Trnsfrmr

Up until a couple of years ago, I had an ever so slight disdain for people that programmed their own patches. It smacked of arrogance to me. What? these amazing presets aren’t good enough for you? Whatever! I bet your music sucks anyway.

It turns out these arrogant monkeys have been right all along. Consider the scenario I’m about to layout and judge which is the more pragmatic approach.

You need a sound that goes wheeeeeewiooooweooowhipweooo in your arrangement. You have a pulse and a $100,000 credit line, your god given right as a living American. So naturally, your studio is fully decked out with a workstation or 2, a vintage analog, a couple of VAs and a gang of soft synths. 

As a preset user, the first problem you encounter is the overwhelming choice of 10,000+ patches at your disposal. Oops thats just the electric pianos. But you can filter by category you say and you are indeed correct but how does one categorize whe*****? It isn’t a bloody piano is it?

Second problem: Lets say your chosen synth happens to have a category full of wheey presets. When you start auditioning them, what invariably happens is that you stumble across some wheeyish presets that sound wonderful so you spend eons just noodling on the keyboard. There is nothing wrong with noodling, but it does distract you from your original task. Oh and you are not guaranteed to find anything remotely close to whe***** in the end. 

Being a programmer helps focus you on the task at hand. You get an approximation of whe***** and then move on to other parts of the arrangement. You can then come back to refine it to perfection. By programming more, you gain a more intimate knowledge of your gear and when you do decide to browse for presets on occasion, you’ll know which synth is most likely to have a preset close to what you are looking for. You’ll know to focus on the virus/blofeld for a wavetable sweep or focus on the radias for step modulated sound. It is pretty clear that wheeeeeewiooooweooowhipweooo has five distinct stages, so you’d increase your chances by looking on the blofeld because the envelopes on there have an ADSDSR mode in addition to the more common 4 stage ADSR. The anal would point out that we would also need formant/vowel filters like on e-mus or kontakt. To them I say go out and get a pumpkin spice latte you anorak!

Looking back, I now realize that I didn’t have to buy all those synths. Once you start programming, you no longer have to use presets as the main buying criterion. You begin to buy fewer synths on the basis of their architecture and usability, keep them longer and as an added bonus, have enough cash left to support your drug habit. This is a good thing unless you own eBay stock.