THE TENETS OF PRESETS: a philosophy of premade sounds in electronic music

It's a scolding everyone who enters electronic music hears as their travels deepen:

"Don't use presets! Presets are lazy! Presets suck! Initialize and start from scratch."

Often delivered without context, this frictative fear is utterly unhelpful.

A preset, after all, is just a sound someone else made —

either a creator of the synthesizer or a sound designer called upon to do the job. While it's true historically, presets were often used for "Wow the crowd!" purposes in music store showrooms, today's world concerns itself evermore with downloadable demos via software synthesis. (And that is the bulk of my expertise, so we shall focus on this, although the concepts apply to physical "boards" like Roland's Fantom.)

Some stigma around presets revolves around their overuse. This was more common when synths weren't as plentiful as they are today, so the chances of a fellow muso in town having the same sounds as you were much higher. However, today, there's a paralysis of choice, not unlike how the web has plentified pornography. With so many options to choose from, musicians turn to forums asking "How do I get THAT sound?" which may already be, conveniently enough, a preset in an existing synth. Predictably, someone tends to fall prey to The Unhelpful Predator and blurts out,

"Don't rip their style! Do your own thing!"

which completely MISSES the point of why someone asked in the first place: just like we as babies imitate our parents and other grown-ups, if we can copy others and understand what makes them tick, then we have a foundation to indeed "do our own thing". While it's true there'll always be cheap knockoffs whether it's in music, handbags, or graffiti, we must concern ourselves with the greater cultural good for our geeky communities: encouraging new electronic musicians to explore existing knowledge so that long-term, they have a solid foundation, and are empowered to make a lasting and unique contribution to our field.

My favorite preset collections do two things:

1. Show off a synth's special personality and
2. Reference what's come before

To #2 ('cuz I'm inverse that way), it's pretentious and impractical to think that a sound can be utterly disconnected from all that has come before. Indeed, such a thing would conceivably be unrelatable to. Something quirky-yet-familiar carries far more power. For specific example, Sonic Charge Synplant has a distinctive way of shaping sounds via a type of DNA. Altho there are numerous presets which possess a keen edge that is freshly Synplant, they honor our pioneers. For instance, I was pleased to discover several sounds which were very Vangelis-like. While the Synplant isn't a Yamaha CS-80 emulator, it was the fluidity of using the mod wheel to travel from a more ethereal to a bombastic mode — two of Vangelis' contrasting tonal strengths — which appealed to me. I felt it was a homage, never a blatant cliché.

For comparison's sake, we can learn from other media. Some TV writers have a distinct voice yet are constantly making "pop culture references" to strengthen their shows. Two of my adored are Joss Whedon and Javier Grillo-Marxuach. Another show I've been watching is NCIS, where Tony DiNozzo compares an event or even a crime scene to a movie he's seen. Hanging lampshade aside, what's the benefit of including these references in synth sounds?

For one, it's cultural preservation of audio memes, which I've applied upon reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's The Evolving Self. We can't advance if we don't know what already happened. While this can most blatantly be observed in synths that strive to be authentic emulations of original hardware, it's even more true where the synth doesn't have limitations of an earlier forbearer, such as Arturia's Analog Classics, allowing one to effectively travel beyond a referenced sound — which produces both the comfortable stability of history and a sense of sonic adventure.

While I've written before on presets as useful starting points for the Janus of entertainment (including marketing) + education (a tool's learning curve), I'm expanding upon my earlier thoughts; now let's venture to #1.

What is a synth's special personality?

Synths to their aficionados, like cars to theirs, have character. To make this less abstract: while basic building blocks such as envelopes, LFOs, and filters are generic concepts, their specific implementations differ greatly. For instance, Moog filters carry a reputation for being "fat".

Another historical example: adding additional effects (reverb, chorus, and soforth) to a sound used to be a tougher proposition, since a synth only had so much processing power. Multitimbral synths in performance mode would often have weak-sounding presets since insert effects blocks were limited to a small number; hence, out of all possible parts, only a few sounded as they did in solo mode. This has become moot with today's ever-increasing computing power and flexibility, where in every major Digital Audio Workstation, you can drop a loooong chain of effects on a track. Consume too much CPU? "Freeze" the track. This is "normal" and expected today.

And yet, I remember less civilized times where "all effects, all the time" like on Novation's Supernova was such a paradigm shift. Some argued (and always will) that effects abundance made us less resourceful because it removed reliance upon crafting a strong core sound before any effects, but I'll argue that a skilled sound designer always takes that into consideration regardless, and effects often are essential parts of their sounds. One great example of this is Native Instruments' B4 II, which I purchased before it was discontinued. No respectful Hammond B3 vibe is complete without a Leslie speaker recreation, and thus, it was included. So's a wonderfully dirty spring reverb, which I've used on many other types of sounds. You can hear it applied to the repeated opening riff in "Watermelon Patch" from my musical Dream Journal:

Consider it one of my mini-signatures, and a nod to something else I consider key: combining two or more existing presets with desired changes to come up with something fresh and vibrant. One need not reinvent the wheel when the solution can be so elegant. For more on that, I recommend reading Matthew E. May's In Pursuit of Elegance.

Anyhoo, even with effects onboard, it's still vital to understand that many "big sounds" can't all in a mix. Incidentally, this lesson, phrased one way or another, is stated in Computer Music magazine every month. So while many potent presets are showy and mix-filling, they must nevertheless work in harmony (in the conceptual, in addition to chromatic, sense). That lends itself to customization, which in turn enables further tinkering where you feel good about making more radical changes.

But not to stray too far from our main topic — presets — aside from enthusiasts, most people will never own a modular analogue or other lumbering beast which begat the instruments we play today. However, just as how the Internet has made it far easier to broadcast your "voice" in the written sense, the educational ramifications of useful presets are enormous. Most students won't be tempted to buy racks of old Roland stuff, but on even a decently-powered computer, they can run Hobnox Audiotool and understand concepts like audio routing. (Predictably, someone always says "It's not the same" to this; my response is that it is far better than nothing at all, and that is what makes the practical differences in our lifelong learning.)

When I acquire a new synth, I often play through all the presets.

This gives me — if the presets are up to stuff — an understanding of what the synth is capable of, performance-wise. I get ideas for how I might use them for real, as opposed to noodling theory. I've documented some of these preset plays in PROJECT PRESET (which I'll eventually playlist for your ease) providing my first-hear observations as well as hopefully informing you of how playable they may be in your own productions. No slick demos, just raw playfulness. Here's a recent example, spurred on because I'm so often saddened when writing about music isn't accompanied by the sounds themselves:

Quality presets can be tweaked and reverse-engineered, providing a great wealth of "How this was done" before one ever starts on a naked canvas.

I believe a choice preset should tap into as many playable modes of expression as possible,

including informing the user of those abilities. A lingering objection to electronic music is that it sounds "cold" and "lifeless". While this is intentional in some cases and an uninformed word in other situations, my observable agreements with this assessment often has to do with the sound not changing, growing, evolving. Thus, more relevant for the performer's actions than the preset's assigned parameters; again I refer to Vangelis, who for decades has understood making the most of the ribbon controller, which sadly hasn't become more popular.

But there is a ribbon and a breath controller on the Eigenharps.

However, mod wheels are commonplace, and I like to hear them deployed for more than a simple vibrato. I enjoy extreme pitch bend ranges to warp one's notion of tonal placement or provide fluid scalability.

Furthermore, I lament that aftertouch/channel pressure doesn't get the gold it should, so I'm always giddy to see a preset with "AT" in the name, incurring me to hold the keys down after they've been pressed.

Keyswitching also excites me greatly: a group of keys that don't play the current sound, but change between articulations. Obviously useful for emulating acoustic instruments with many fine nuances such as in the East West Quantum Leap Play series, but as the free Ohm Force Symptohm:Melohman Performer Edition shows, it can be put to good use "mutating" existing presets. Another of my faves is Plogue Chipsounds, whose keyswitching greatly increases the range of bleeps and bloops you can get out of a "main" sound.

Expressivity to enhance presets doesn't end there! Another wonder I've come to favor is the morphing featured in Camel Audio Alchemy, Native Instruments Kore 2, and beyond. You get multiple sound variations (in Alchemy and Kore's case, 8), each of which is a "macro" tied to a set of parameters. Thus, instead of moving all the underlying knobs/sliders one-a-a-time, you simply save a variation and drag the mouse or a controller such as an XY pad to jaunt through the variations. Two of my favorites to demonstrate this are Jeremiah Savage's Kore soundpacks, Acoustic Refractions and Sonic Fiction (my video coming soon). Morphing is not only convenient for subtle transitions, it substantially increases the spectrum of expressiveness and character you can inject into an existing preset. The man-machine fusion Kraftwerk implored.

I could go on and on…

and on some of the finer points above, I will in good time. Overall in recent memory, it's refreshing to see more attention paid to usability with "easy" edit modes and vivid UIs, as well as boosting what's worked so well in the past while freeing ourselves from creativity-blocking traditions which make little or no sense.

This is why, if you're a new or insecure (it happens to all of us) electronic musician, be skeptical of dubious "advice" you're handed. If you've reasonably explored possibilities and earnestly believe a sound fits in your mix, it does. Presets also save time, a considerable factor for composers with tight deadlines, and playing presets passionately honors the work of those who did do considerable work to make a synth's character shine. Perhaps one day, you too will design your own sounds from scratch.

After all, there's beautiful temporal coexistence between what exists and what doesn't… yet.

I impart the following to your care.

Scrutinize them and through experience, judge if they work well for you as they have for me:

• Many presets today will never be heard on real recordings shared with others, and most listeners don't care. Like there's more porn than any one person could possibly self-gratify themselves to, the same, to an admitted lesser extent, is true for copious amount of sounds, a veritable cornucopia, we have available.
• No one calls a classic grand piano sound overused, yet why are TB-303 acid squelches or Amen break judged as such? It has more to do with mental and peer limitations than actual sounds. This is precisely why I envision alternate realities.
• Ultimately, most criticism doesn't matter, and you can't overuse what earnestly pleases you.
• Didn't get it right? Make another song.
• Learn to tweak as-needed, such as subtractive EQ to remove slop, but don't buckle to unworkable pressure.
• Flirt with clichés, play with your presets, and keep dancing!