Do you program all of your sounds from scratch?

[vurt]

Some hardware you may just love to have around and use.

Maybe but nothing from last century. I cannot imagine anything worse. My hardware is all state of the art, that's what makes it worth having.

you've made it clear on many occasions here, you are not a musician (or a musicians arsehole)
maybe if you were, you'd appreciate musical instruments a little more

it's like when people talk cars at me, for me, it's whatever the taxi driver turns up in, it serves a purpose.
for them it's some kind of personal statement.

[vurt]

or when dave starts on about drills and we're all suddenly busy

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

nothing from last century.

My Sovjets, Comrad Stalin (Polivoks) and Comrad Lenin (Altair 231), take note of your counter-revolutionary attitude and will defintely recommend reschooling in the woods of Siberia.

I cannot imagine anything worse.

Then try imagine Oprah Winfrey sing the Star Sprangled Banner at the Super Bowl naked.

[BONES]

That's the thing, isn't it? You need some measure of brainwashing to convince yourself it's worth anything at all. Sadly, I am cursed with clarity so I see those things for the anachronisms they were.

you've made it clear on many occasions here, you are not a musician (or a musicians arsehole)
maybe if you were, you'd appreciate musical instruments a little more

You mean instruments that don't even respond to velocity, let alone Glide, Slide, Press(ure) or Lift? And as I was specifically thinking about his Polivoks, no pitch-bend or mod wheel, either. A real treat for any good muso, I'm sure.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Don’t worry, guys, obviously my Sovjets are gimmicks. Used mostly for jam, tweak and fun. And so is the rest of the hardware I am gonna keep. Customized synths: A black MC909, A black Nord Lead 2 and a black minimoog formed microkorg. They just look cool and are inspiring to play. Tho, Polivoks is the bass synth on Valkyrie. Altair 231 made it to our most recent track Norn Song, but only as a lower and discreet layer of the bass, which is made with Deepmind 6 waveform samples otherwise. And only because it was already hooked up for a test. There is also a Repro 1 involved as the high arp bass that answers the lower. Could have made the bass with emulations too, but I just grap something and start working, and if it ain’t broken, I don't fix it. In an upcoming tune, we use Vital for bass for a change, also due to a test. Analog, digital, hardware, software, ancient or futuristic. Who cares what gets the job done? I know we don't, and listeners have not shown any interest in knowing our bass synths either. All is good.

[BONES]

I sure as hell do because I want things to sound good. I want to be able to go back next week, next month and next year to make changes here and there, so that a song gets better and better over time. The album version will always be the album version but that doesn't mean that the version we play live 10 years later shouldn't sound even better.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I am good at picking my synths from scratch, so it is seldom an issue to me. If I improve something, it is mostly the mixing and mastering, which I am still learning. Our synth jobs are restricted to some bass, subtle pads and some effects. All leads are Peter´s effect twisted guitar and some physical modeling layered with samplepacks; bagpipes, violins, offerdale flutes, Hurdy Gurdy and so forth. They require most of our attention.

[Kinh]

ya dont naa-eed ta make yo presets

[jamcat]

I just use E.Piano1 on the DX7, like everyone else.

[kritikon]

I'll often use a preset as starting point if I'm on a VSTi, but generally I'm playing with h/w. I might start with a h/w preset and change it, but more often than not I'm with synths that don't have presets, so I have to start from scratch and I like it that way.

And before Bones starts - I don't need or want to be able to reproduce whatever sounds. I will usually never return to that same song/sound again. I think in my whole life I've only ever revisited 1 single track that I made to redo it. And I pretty well used completely different sounds on it and loaded up only the drums and midi (and I didn't like what I did so gave up, my thought processes were - "It was the best I could do at that time therefore it was the best it could be, this time is a different time so actually it's a completely different track). Reproducing stuff is irrelevant to me. Patch memory on synths is pretty irrelevant to me most of the time. And if I need on the odd occasion to use a very similar patch - I have VSTis for that sort of bread and butter crap.

[darkinners]

I program some parts. I like the process of programming new sound, if by any luck i programmed something I think is interesting or inspiring I will try to make some music evolve around it, and the rest of the sound in the track mostly will use presets that fits the theme .

[MightyMouse]

when I program from scratch it is usually better mixed.

[BONES]

I don't need or want to be able to reproduce whatever sounds. I will usually never return to that same song/sound again.

It's not just about that, it's also about being able to work on more than one song at a time. Last night, for example, I think I worked on 5 or 6 different songs over the course of the evening and it was as much about tweaking the instruments/patches as it was about fiddling with the mixes. (Which makes sense when a mix to me is pretty much just adjusting the levels of each channel.)

[Dasheesh]

You are on the wrong forum for an honest discussion about this OP. 1/2 the people on here make money selling you presets, and 1/3 of what's left could care less.

[ghettosynth]

You are on the wrong forum for an honest discussion about this OP. 1/2 the people on here make money selling you presets, and 1/3 of what's left could care less.

You can make money selling presets?