That is pretty much the way I work, too, but when it came to Massive, I could never find anything that really worked for what I was trying to do. Where we did use it, is was usually because one of us had found some gnarly, glitchy patch that we made an effort to find a use for.jancivil wrote: Wed Oct 04, 2023 10:26 pmI'm not looking for the cut-and-dried. (A nice strings patch, I wouldn't look for Massive for, that's for sure.) The time I found a lot of joy in its use I was having a whale of a time as it was and found a "preset" that was exactly what I needed. I didn't have a hard preconception of what I needed past it would be a lead line that provided contrast from the rest (which was 100% my sound design). A few tweaks that didn't ruin it but made it work 'best' and I was even more inspired.
The string patch thing, for me, is a bit of a benchmark because pretty much every synth has strings patches and a lot of synths have good ones. We use them a lot but I don't really have a go-to because most of the synths I use regularly can manage something good without much effort.
I think most of us see that kind of progression in our own music but unless you are into that kind of music, it's much harder to see it from the outside. People tell us we sound like this band or that band but, interestingly, it's always a different band. I used to get people telling me I sounded like Fred Schneider from the B-52s, because that was the only reference they had for that sing/spoken vocal style. People with broader musical experience used to cite Stan Ridgway from Wall of Voodoo, but I never thought I sounded anything like either of them.So my music has changed a lot in the last 15 yrs. I'm uninterested in what my approach or technique was at any of those points, I don't sound like that now.
Our new album has a couple of songs that we couldn't have contemplated even 5 years ago. We've got better, our equipment has got better and our processes have got better and that has allowed us to broaden our horizons, to try stuff we probably wouldn't have been able to pull off in the past. To me it's all utterly unique, even though I don't think it's necessarily "original". I don't hear anyone else in any of it but if you aren't familiar with the style of music, you'll probably just lump it in with a whole lot of other stuff you aren't terribly familiar with, as I do with dance music. Music is (and absolutely should be) a very personal thing.
No, I understand what you mean but it's something I try to avoid. e.g. I don't get into a situation where I have to make this bass sound fit in with these drums. Instead, if I already have the drums, I'll find a bass patch that works with it from the get-go. So I am working on the mix from the moment I add a second part, rather than putting in all the parts and then having to solve a whole heap of problems to make it all work together.(Long story short, I don't say "problems" meaning what you mean by the word, or as though one is faced with avoidable mistakes or something.