Ableton Forum

I mainly edit Presets rather than making sounds from scratch.

What about you guys?

i mainly just scratch. actually the first thing i do after installing Live is blow away the bundled preset library. not a big fan.

I use both.

Never been a fan of presets.

Presets ... err, sometimes !

Check them out, see if any fit, 90% of them don't work for me. Tweak 'em a little or a lot or not at all to taste.

Just don't let them rule ya, otherwise you will sound like mr cheesy cliche sound 2007. Be bold enough to make your own sounds. Or at least blend 'em in, you know I've heard some of those Live sounds, especially the electronic drums clips, lots and lots of times to the point of being almost a FL hip hop preset. Which is not good after a while....

I start everything from scratch.

I never edit presets

Nothing bad using presets at all but...

I way prefer my own stuff

Modified presets mostly

I suck at synth programming

I use notepad to write Ableton Live from scratch. Then I start on a project.

decoder wrote:I use notepad to write Ableton Live from scratch. Then I start on a project.

jesus that must take like AGES¬

benlowther wrote:I mainly edit Presets rather than making sounds from scratch.

What about you guys?

Whats the problem with presets, you need to make a new gitar to play it artisticly?

As long as you express the sound with twisting its parameters, it will sound personal.


its the 80ties, and the euro trance-dance thats fuked up!

ze2be wrote:

benlowther wrote:I mainly edit Presets rather than making sounds from scratch.

What about you guys?

Whats the problem with presets, you need to make a new gitar to play it artisticly?

As long as you express the sound with twisting its parameters, it will sound personal.


its the 80ties, and the euro trance-dance thats fuked up!

Totally agree!

Presets are a guideline and a great headstart to finding your sound....Especially if you do this for a living. Time is money and some of us can't just tweak sine waves all day.

preset or not; does it matter?
not for me.. I'll sculp them till I like it anyway..

also depends on the complexity of the synth..

programming a Juno 106; you can hardly call it your own preset because there isn't that much to tweak; it will always be very close to one of it's factory presets..

programming a DX7 is another thing since there are 100's of parameters to tweak..

presets are just a combination of values that you will set one day yourself;
so why always bother to program them manually from scratch?
only because it makes you feel you initiated/created something yourself..
and then, the next day, you come across a preset that is almost similar to the one you did the other day, which took you a long time to sculpt..

just use them..

I don't use any presets at all for getting a unique, at least "own" sound.
This also implies much learning in synthesis and audio editing cause i wanna know how a sound is produced and how it developes.
I bought a Nord Modular exactly for this reason - no need for preset zapping over here. Doing tutorials with embedded presets is another thing - learn with them how to do it on your own.

So - EQ presets - what's that all about?

Discovering a synth using presets is like discovering a city using the subway. You jump quickly from one area to another without really knowing whats in between...
i think its important to spend time "walking around" your synth, really tweaking it so you understand what parameters were changed to get from that fat bass to the airy pad.
But thats for the exploration part. Once its done, i think its ok to shamelessly use presets (tweaked a bit for ur tastes of course)
Actually, I never ever heard someone saying "i dont use presets, i make my own sounds" actually sounding unique and fresh.

maybe those who like their "own" sounds are too blind to realise that they'll always end up sounding like one of the already existing 900 presets anyway...