#Serum fl studio how to#
#Serum fl studio professional#

For now, you should know that every preset in Serum uses at least one wavetable or waveform as its base. We’ll cover the difference between presets and wavetables in more detail later in this article.

Serum is one of those synths it comes with over 450 presets in different sound categories like Bass, Lead, Synth, Plucked, Pads, FX, and more. If you are a producer who is more focused on musical composition rather than sound design, then you’ll want to use a synth that comes with an extensive stock library of presets. Now that you’re sufficiently informed about the role of presets in music production let’s turn our attention to Serum. It would be foolish to renounce these helpful tools because of a small minority in the producer community who is speaking out against it. Using presets is a great way to turbocharge your production, especially if you are a beginner or intermediate producer. Layering presets, slightly tweaking the knobs, and applying new effects are standard techniques to make your sound stand out while keeping the creative process time-efficient. Besides, if you want to make a preset unrecognizable from its default settings, there are many ways to achieve it. Your listeners will care about whether they can feel the vibe of your music presets will be the last thing on their minds. Your audience won’t care whether you used a preset from a popular pack or designed the sound yourself. Although the sounds won’t be exclusive to you, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make something unique out of them. Using presets from packs or soundbanks indeed implies relying on sounds that are available to other producers too.

#Serum fl studio professional#

By reverse-engineering presets, you can gain insight into professional sound design techniques, which is one of the main ways how producers learn about sound design in the first place. For that reason, you can view every preset as a blueprint that holds all the necessary instructions to create a captivating sound. If you take a closer look at a preset for a complex synth like Serum, you will see what knobs and settings the sound designer used to generate the idea. Although presets’ primary purpose is to provide the producer with a ready to go sound, they can also be a valuable learning tool.

#Serum fl studio how to#

Presets can quickly show you which type of sound works well in your track and even give you new ideas on how to expand on your composition. By browsing through presets, you can save a lot of time and frustration. Even if you know how to design sounds yourself, you might experience a creative block. At times you won’t know what type of sound exactly you need for your melody or chord progression.

Presets can be very inspiring and start the ball rolling.

It’s okay to rely on other people’s expertise and focus on aspects of music production that are more in line with your skills. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel if you want to build a car.

By using presets made by others, you are taking advantage of the knowledge of experienced sound designers whose main favorite pastime is to experiment with sound.

Still, it is rare to find a unicorn producer who is an expert in everything ⁠- composition, arrangement, mixing, mastering, sound design, etc. Music producers bring a wide variety of skills to the table.More open-minded producers who are looking to speed up their workflow and spend less time on sound design will favor the use of presets for various reasons such as: Purists who want to control every single aspect of their music production will often take a negative stance towards presets. After all, you are not making the sounds yourself you’re using someone else’s work. One of the common questions that can spark a bit of controversy from time to time is whether using presets is equivalent to cheating. The most popular synths not only have a stock library of presets but also enjoy a constant supply of new presets that are being made by talented producers and sound designers. Pretty much any VST synthesizer worth its salt comes with a library of presets. The initial preset will be either a generic waveform (e.g., saw wave), or a more sophisticated preset sound that is supposed to demonstrate the power and versatility of the synth. When you open any VST synth inside your DAW for the first time and play a random note, you will encounter two kinds of default settings. Presets is just an abbreviation for preset settings. When producers talk about their favorite synthesizer, you will often hear the term presets thrown around a lot.