after doing presets for korg's polysix and sonic charge's synplant, i'm working on presets for korg's ms20 emulation. always eager to reflect upon what i do, i offer you some of my thoughts on the process of making synth presets.

the process usually starts with just fooling around with the synth in question, to get a feel for all the possibilities it offers. after that i thoroughly read the manual, to find out about less familiar functions and non-standard implementations of basic functions. the latter is especially important in emulations of voltage controlled synthesizers, and the ms20 is full of it.

after i feel i know my way around on the synth, i start looking for tricks that other people have come up with while it's been out. in the case of the ms20, we're talking about 30 years of collective experience, so it would be dumb not to drink from that fountain. a particularly fine source for this is youtube, which hosts hundreds of videos of enthusiasts showing what cool tricks their synths can do. finally, i go through preset banks of others, just to see what they've done.

after these preparations, i'll start creating presets, guided by three goals: to show what the synth can do, to show what i can do with it and to give users usable patches.

when showing what a synth can do, i mainly look for sounds that are typical for that synth. many presets i come across rely heavily on the unison spread and unison detune, which can be found on almost all synths nowdays. take them off, and you're left with a bland sound that could've come out of any synth. i'm aware that due to the demands of modern day production, unison is indispensable, but i prefer to get a good, typical dry sound first and then use unison as icing on the cake.

the same could be said about effects, but i treat them a bit differently, as some of them are part of the basic structure of a synth. the chorus on the roland juno60 comes to mind, as does the ensemble effect on the korg polysix . my rule of thumb is that i don't use generic on board effects to define a sound, but only to sweeten it. of course i use unison and effects, but in my presets i want to emphasize the elements that set a synth apart, not what it has in common with other synths. unison and most effects don't set a synth apart, it's the synthesis engine that does. so that's what i focus on.

looking for typical sounds combines nicely with the desire to show my skills as a synthesist. i keep in mind though, that people are inspired by the audible result, not by how a sound is made. no matter how smart a preset, if it sounds like teh suck, it is teh suck. to prevent that i get blinded by my own cleverness, i let fresh presets rest for a while until i forget how i exactly made them. that allows me to just listen to how they sound.

the final step is deciding whether the presets are usable, which means balancing my preferences with that of the target audience. most synths cater to a wide audience, so making some good bass, pads, lead and fx sounds is usually a safe bet. when a synth has been hijacked by a certain genre, it's advisable to research how the synth is typically used and take that into account.

in the end, i hope my presets either inspire users to build tracks with them or motivate them to explore the synth's possibilities for themselves. maybe my upcoming ms20 preset bank holds something for you.

update: whoomp, there it is.