Producers: presets or four days perfecting a snare?

Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Re: sample CDs: I'd really like to use more of them! But I don't have that many- just a couple of refills I've torrented really. As it is I'm quite happy to just chuck whole commercial tracks into Live and cut up big gobs of them.

Re: reason: Reason 4 is a BIG step forward sonically. And as soon as you rewire it the game changes completely, you lose that glassy hollow edge very quickly when you put it through Cubase - Live is particularly good for warming it up for some reason (could be my ears going though). I'm beginning to be a bit unsure about Logic though.

And the Black Dog is just different! Partly because of the heritage, obviously. But also because of the three-way collaborative working process - it doesn't matter how preset something is at the start, by the end it's pure Dog. Plus there's the skill of the people involved- Rich is a world class sound designer, it's quicker for him to programme something that to find a preset for just about any sound, while Ken is a world class mangler and visionary. Shame about Martin but two out three ain't bad :p

Funnily enough right now I'm trying to cut down the number of sounds I use and just use a very simple, repetitive pallette. It's not actually working - I keep on expanding the sound set - but I'm trying to streamline it and be more generic.
 
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Shonx

Shallow House
It was me who mentioned the tabletop-tappery by the way. ;)

I suppose since that comment (although I've kind of fucked off the production side completely at the moment), what I've been buying has been quite simplistic production wise - fair bit of b-more, booty and baile. A lot of the fidget stuff can be quite "edity" but then again does use a lot of fairly standard sounds (subs, house kicks, saw-wave basses) and mostly seems to concentrate more on doing new things with old sounds than vice versa.

Listened to some dubstep show the other week for the first time in ages and heard one of those mid-rangey tunes with the variable tremelo lfo lead/bass and realised that apart from the sound it was pretty much indistinguishable from most of its contemporaries. I think some people are happy doing doughnuts in their custom cars, but I'd rather get out the car park and go somewhere interesting.
 
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elgato

I just dont know
why is it always presented as one or the other? why not both? or one sometimes and the other at others?

but on the actual issues

for me half the excitement about electronic, dance, rave etc is the collapsing of distinctions between engineering / sound design and 'song-writing'... four days perfecting a snare is not equal to four days moulding a sound that sounds like nothing you've ever heard before, which for me is a valuable form of expression. maybe that can be done in 2 minutes... either way! for me timbre is unquestionably still one of the most exciting things about dance music, whether its that of a preset or a sound that took days

maybe i've mistook the topic, if its more about simple economy of time then apologies, but time and time again emphasis on timbre is presented as being wanky or techy or a dead-end, but reversion to ideas about writing 'music' or 'songs' and rejecting the potential in other aspects of sound is not the way im interested in going
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
Messing with sounds for hours and hours can lead to new ideas and interesting compositions.

I think the experimental angle is totally underplayed when it comes to making stuff - people love to romanticise inspiration, but sometimes the best ideas come through trying stuff, having happy accidents, seeing what to do with the thing you just stumbled upon. (I mean "experimental" in the most prosaic sense, btw - not as some shit genre tag)

The same way a lot of producers can stumble upon a hook on a record and go "sweet, I could make a track around that", mangling and rerouting and fucking with bits and pieces can either create building blocks for new tracks or open up processes that can be used to finish off something half-finished.

I guess the above three paras are the same thing said three ways. :)


A lot of what's been said (and I agree with it!) comes back to a bunch of stuff that surely all producers have heard a million times, e.g. don't lose sight of the overall composition ... do whatever's appropriate so long as it's in service of making the track work ... a polished turd is still a turd... etc.

There's also a bit of a continuum from untouched presets everyone has heard a thousand times through tweaked presets to completely bespoke business. I'm sure, say, Booka Shade put heaps and heaps of time into making the production on their tracks sound as good as it does while most of the sounds are pretty damn generic.


Um, anyway, being in the home listening / mannered / ambient type camp rather than the dancefloor / street / unbridled ruffness camp, I tend towards tweaking and mangling stuff a lot while I'm writing. I definitely don't have clear, sequential phases of setting out the track and then working on the sounds. If I use preset sounds on VST synths or whatever I only change them if I think it's necessary... but I usually think it is necessary.
 
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sodiumnightlife

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
It can be both elgato, and don't get me wrong, i'd rather hear some amazingly soulful synth sound than just anothe rhodes organ used to denote deepness (nothing really against rhodes), but I do think that over emphasis on one comes at the expense of the other usually.
 
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Shonx

Shallow House
elgato said:
maybe i've mistook the topic, if its more about simple economy of time then apologies, but time and time again emphasis on timbre is presented as being wanky or techy or a dead-end, but reversion to ideas about writing 'music' or 'songs' and rejecting the potential in other aspects of sound is not the way im interested in going
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I think maybe there's actually two arguments here - there is the emphasis on sound design and creating sounds never before heard, twisted beyond all recognition to create something completely new...

...or, spending large amounts of time fucking around with snares, reeses, lfo-basses, etc which although may have been individually redesigned for that particular tune have all been done before and for all the tweaking don't actually sound that different to the last time they were used, and are of minimal interest to anyone apart from sound engineers and audiophiles (leave the wav alone, pervert!!).

I think in the first instance, this is definitely something that progresses music and inspires future producers, in the second, adds nothing of much interest to my mind. It just seems to basically turn composition into competition when I think it should be about celebrating the idiosyncracies of the producer.
 
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elgato

I just dont know
sodiumnightlife said:
It can be both elgato, and don't get me wrong, i'd rather hear some amazingly soulful synth sound than just anothe rhodes organ used to denote deepness (nothing really against rhodes), but I do think that over emphasis on one comes at the expense of the other usually.
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yeh this is true, in terms of method there's a lot to be said for producers maintaining balance and such, i guess im running my mouth off more in terms of broader outlook... i feel like i hear a lot of people dismissing timbre as not being worth anything, which is not where i stand.. for example part of why i love presets is cos of their timbre, not just how they're arranged
 
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elgato

I just dont know
Shonx said:
I think maybe there's actually two arguments here - there is the emphasis on sound design and creating sounds never before heard, twisted beyond all recognition to create something completely new...

...or, spending large amounts of time fucking around with snares, reeses, lfo-basses, etc which although may have been individually redesigned for that particular tune have all been done before and for all the tweaking don't actually sound that different to the last time they were used, and are of minimal interest to anyone apart from sound engineers and audiophiles (leave the wav alone, pervert!!).

I think in the first instance, this is definitely something that progresses music and inspires future producers, in the second, adds nothing of much interest to my mind. It just seems to basically turn composition into competition when I think it should be about celebrating the idiosyncracies of the producer.
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yeh man this for me is spot on
 
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moolac

Well-known member
songwriting/ideas - presets/bashing stuff about quickly
finishing/producing - tweaking/geeking/spending too long doing stuff and never finalising it

i usually get stuck on one or the other
 
S

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
This is the same sort of debate that was going on about DJs here not so long ago - you know, those DJs who can beat match without headphones or hands, while simultaneously getting a blowjob, but for some reason wouldn't be able to know a good track if it was... well... giving them a blowjob.
 
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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
sodiumnightlife said:
martin dust said he spent two weeks on a bass sound.
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We've just used it on a Slam remix, it sounds perfect and well worth putting the time in but sometimes things come fast and other times it takes months, I don't really mind as you can't rush a good track and the day we say "That will do" is the day it's over.
 
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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
Grievous Angel said:
And the Black Dog is just different! Partly because of the heritage, obviously. But also because of the three-way collaborative working process - it doesn't matter how preset something is at the start, by the end it's pure Dog. Plus there's the skill of the people involved- Rich is a world class sound designer, it's quicker for him to programme something that to find a preset for just about any sound, while Ken is a world class mangler and visionary. Shame about Martin but two out three ain't bad :p
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You cheeky fecker, the past does make it hard in some ways but it's not 1992 anymore and people who want that sound can listen to Bytes on repeat :)
 
K

Kuma

The Konspirator
Man, it's different everytime. But I find the mixing down/finishing process to be the part that really takes up my time.

sample cds are fun, but I'd rather hack tiny bits out of my record collection.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Shonx said:
Has anyone actually stuck up for the four day snare yet? ;)
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I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that spending a bit of time trying to get things sounding good doesn't automatically turn you into some sort of anally retentive neek with no creative ideas. It's possible to (say) start off with a basic understanding of what different things do to the sound, learn a few tricks, and at some point while you're working on a track spend ten or twenty minutes trying different things to get your drums sounding better and hitting harder or whatever, and gradually get to the point of knowing more about what you're doing.

Some people (eg Bob Macc) seem to be able to get to the stage of knowing more about audio processing than is entirely healthy but knowing it well enough that they can just pull stuff out and do it without breaking out of their creative process. Or there are extreme examples like the stories of King Tubby taking the tops off effects boxes and re-soldering bits of them between takes.

Obviously 'nice sounding drums' are no match for 'great ideas', but if you can aim for both, why not?
 
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