Option Overload - The conundrum of the modern musician

G'day folks, it's Michael here, and this is our Bass Guitar. It's not a very expensive one, and while you can hear us playing it in a few of our songs, we're not exactly a dedicated bassist.

 

More to the point though, this Bass guitar, despite looking all sorts of funky and having 3 whole knobs to twiddle, is a relatively limited instrument in terms of what sounds it'll produce.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, it's got a fretboard full of notes, you can twiddle the knobs for some fine-tuning, and you can do fingerstyle, playing with a pick, slapping, even tapping!

 

And all those choices might -seem- like a lot, but that leads me quite nicely into today's topic, which is that, as a modern, computer-equipped musician, you have an absolutely ridiculous amount of options to play with.

 

To the point, in fact, where you cannot allow yourself to be a perfectionist. With the amount of tools available today, you'll be stuck tweaking and tuning for actual, literal years before you manage to release anything.

 

So, in order to showcase my point, let's look at some examples of fairly common software you might find on a home-studio PC:

 

Above, you can see the Instrument selection of Native Instrument's "Kontakt" platform. The fancy pictures each represent a single virtual instrument that can be played with a MIDI-device of your choice. (So keyboards, pads, a keytar, an EWI, and many others.)

 

And in the bottom right corner, if the picture is big enough, you can make out the line: 3844 presets.

So, for the uninitiated: In this kind of software, a "preset" refers to a specific arrangement of settings -within- a virtual instrument.

 

With some instruments, like say, a piano, the presets within will sound broadly similar, because they're all variations of a sampled piano. But then, with many of these virtual instruments, especially the synthesis-heavy ones, you'll find that each and every preset sounds quite different. To the point where it actually sounds like an entirely different instrument.

 

So, you can see where this goes, already. 3844 presets for various virtual instruments, with a lot of them sounding pretty unique and distinct. And just to point out, we haven't even got all of our Kontakt instruments installed for disk space reasons.

 

Suddenly, that Bass Guitar of ours looks a lot less capable, eh?

 

But I've got more! For example, have a look at Arturia's Analog Lab:

 

Did you spot it?

That's right.

 

6225 presets.

 

Now, mind you, Kontakt involves more recorded samples of physical instruments, whereas Analog Lab is way more Synth-heavy, and therefore the bigger number of presets isn't that surprising.

A synthesizer simply has far more options to create sounds than say, a violin or Guitar. But we'll get to that.

The point is though: With us owning the pro version of Analog Lab and a handful of extra sounbanks, we're looking at 6225 choices of sound, and with most of them being synth-based, they all sound quite different from one another.

 

Basically, you really, -really- can't ever try every sound in your arsenal and settle on the one that works best for the song. Because just picking instruments would probably take weeks.

 

But wait, there's more yet to come! Instead of talking about presets, let's talk about......

Synthesizers.

Pictured above is Arturia's Pigments. It's their Flagship software-synthesizer (They do hardware ones, too), and even completely ignoring the presets it has, it gives you an almost silly amount of options when it comes to designing a sound from scratch, and then tweaking it to absolute perfection.

Which might sound great, but synthesizers like this one have taught us a valuable lesson when it comes to music making, and it's this:

 

When you're an independent artist, you have to wear many hats. Composer, producer, artist, marketer and more, and it all takes time. And if you so chose, you could add to that list the job of 

"Sound Designer". But we wouldn't recommend it.

 

You see, you -can- tune and tweak your sounds for hours, even days, and some people actually get paid to do so (You know, the ones who make all those presets!), but if you want to release your own music, you really probably shouldn't. It's too many options to fiddle with and still get something done in any reasonable time frame.

 

Here's another interesting Example of why that is:

 

 This is another Arturia software-synth, the "Modular V". An emulation of a Moog 55, and yes, it looks like a retro spaceship console with wooden trim.

In this one, you have gazillions of knobs to twiddle and virtual patch-cables to connect. You can even change out entire sections of the panel for different functionalities. It's modular! It's virtual modular, and just like hardware modular, you could spend the rest of time tweaking your sounds, what with the staggering amount of choice you have.

 

But let's say you've done all that. Maybe you spent 5 years locking in the perfect sound on your virtual modular synth, maybe you just picked the first preset you came across, or maybe you picked up your trusty ol' Bass guitar. Point is, you got past your option paralysis and laid down a cool track. Nice.

 

Now, time for yet more options, with...

Effects

 

Oh, so you thought you had escaped the overwhelming mountain of options just because you've finally managed to record everything?

 

Well, think again!

 

 

 Above, you see a selection of just some of the effect plugins we have installed in our DAW.

But what -are- effects? Well, that's a bit hard to pin down. You see, while an instrument, virtual or not, might have thousands of presets, ultimately it'll always do one thing: Make a sound.

 

 Not so with effect plugins.

 

They can be quite subtle, like a compressor, or even something that doesn't affect sound at all, like a spectrum meter.

 But then, most effects will do something reasonably major. Commonly, you have things like EQ, delay (echo), reverb, distortion, filters and many others.

 

EQs are a very common type of plugin. This one's Pro EQ, the built-in one for Studio One.

Some can get pretty crazy. Like plugins that mix the audio with a granual synthesis of itself, creating otherworldly echoes. And of course, there's all sorts of settings (And even presets!) to try.

 

This is Shaperbox 3. It has tons of options, including time shaper, with which you can emulate DJ scratching and the like.

 

You can use them to add finishing touches and fine-tune your sound to be just right. -Or- you can use them to completely and utterly change sounds on a fundamental level and effectively create new instruments with them.

 

So effectively, if you have a DAW and a decent selection of effect plugins, or indeed, a bunch of physical effect pedals, you've got a whole new world of options to tempt you!

This is a compressor. It essentially levels out the loud and quiet bits of the track.

 

And don't get us wrong, by the way. We like, and use all of the stuff we've talked about, here.

 

But we're trying to get some music released.

And something we've learned in due time is that as a do-it-yourself  indie musician and self-producer, you need to become good friends with the words "That'll do."

 

That's not to say that you shouldn't try out a bunch of options and see what fits your needs best.

Nono, by all means, experiment and try things.

But we really needed to learn that no, we can't use all of the options available all the time, because it'd take years to make a single song.

 

So you have to learn to just try a few options and pick something that works. Remember that music is art, and there's no objectively "correct" choice to make in the first place.

 

Instead, ya roll with the punches, pick something that fits, and get to work on the song. You might even wanna pick favorites. I mean, if you build familiarity with a specific tool, you'll get better at using it.

So that's something to keep in mind as well.

 

 In fact, if you're perhaps quite budget-restrained and can't afford all that many tools, take that last bit to heart. There's a certain joy to be had in working with limitations. You get that practice, and you learn to work well with what you have!

 

 But anyways, that's my take on the sheer, sometimes bewildering amount of options you have as a modern musician.

 

Hopefully you enjoyed the read, and are looking to go for another? Or maybe listen to some of our music? Or just have a good day in general. That'll work, too. 😉