About the use of presets, packs: is it cheating?

[SampleScience]

Interesting video from SeamLessR about the producers who use sample packs, templates, construction kits and presets.

[dune_rave]

"About the use of presets, packs: is it cheating?"
Yes of course. This is cheating!
Your preset pack contains 500 presets? It's a bigger cheating.
Moreover....You use a daw that is programmed a developer? You cheat again!
Program your own daw, or use a wave editor, to create your tracks!
You own a hardware synth - this already has presets, another cheating.....
BTW, you didn't buy the software you use? Another big cheat.

[Ghostwave]

As said in the video, listeners can't tell (and don't care) if you use presets unless you're known for your sound design. I'm fine with that.
There, I just saved you 15 mins.

[nickamandote]

It's all about how you feel in the end. You will feel better when your song is more original. Even if you won't (maybe) admit it.

[tehlord]

Such a pointless topic. People who use synths have been using presets since synths had the ability to save presets.

And on those tracks where the people used presets, they used and engineer to mix the track AND a producer to polish it too!!!!!

And quite often a session musician to do the bits they couldn't.......

[spirit]

I also make all my own clothes using wool from a sheep I helped deliver that fed on grass I planted from a genome I sequenced on a planet I formed from cosmic debris.

[tehlord]

I also make all my own clothes using wool from a sheep I helped deliver that fed on grass I planted from a genome I sequenced on a planet I formed from cosmic debris.

Good Lord

[foosnark]

[Ghostwave]

I wish KVR had preset posts for these kinds of threads.

[OzoneJunkie]

The commented I posted on the video:

Musicians/Artists/Creatives face a number of potential traps. Those traps tend to revolve around the craft side. I believe that the balance between craft and art is important, and when there's an imbalance, a trap might arise.

Examples of traps are things like physical technique (aka chops) when it comes to playing an instrument, sound design for producers, and so on. When someone places emphasis on the craft side, art may suffer.

It depends on if the art is one that emphasizes the craft - going to see a band that is very technical - in this case - technique isn't necessarily a trap, but could limit the audience that it reaches.

With the concept of traps, I think the end result can be "music that is created for musicians", in other words, music that highlights the craft side of things.

There's nothing wrong with that, however, I personally try to be aware of such things, and my own personal traps, so that I can avoid a bias that I don't wan't.

[Marando]

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with using presets. I have made a lot of synthesizer presets over the years and I have even won a preset competition a very long time ago (lol), but I'm not a good producer. I can imagine there are lots of people who are the opposite of me, they happen to have great talent in producing/composing music, but are not that great in creating great synthesizer presets from scratch. Let them use a nice bass or lead preset in Spire or Massive, what's wrong with that.

A friend of mine has amazing skills on the guitar, is he cheating because he didn't make the guitar himself, but instead, he is using a guitar that has been made and designed by somebody else? I don't think so. And this same friend, who happens to be a very good songwriter and singer, also happens to suck at creating presets with a synthesizer. Often I help him with presets, but he also uses presets that are already included. For the life of me, I can't see how that could be called cheating.

[dune_rave]

Apart from joking, this topic has some meaning.
Someone measures his musical knowledge merely on "preset making"
and others merely on "producing tracks",
and others on a mixture of the previous two.

So if your main strength that you make good tracks from any material
i Think it's not worse than the case where you create your own presets.....

[2ZrgE]

Cheating?

I'd put it the other way round: it's just plain stupid to spend precious studio time on patching a standard sound, let's say a Moog bass type, when you can just grab that sound from the preset bank and tweak it to your purpose.

Using a commecial DAW? Cheating, why don't you program a DAW yourself? Using drum samples? Only if you recorded your own drums of course, from your hand made drum kit.

[chaosWyrM]

yes its cheating.

that mozart guy was nothing but a dirty dirty cheater...he never created a single patch, every sound he ever used was a preset.

cheater!!!!

[chaosWyrM]

perfect