com/product/prese ... a-presets/
and here's another to Z3ta+ (but I think that this donesn't exactly cover your needs).