Programming: prior or during songwriting?

[annikk.exe]

How do you guys work programming into your songwriting?
Do you write all your patches beforehand, then pick from the patches you've written when writing a song, modding patches a little here and there to make them fit better?

Or do you start completely from scratch and program the sounds as you write?


I've historically always taken the latter approach but I've been finding it can take a long time for me to develop a good sound on the Virus. It's probably mainly due to my inexperience with it, I guess as I get more and more used to it programming will become much faster.

What approach do you guys find works best?


-Annikk

[Cantankerous]

Originally Posted by annikk.exe

How do you guys work programming into your songwriting?
Do you write all your patches beforehand, then pick from the patches you've written when writing a song, modding patches a little here and there to make them fit better?

Or do you start completely from scratch and program the sounds as you write?


I've historically always taken the latter approach but I've been finding it can take a long time for me to develop a good sound on the Virus. It's probably mainly due to my inexperience with it, I guess as I get more and more used to it programming will become much faster.

What approach do you guys find works best?


-Annikk

I myself am also very slow at programming with the Virus. I tend to take presets I like and modify them from their. I generally take the latter approach as well and program as I write, I find if I create the sounds before hand I setting up a dictatorship to HAVE to use those sounds since I already spent all the time creating them. During the writing process your creative flow can change drastically calling upon new ideas which mean new sounds. I never limit myself to what sounds I can use by selecting them before hand. One or two to get you started is fine, we need something to spark the flow of the tune.

[Splat!]

I usually pre-program patches. Just can't work on a patch during a track, I lose my track idea, lol. I concentrate more on song-writing then.
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[cl516]

sometimes they go hand in hand for me, but i alternate between days of programming sounds on virus to not programming a single sound at all but using the stuff i made to write songs instead. this has been my way since Virus C.

[Ceri JC]

My usual approach, regardless of the synth used, is to first make patches, keeping the genre(s) they'll be used for in mind. Then, when it comes to writing a track, I go and pick from amongst these and then almost always do some fairly minor tweaking to get it to sit well in the mix. Occassionally, I'll use a patch I've written previously exactly as it is, or make a new patch specifically for a track, but these latter two are much less common.