Producers: presets or four days perfecting a snare?

B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
There was a fascinating discussion that was unfortunately a bit buried on the (equally great) funky thread, about the value of using presets and setting down inventive tunes, versus taking "four days to find the right snare sound".

I loved this comment: "I've heard people tapping out more interesting riddims on tables than I hear in a lot of tunes recently." How true.

As someone who loves timbres but who also holds dear the rave aesthetic of democratising music so that anyone can make tunes in their bedroom, I am a bit conflicted in this debate.

I have spent a while trying to get to the bottom of sound design, which I do find fascinating, but the process of creating sounds from scratch still eludes me. My personal conclusion is that I favour tweaking presets to get the sounds I want, and then to concentrate on getting a song down.

The geekiness surrounding drum sounds in genres like dubstep particularly annoys me - who the fuck, aside from fellow geeks, really hears the difference between snare #701 and snare #702? Far more interesting is to use a distinctive and startling palette, a la Shackleton...

Because it's the software I currently use, I was also interested to read the comments (mostly positive) about Reason - what do people here think about its merits?
 
W

wascal

Wild Horses
I tend to work this way:

When I'm full of inspiration, I knock up a track as fast as you can using whatevers at hand. When I'm out of ideas or sick of I've been working on I tend to spend an hour or two creating as many sounds as possible and saving them / resampling them.

Working this way, eventually when you're inspired you can knock up a track using entirely your own sounds. I'm all for using presets as a starting point but you need to put your own twist on them in my opinion. Also once youve got your own massive soundbank you can go back to your old stuff and substitute the presets for your own creations.

Saying that, 2D by Skream is just a preset from Reaktor but it sounds pretty awesome - I guess it all depends if you dont mind audiogeeks calling you out on forums about lazy techniques...
 
sodiumnightlife

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
I rarely find presets sound good straight away, but i hav eno problem with using them as a basis. Its all about getting the balance - if you can build all your own sounds from scratch and still make an amazing song with them, then do it. However, I think one usually takes over at the expense of the other.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
I think you should do whatever the hell you feel like. Spending days writing one single loop or months building your own analogue synth can be very rewarding and good fun, but ultimately it doesn't matter. If people can make tunes out of bits of other people's tune, then I can use a pre-set. I didn't build my own guitar, why should I build my own saw-tooth?
 
P

Pestario

tell your friends
I have nothing against people spending days crafting a perfect cowbell but this whole side to production is what puts me off me getting into it myself. I know that it can be rewarding but it is simply hard work and not very fun at all. I know good art takes sacrifice but there must be a better way!

I'm really just expressing my frustration over my creative impotence...

Edit: Who wants to be my personal sound engineer? I will pay you with Nandoes.
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
It's usually mostly presets and then tweaking for me, partly because I'm lazy but also because you can still get so much out of them with a some EQ and pitch shifting. I used to do everything with a basic drum machine, 4-track and some guitar pedals and the sounds I could get in an hour or two convinced me of how much can be drawn out of a very limited and dull sound set (going for interesting timbres rather than perfect force and clarity) without getting anal about it. So Reason Rewired into Logic or Live is my favourite way to go these days when I start getting serious about a track but I still have a bit of trouble navigating the line between underdone and overcooked. I might think I'm on to something but then find I've tweaked the energy out of the thing. Actually, my laziness about moving from Redrum patterns to developing track structure in the sequencer often leads to me getting too fussy about individual sounds and not progressing.

Anyone noticed that the synth line from Anti-War dub is (almost certainly) a Reason preset too? I find that encouraging.
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Use presets, assuming you want to ACTUALLY FINISH A TRACK as opposed to wanking around endlessly on something that nobody will notice anyway.

You'll need to edit them a bit to fit anyway. And then there's the mix, the kind of compression you use on which bits (if you use it at all), and the arrangement, and then - and this may come as a huge surprise - there's the actual WRITING. You know, the beats and the notes. All of this adds up to far more individuality than you get from coming up with some variant of a 909 kick / 808 cowbell / gritty funk snare / washy pad etc. And then - my god! - you might actually have some time left to work with another musician? Say an MC or something? Or at least find a useful sample.

Originality in programming is totally over-rated. It's a very, very useful skill, but using presets doesn't make you a bad producer. It's picking the wrong ones that makes you a bad producer.
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
^^ 80s dancehall being a perfect of example of "it's what you do with the preset"

two related questions:

do you use sample CDs? arguments for/against.

more philosophically, it strikes me a bit odd how it's taboo to sample beats the way people have always sampled breaks. not biting but grabbing, disassembling, layering. what's the rationale? or does this happen more than i know?
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
nomos said:
more philosophically, it strikes me a bit odd how it's taboo to sample beats the way people have always sampled breaks. not biting but grabbing, disassembling, layering. what's the rationale? or does this happen more than i know?
Click to expand...

I get the feeling that everyone does this. Certainly my dance music orientated mates do it, especially given that most of em use Reason ('cheap' sounding pre-sets & that plug-in -- is it called Redrum?).
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
and here i was making everything from scratch like a chump. if that's the case then people certainly don't talk about it.
 
W

wascal

Wild Horses
nomos said:
do you use sample CDs? arguments for/against.
Click to expand...

For single hit drums etc, yes. For long musical phrases its a strict no in my geek rulebook.

Most of my favourite music has more emphasis on the sounds rather than the notes, from Hendrix to Kode9 so the 'just use a preset' approach doesnt really wash with me. It may make the creation process faster but I'd rather take a few months and get it sounding how I imagine.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Grievous Angel said:
Use presets, assuming you want to ACTUALLY FINISH A TRACK as opposed to wanking around endlessly on something that nobody will notice anyway.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't go that far. I make quite a lot of sounds from scratch (or for drums, by doing a bit of tweaking and poking on a given sample) and for a lot of things it's not that hard, and probably takes less time than trying to track down a preset that sounds right and fits into the tune. I still spend all my time wanking around and not finishing tracks, but that's another matter...

You'll need to edit them a bit to fit anyway. And then there's the mix, the kind of compression you use on which bits (if you use it at all), and the arrangement, and then - and this may come as a huge surprise - there's the actual WRITING. You know, the beats and the notes. All of this adds up to far more individuality than you get from coming up with some variant of a 909 kick / 808 cowbell / gritty funk snare / washy pad etc. And then - my god! - you might actually have some time left to work with another musician? Say an MC or something? Or at least find a useful sample.

Originality in programming is totally over-rated. It's a very, very useful skill, but using presets doesn't make you a bad producer. It's picking the wrong ones that makes you a bad producer.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'd agree with most of that, though. So many people seem obsessed with the idea that using a preset will make you sound EXACTLY LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, whereas creating your own sound will make you EARTH SHATTERINGLY ORIGINAL even if you're essentially creating a slight variation on an absolutely standard sound and using it in exactly the same way as everyone else. Likewise, I dunno, using the same snare sample in two seperate tunes. Chrissakes...
 
B

Blackdown

nexKeysound
there was a quote from EZ Rollers in Knowledge about how long they spent EQing a snare that made me want to self harm. that or ring them up and shout "that's why all your tunes are shiiiiit..."

then they released all their sounds as a sample CD. It's unuseable...
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Blackdown said:
there was a quote from EZ Rollers in Knowledge about how long they spent EQing a snare that made me want to self harm. that or ring them up and shout "that's why all your tunes are shiiiiit..."
Click to expand...

It's like that (and set aside your other feelings about the tune) story about Kanye West using about 147 kick drums on 'Stronger' before he got the one he wanted. I found that really depressing for some reason. Some of us have day jobs, Kanye.
 
M

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
Best stay out of this as I can spend at least 6 weeks getting 18 songs in order and we've just spent two weeks on a bass sound :)
 
hint

hint

party record with a siren
Composition and arrangements first, sound second.

There's a long list of classic tracks that use presets, but their classic status usually has little to do with the preset itself. The presets become well-known through their association with good compositions.

Getting over-excited about the romantic idea of people throwing things together in 5 minutes with a cracked copy of Fruity Loops is just as boring and blinkered as getting over-excited about "sound design".
 
B

Blackdown

nexKeysound
baboon2004 said:
It's like that (and set aside your other feelings about the tune) story about Kanye West using about 147 kick drums on 'Stronger' before he got the one he wanted. I found that really depressing for some reason. Some of us have day jobs, Kanye.
Click to expand...

funnier than that, he got so upset about the kick he (mr ego) called in Timbaland to fix it for him, the video's here. oh the loss of face! timbo seems to communicate the science of kick drum frequencies soley through the medium of weird circular hand wavey gestures...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top