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Quickly Make Your Own Presets Or Maticulously Automate Each Parameter

Lets firstly get this out of the way: yes you can do either/both and why not.

They are 2 different experiences and will have 2 different effects on your creative process.

Im wondering why some people do one more than the other. Personally I find doing manual automations to be a bit more interesting because I feel I can be more precise with my sound design but when im making presets I find it to be quicker and so instead of spending hours on one sound I can get to other parts faster which sometimes feels alot better, and the problem is it depends on what im feeling so I wonder which one would/should be better to approach because while it feels great to move on quicker it doesnt feel good to not be so precise and while it feels good to be precise it doesnt feel so good to take so much time.

How do you feel toward each one? Have you had my problem before? How did you overcome those feelings and which one do you end up doing more and what context would you do either one in? If I didn't have the bad feelings I would be more meticulous because the very fine details are very important to me although ill admit those details can be lost in the total mix so perhaps theres a certain workflow like for example say you automate the operators/oscillators/etc and then select drums that would sound good with what you have and then whatever room you have left you could throw some pads in there and maybe a lead after that (any order)

Cheers

I always start from scratch on a synth, if I want the same sound over and over again I'll use a real instrument like a guitar

Mixture of both. You can make some pretty cool sounding basses by dropping Lowpass filters on leads and pads and things of that nature.

DimensionX wrote:I wonder which one would/should be better to approach because while it feels great to move on quicker it doesnt feel good to not be so precise and while it feels good to be precise it doesnt feel so good to take so much time.

How do you feel toward each one? Have you had my problem before? How did you overcome those feelings and which one do you end up doing more and what context would you do either one in? If I didn't have the bad feelings I would be more meticulous because the very fine details are very important to me although ill admit those details can be lost in the total mix so perhaps theres a certain workflow like for example say you automate the operators/oscillators/etc and then select drums that would sound good with what you have and then whatever room you have left you could throw some pads in there and maybe a lead after that (any order)

Cheers

It's all up to you as an artist. Your choices are what make you what you are.

You have to figure out what you're doing, why you're making music. If you're making it so other people can hear it, songwriting and mixing are far more important. People's playback systems are usually shit, all the nuances are lost. Just write good songs and mix them reasonably well and people will listen.

Further, I encourage you to skip the moral hesitancy to using presets. Some of the greatest electronic music tracks were made with presets. Only the uberist of nerds is going to recognize that shit, and what then, discount you because you didn't synth the sound up from a square and saw wave? And that gets back to why you're making music. You really have to get real with yourself, that will set your priorities. But if you're feeling all these tugs like you should be doing something else, you probably haven't been honest with yourself about what is important.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

I'm not sure what the OP is asking to be honest...doesn't sound like a preset versus original sound design question to me...

Just a stab in the dark, OP, but try making your automations by hand while the whole mix is playing. Maybe you are geting too into one track, and details are getting lost, sounds masked, etc and you are ending up spending too much time per track, wasting time, and more importantly energy, where it could be spent elsewhere?
I'm confused what you're asking though.

I'm not sure what you're asking either.. Do mean that do others prefer to spend less time on individual sounds to get stuff together faster? Or do people spend ages on fine tuning their patches, with the cost of it taking more time to get the track built up?

If this is the case, for me it depends on the style of track (or to be more precise, your vision of how the track will end up). If I know that the song is gonna end up being 200-audio-track-clusterfuck that has lots of instruments playing at the same time, there's no point to focus on fine details early on. If it's more minimal track the thing might be different, but I pretty much never make minimalistic tunes so can't really say for sure.

What I'm kinda getting from it is he's asking whether you'd rather make presets with parameters being modulated by envelopes/lfos etc (takes less time). Or if you'd rather use automation to modulate things more in depth (which takes more time).

Could be wrong though.

I just use romplers cause who has the time to make sounds these days.