Should You Be Using Presets?

Almost all software synths come with presets to get you started. There is a huge debate over whether these presets should be all a person uses in a song or not. It is an understandable argument as people spend many hours working on their own sounds, building them up from scratch to get it exactly how they want it.

Beginners especially need to use presets as the fundamental understanding of a synth is not as important as the song-writing process. It is more important to focus on writing the song than to minutely tweak the filter 2 resonance but when people develop to the intermediate stage should they stop using presets all together?

My first inclination would be to say yes. Every song has a different set of sounds that all need to fit together nicely. Mixing is so much easier if you design all the sounds to occupy their own space as opposed to EQing them further down the line.

Consider artists such as Skrillex, love him or hate him, his sound design rocks and his synths are insane. Almost every track of his is immediately identifiable as his own. Why? Because he has spent time designing his own signature sound.

Using presets eliminates the uniqueness of an artist since they are available for every artist with that software synth to use. Chances are your song will sound the same as another and there is nothing to set it apart.

This is demonstrated with looking at trends in EDM. After the release of songs such as Knife Party’s LRAD the “woodblock” sound was abused by many in the emerging Bigroom style that flared up in the past few years. Bigroom house seemed to be the epitome of preset use and artists all using the same sounds consider the Pryda Snare and the Bigroom kick drum.

Melbourne Bounce and Trap music also feature these same occurrences, these examples are perfectly described in DJs From Mars’s video “Phat Ass Drop 2”: