Overcoming overchoice

[CyberGene]

I’ve purchased a lot of virtual instruments, effects and apps, third-party patches. I also have multiple hardware synths and pianos. But I use none. (Well, not exactly but I’m trying to make a point).

 

I start laying down an idea in my DAW and when I begin browsing through the thousands of patches and options I feel a sudden choice paralysis, should I use this synth, or maybe that, or no, maybe that other one, no, no, no… and it instantly kills my creativity.

 

I’ve been following a composer on YouTube, Jameson Nathan Jones, who is a former classical composer who is now using synths and creates modern music. He recently posted about how he is more creative with self imposed limitations and gives an example of trying to come up with a music idea by only using two keys at a time, no chords. But that’s just one example of intentionally seeking to limit yourself and I’m sure it can be applied to any situation of choice overload, e.g. to force myself to use only one synth. 
 

What do you think? How do you overcome overchoice?

[Adam Burgess]

Imposing these limitations is a great way to improve and make you focus on certain things.
Maybe the results may not make it into a finished song/tune/production - but guess you'll have learnt something! I think it's quite fun.

Use one synth for everything - gets as much as you can from whatever you choose. How simple would the synth be? Live a little and let yourself use some polyphony, or give yourself hard labour doing mono lines only? Harmony and counterpoint are different and wonderful things…

Use one note/chord - how many ways can you make this interesting? Same way as everything - timbre, dynamics, rhythm… 

More abstractly, only use sounds that say the 'colour yellow' to you, or remind you of a smell, or what a gerbil would play… 

Use mathematics to create patterns…

They're all great as learning tools, for sure 🙂 

 

[JamPro]

I do improv exercises on the piano.  Each improv exercise is a (jazz or blues) song I play in all keys, improving over the changes of the song.  Sometimes, my mind is overwhelmed by all the things I could play, and I have trouble getting anything out.  My standard trick is to restrict myself to one or two notes only (say tonic and seventh underneath it) and try to play an entire chorus making coherent musical phrases with only those two notes.  By eliminating a wide range of choices, I have reduced the things my hand needs to do to (play on one or two notes only), and this helps focus my attention.  After playing a chorus using only one or two notes, my mind then fills with phrases involving other notes, so as the exercise goes on, I am playing more complex lines eventually using all notes.

 

It works a treat for me. 

[ProfD]

2 hours ago, CyberGene said:

What do you think? How do you overcome overchoice?

I could have a house full of hardware KBs and a laptop full of VSTs. But I don't for this very reason.

 

I have a Rhodes. I have some type of synth/sampling KB workstation. These 2 pieces of gear insure that I make deliberate decisions when it comes to what I play, compose and the sound(s) I need.

 

The best way to avoid sound choice analysis paralysis is to pull up a piano sound to see if that  melodic or harmonic part in question still works and/or is necessary.😎

[CyberGene]

10 minutes ago, ProfD said:

The best way to avoid sound choice analysis paralysis is to pull up a piano sound to see if that  melodic or harmonic part in question still works and/or is necessary.

That’s what I’ve been doing lately and indeed it’s super useful!

[SamuelBLupowitz]

I’ve always told myself that a great song can be performed on just piano and still read as a great song. 
 

There are, of course, a ton of exceptions to that rule (as fun as my piano arrangement of Master of Puppets may be), and certainly I’ve been inspired to go different places harmonically and melodically based on the instrument or patch that I cue up.

 

But whenever possible, unless I’m hearing a specific sound in my head (this needs a Rhodes! I want to write something around an 808 groove!) I try to write first, arrange later. The surest way to stop your composition brain in its tracks is to Tone Quest before you have enough context to know what tones will properly support the music (and lyrics, if it’s that kind of tune). And if you’re in the middle of writing and you go “man, this electric piano I’m playing on just isn’t working — it needs a juicy synth patch,” that’s your compositional brain engaging with your arranger brain, rather than yielding to it.

[Tusker]

6 minutes ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

But whenever possible, unless I’m hearing a specific sound in my head (this needs a Rhodes! I want to write something around an 808 groove!) I try to write first, arrange later.

Same here.  I have four tracks of piano set aside in my template to do a “piano mockup” first. It helps with the composing and also the arranging. The composing because it prevents a tentative musical idea from being swamped by “overchoice.” (Great term btw.)

 

Or forgetting the idea in a “squirrel.” (“Look at this great sound. I wonder how I should use it.”)

 

On the arranging side the piano mockup reduces the dreaded “pancake effect” where there are nice layers which don’t relate much to each other.
 

When I have a badly arranged/written piece it’s often because I moved too quickly from a partially conceived mockup to texture/orchestration. Still working on workflow. Great topic. 👍👍

[CEB]

Don't overthink things.  But I guess that has to be your nature if you are a composer.  Especially if you create things that are timbre specific.  Composers have to think.  Players play.

 

In my world gear is overrated.  I have lots of stuff but now only I just play what is handy.  Gear is for gigs.  At the the end of of day I'm a pianist and a organist who had to learn synthesis and technology to make a living and raise two kids.  I work on technique these days.  This morning my problem is accuracy.  I sat down tried to play Grieg's Concerto.  In my university days I nailed it ... sort of.  Today it sucks.  I'm having to slow it down so much compared to how I used to play to cleanly hit the E majors chords in the opening.  I suck so bad I don't have time to worry about tones.  LOL  I guess I should leave Keyboard Corner and move to Piano World

 

When I was a player my world was based around  someone telling me "You play this song."    Gear was something for re-creation.  When I do write the piece of gear I use is a Baldwin grand.   MY challenge and need for gear since doing Pop jobs were getting the gear that would allow me to do multiple combi changes in a single song during performance and require no time to go from sounds to prescribed sounds in show order.  The tone became almost a secondary problem.

[ProfD]

8 minutes ago, CEB said:

I suck so bad I don't have time to worry about tones.  LOL  I guess I should leaving Keyboard Corner and move to Piano World...

Absolutely not.🤣

 

Brotha @CEB, KC Is your home. We can encourage and motivate you to continue practicing to refresh those piano/organ chops with a side of synthesis/gear talk.😁

 

At least overchoice is the least of your concerns. Playing lollipops is a different story.🤣😎

[johnchop]

I have a lot of Ableton sessions that are  “one-synth challenge” exercises. Thats really helped me weed out some stuff I thought I liked. I’ve still got too many plugins.

I try to keep a small library (<20) of favorite presets so I can just drag and drop and write without thinking too hard. 

 

Writing and production are usually separate processes for me, as I don’t have a Jacob Collier-esque gigabrain to do both at once.
 

I work at trusting myself and my instincts.

 

[GRollins]

I needed a push broom for my shop.

 

I went to Lowe's. They had push brooms for smooth concrete floors, rough concrete floors, hardwood floors, bare dirt floors, linoleum floors, you name it. 38 kinds of push broom. Unbelievable. I never knew there were so many kinds of push brooms.

 

My mind went into overload. I walked out, went to Walmart, and bought a plain vanilla "Push Broom."

 

I've been happy with it.

 

Now, to be honest, a lot of the time I get anal, obsess over the myriad details, and have a good time doing so, making sure that I get the exact, perfect, ne plus ultra item to do the job. Other times, as has become a catch phrase around the house: "I just want a push broom, dammit!"

 

My point is that you don't always have to follow the same path. Obsess over it when you have the time and feel like it. Take the simple path when you feel like it. Make it a choice, not a crisis. Whatever suits you at the moment.

 

Grey

[KuruPrionz]

First, I'm a guitarist and I stink on keyboards (although I have an XKey 25 and do use it sometimes).

 

I have a Fishman Triple Play for playing plugins. You're right, too many plugins is madness and some individual plugins by themselves are total insanity - the Cherry Audio

8-Voice comes to mind, more "knobs" than anybody should ever have to deal with. 

 

So, here's what I do. I park 4 synths in Triple Play, choose a preset for each one of them and play a part for the recording. That creates a multi instrument MIDI track. Sometimes I keep the Triple Play and 4 synths, most of the time I don't. If I do, I probably shut off some of the presets or change them. 

 

Copy and paste the MIDI track to however many open tracks you want. Drop a plugin, grab a preset that sounds good. Maybe have a few tracks like this. Sum those to a stem, add EQ so you can fit it in the mix and move on. If you want to go deeper, just automate the volume and panning in the tracks for the stem and bring things in and out of the mix. 

 

It doesn't take long. And I don't care if everybody else must tweak all their presets, you could spend a week twisting knobs on the 8-Voice and never come up with anything that's better than just clicking the arrow at the top and choosing somebody else's hard work. I don't let it bog me down, I want to get stuff done!

 

 

 

[Docbop]

Restrictions are great for practice and for composition.    When I was an Art major they talked about when great painters felt they had run out of creative is when they would work with just two colors.    When I went to  GIT we had a composition course initial assignment we were limited to just the notes of the triad.   When we complained about it being too limiting our teacher talked about his teacher's teacher a famous classical composer (sorry forgot the composer's name.)   He said he would making students compose with only one note (they had studied theory and orchestration already).    The wonders how to compose with just one note and realized everything was about rhythm and using the sounds of the orchestra to be creative.   My teacher said they had to spend weeks writing with one note.   Then the composer told his students they could now use two notes, he said they were overwhelmed with all the possibilities after all they learned from writing with one note.

 

Also a lot of songwriters don't write on their main instruments they play another instrument to avoid using the familiar patterns and such they already know, but also to not subconsciously limit their thinking from knowing their limitations the instrument.   Old story I heard about Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin.   Page didn't play anything but guitar, but wanted to avoid what I was saying the familiar.  So Page would take a guitar and randomly detune it.  Then use a slide to play the detuned guitar and see what melodies and riff ideas he could come up with.  When he found something he liked he'd record it on a cassette deck, then tune the guitar back up normal and figure out what he'd come up with.   

 

Restrictions are a great way to work on creativity and to avoid the familiar when trying to be creative.     To the OP make yourself a set of flashcards with all your keyboards on them,   Then shuffle the cards and then pick one whatever the keyboard is, that's you'll use until you write something you like.   Then rinse and repeat.

[KuruPrionz]

22 minutes ago, Docbop said:

Restrictions are great for practice and for composition.    When I was an Art major they talked about when great painters felt they had run out of creative is when they would work with just two colors.    When I went to  GIT we had a composition course initial assignment we were limited to just the notes of the triad.   When we complained about it being too limiting our teacher talked about his teacher's teacher a famous classical composer (sorry forgot the composer's name.)   He said he would making students compose with only one note (they had studied theory and orchestration already).    The wonders how to compose with just one note and realized everything was about rhythm and using the sounds of the orchestra to be creative.   My teacher said they had to spend weeks writing with one note.   Then the composer told his students they could now use two notes, he said they were overwhelmed with all the possibilities after all they learned from writing with one note.

 

Also a lot of songwriters don't write on their main instruments they play another instrument to avoid using the familiar patterns and such they already know, but also to not subconsciously limit their thinking from knowing their limitations the instrument.   Old story I heard about Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin.   Page didn't play anything but guitar, but wanted to avoid what I was saying the familiar.  So Page would take a guitar and randomly detune it.  Then use a slide to play the detuned guitar and see what melodies and riff ideas he could come up with.  When he found something he liked he'd record it on a cassette deck, then tune the guitar back up normal and figure out what he'd come up with.   

 

Restrictions are a great way to work on creativity and to avoid the familiar when trying to be creative.     To the OP make yourself a set of flashcards with all your keyboards on them,   Then shuffle the cards and then pick one whatever the keyboard is, is what you'll use until you write something you like.   Then rinse and repeat.

I have a fretless banjo with nylon strings that I built from a kit, it's a copy of the Boucher banjo which was pre Civil War. 5 string with the high drone. 

It's great for taking me out of my comfort zone!

I've used an ukulele too, I need to get another one. Also a small glockenspiel thingie sometimes. 

 

One note would be interesting!

[obxa]

 Have recently been following several blogs and videos on this subject. Once again this forum knows my habits LOL   This is a common topic... AKA "option overload" or "option paralysis"   https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/choice-overload-bias  

 

Rather than impose severe limitations, I recently created a slightly different 4 step approach and mindset: 

 

ONE:  I didn't erase my hundreds  (more than that) of plugs.  Instead, I put a plug in folder in Logic that contains only the bare bone essentials I need for composing as well as basic FX.   Because I need visual reinforcement,  I made two printed labels put below my monitor:   "Better Ideas, not better plugins"  "Music first, Audio second".   

 

Like others here, I wear many hats with what I do, but have forced myself to remember which hat I'm wearing, and when it's appropriate to change hats.  Yes, I literally thought about using real hats.  😀

 

It's easy for us to become distracted because we have almost unlimited options.  I can spend 3 hours trying every Rhodes or  Minimoog  plug-in and associated FX chain.

I truly enjoy that kind of thing, but it doesn't help finish any actual music.

 

 I started on a 4 track with a single Delay box.  Later on early Midi with just one multi-timbral module at home, and maybe 2 or 3 at school.    I was incredibly prolific; because I didn't have the power to do extensive FX etc..  Now with unlimited power, and because I'm poster child ADHD,  I can easily go down endless rabbit holes of reverbs, compressors and delay resolutions etc. -  when I should be working on actual music.  Side note:  I've thought about going back on Ritalin or similar at some point, but that's a topic for another thread. 

 

TWO:  So back to hats:  when I'm composing, I work on music.  I'll pick from a basic sound-set of favorite synths for the style I'm working on and do the bare minimum.  I'm not always successful,  but getting much better now that it's a conscious decision.   When it's time to mix,  I put on my audio hat and spend time on FX.  I'll play with delay times and other fun things,  or tweak synth sounds more.  But also try to set some limitations to actually mix, and not just tweak.     I also have "experiment and fool-around" days, where I do just play around (guilt free) with stuff and store presets or sounds for later use. 

 

And finally: DEADLINES.  I'm currently finishing up 2 EPs.  One is Smooth jazz, the other a Chill-step thing.  I've pushed myself to have them completed and released by a certain date. (see step 3)

 

THREE: My most valuable piece of hardware ?  I've done several projects for a local producer/composer who had many hits in the 60's & 70's.  First time at his house, besides the gold records...  I noticed on his office wall were several dry-erase boards that outlined the steps, tasks,  and timeline for various songs/albums he was currently working on. 

I started noticing other successful composers and studio folks that also do the dry erase board.   It's probably an obvious well known 7 habits of success "duh"  kind of thing for others,  but it's made an impactful difference.   For me, it can't be a digital to-do list.   I need a big honking visual thing I can see daily. 

 

FOUR:   I hate to say it, because I find it so enjoyable, and absolutely love the community aspect -  But spending time on Forums is a distraction, and very often contributes to buying more stuff.  So I try to limit to when I'm on the road, or a fixed amount of time.    I noticed some of the most frequent posters on the composing and audio forums actually have very little music out there.   Not a judgment, just an observation.    Finally, been taking myself off vendor mailing lists for plugins and trying to really limit those I buy.  There are many vids on this, Barry Johns recently did a great one:

 

[D. Gauss]

As a studio owner for over 35 years, I have tons of stuff. waaay too much stuff.  dozens of guitars, vintage amps, real keys, plugins, microphones, drumsets, etc.

As a songwriter/producer for both myself and others, for just as long, i have "my room"  setup with only what i need to realize a song quickly and efficiently without the left brain technical stuff getting in the way. 

  Situated in a semicircle behind me and the com-pu-tor,  i have a bass, a tele, les paul and acoustic, a 3 tier keyboard setup with Piano, Whurly & B3 sounds per tier, a miced drumset and an electronic drumset (lockdown & family members home), tenor and bari sax, a pedal steel guitar and a vocal mic.  All instruments are already miced (if need be, DI-ed, or otherwise a virtual plug) and assigned in a template in the com-pu-tor. From the moment i click "new song" template in the DAW, i can bash out a complete song top-to-bottom fast 'n' furious in less than an hour while the ideas are fresh and not be boggled down in needless/endless choices.  After that, i may (or may not) go back and refine things with different instruments/sounds, etc. I love working this way.

[summerinstereo]

I stick to the same thing(s) and force myself to just release the song once the time is up. That's how I beat this, for the most part.

 

For example - with VSTs etc, I'll decide to just use the same synth VST for the whole thing. Unless, I already have something specific in mind that I liked or picked up from somewhere else or prior experience - ie a nice bass patch that I'm happy to tweak and reuse from another synth or whatever. I'm a big fan of just narrowing down the toolset as much as possible. Kinda need to.

 

All of my synthwave songs follow the above - one of them is just UJAM's USynths, one of them is all Cherry Audio's GX-80, another is almost all Fabfilter's One.

For a short period, I was releasing a song a month, and I was learning how far in advance I need to release a song to be viable for playlist consideration etc with Spotify and all that.

 

I've stopped for now, but I'll get back into it as soon as I've got the rest of this year fleshed out with gigs - it's just more important that I keep on top of finances and also get some extra cash together to pick up a Yamaha CK-88, and replace my car. I'll get back into music as soon as the gigs are more fleshed out later in the year though.

 

Anyway, when I was releasing a song a month - I decided I like at least 2 weeks in advance, preferably a full month. Which means there are deadlines that I just have to submit the song by. This was a big way of getting me to actually release my music and not just hold onto it forever.

 

I hate having too many options available. I just have to narrow things down drastically - I use the same plugins for compression, EQ, sidechaining etc.. I stick with what I know and like now. Of course getting to that point was a learning experience in itself. But now I know, and it helps.

 

I haven't released a song using it, but I've actually set up a little template in my DAW for future songs, I've messed with it and it seems super cool - it's awesome just opening it up and boom, I've got my pad VSTs, bass VSTs, lead synth VSTs, drums etc already pre-loaded. I'm not forced into sticking with these sounds for the final product, but it's been super awesome for just opening the DAW and getting ideas down - completely removes the "what sound do I want" aspect, in a way, it's a little similar to picking up my acoustic guitar. The guitar is the guitar - unplugged, it's going to sound pretty much the same no matter what - outside of string changes and changing where I pick/strum but the instrument is the instrument. Same deal with a piano or keyboard etc. 

 

Narrowing things down is handy. If you haven't already, try the template idea. It's not a song-structure template, it just means putting your VSTs into tracks - even naming the tracks - and also putting your preferred FX etc onto the tracks, I've got a reverb bus, drum bus, vocal FX bus etc etc all set up and ready to go. 

[Morrissey]

14 hours ago, CyberGene said:

I feel a sudden choice paralysis, should I use this synth, or maybe that, or no, maybe that other one, no, no, no… and it instantly kills my creativity.

 

A good read on this is Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.  About 20 years old so the anecdotes may be a bit dated but the concepts still apply... about purposefully limiting choices to increase happiness in an overabundant setting.

[David Emm]

14 hours ago, CyberGene said:

What do you think? How do you overcome overchoice?

How dare you use a foul word like "overchoice" on KC!

 

I dunno... I've generally had a solid image of my ideal inner band. I've owned pieces that didn't take me where I wanted to go, but I've also (mostly) resisted overloading the band. Two or three examples of most instruments (like VAs) is plenty, unless you are a guitarist. Different world there.

 

Its easy to cover things now, even precious oddities like the Mellotron. Chromaphone handles so many FM and additive duties that I gradually veered over to physical modeling for those, which is good for my work flow. You grow as you go. The results of what started as a piano piece can wind up as all sorts of things.     

 

Its not overchoice for me, its the broad options for more PRECISE choice.         

 

Not to be a lying goon about it, because I had a blast building my Favorites from the GX-80 presets, but there's a Venn point between Patch Fatigue and going swimming in the right musical lake for you. Besides, you're a lying **** if you say you don't need a CS-80. Everyone needs a CS-80 except the ghost of Karen Carpenter.    

[KuruPrionz]

53 minutes ago, summerinstereo said:

I stick to the same thing(s) and force myself to just release the song once the time is up. That's how I beat this, for the most part.

 

For example - with VSTs etc, I'll decide to just use the same synth VST for the whole thing. Unless, I already have something specific in mind that I liked or picked up from somewhere else or prior experience - ie a nice bass patch that I'm happy to tweak and reuse from another synth or whatever. I'm a big fan of just narrowing down the toolset as much as possible. Kinda need to.

 

All of my synthwave songs follow the above - one of them is just UJAM's USynths, one of them is all Cherry Audio's GX-80, another is almost all Fabfilter's One.

For a short period, I was releasing a song a month, and I was learning how far in advance I need to release a song to be viable for playlist consideration etc with Spotify and all that.

 

I've stopped for now, but I'll get back into it as soon as I've got the rest of this year fleshed out with gigs - it's just more important that I keep on top of finances and also get some extra cash together to pick up a Yamaha CK-88, and replace my car. I'll get back into music as soon as the gigs are more fleshed out later in the year though.

 

Anyway, when I was releasing a song a month - I decided I like at least 2 weeks in advance, preferably a full month. Which means there are deadlines that I just have to submit the song by. This was a big way of getting me to actually release my music and not just hold onto it forever.

 

I hate having too many options available. I just have to narrow things down drastically - I use the same plugins for compression, EQ, sidechaining etc.. I stick with what I know and like now. Of course getting to that point was a learning experience in itself. But now I know, and it helps.

 

I haven't released a song using it, but I've actually set up a little template in my DAW for future songs, I've messed with it and it seems super cool - it's awesome just opening it up and boom, I've got my pad VSTs, bass VSTs, lead synth VSTs, drums etc already pre-loaded. I'm not forced into sticking with these sounds for the final product, but it's been super awesome for just opening the DAW and getting ideas down - completely removes the "what sound do I want" aspect, in a way, it's a little similar to picking up my acoustic guitar. The guitar is the guitar - unplugged, it's going to sound pretty much the same no matter what - outside of string changes and changing where I pick/strum but the instrument is the instrument. Same deal with a piano or keyboard etc. 

 

Narrowing things down is handy. If you haven't already, try the template idea. It's not a song-structure template, it just means putting your VSTs into tracks - even naming the tracks - and also putting your preferred FX etc onto the tracks, I've got a reverb bus, drum bus, vocal FX bus etc etc all set up and ready to go. 

I always track without plugins, much lower latency that way. 

I rarely use more than one plugin per track. The last song I recorded had 12 tracks. 2 tracks had drum plugins. 2 tracks had zero plugins. And one track had 2 plugins. The other 7 tracks had one plugin each. 

 

I'm working towards a simpler way of getting things done, this is an interesting thread!

[KuruPrionz]

9 minutes ago, David Emm said:

How dare you use a foul word like "overchoice" on KC!

 

I dunno... I've generally had a solid image of my ideal inner band. I've owned pieces that didn't take me where I wanted to go, but I've also (mostly) resisted overloading the band. Two or three examples of most instruments (like VAs) is plenty, unless you are a guitarist. Different world there.

 

Its easy to cover things now, even precious oddities like the Mellotron. Chromaphone handles so many FM and additive duties that I gradually veered over to physical modeling for those, which is good for my work flow. You grow as you go. The results of what started as a piano piece can wind up as all sorts of things.     

 

Its not overchoice for me, its the broad options for more PRECISE choice.         

 

Not to be a lying goon about it, because I had a blast building my Favorites from the GX-80 presets, but there's a Venn point between Patch Fatigue and going swimming in the right musical lake for you. Besides, you're a lying **** if you say you don't need a CS-80. Everyone needs a CS-80 except the ghost of Karen Carpenter.    

Even I have the GX-80 and I am but a lowly guitar player who does not believe in the tempered scale... 😇

I haven't tried it yet, someday I'll get around to it.

[Steve Nathan]

Just to push back slightly:  In many cases, the sounds are just as important as the notes.  Sometimes, one synth simply doesn't convey the feeling you want from the part as well as another synth.  I'm not a serious composer, and these days I only make recordings for my own amusement, but I don't think of this as wasting time. I rather enjoy searching for something close and tweaking it to perfect.

[Sundown]

Hi Gene,

 

There is great insight/wisdom in your initial post, for this simple reason... Whenever I find myself jonesing for the latest analog re-issue or ROMpler superstation, I ask myself: "Is sound availability or sound quality really the thing holding me back from finishing projects?" 

 

The answer is always No. A new instrument might spark some creativity or new thoughts, but with the abundance of sounds at my disposal (from plugins alone), it's not the real obstacle. And no one (outside of perhaps someone on this discussion forum) is going to listen to one of my tracks and notice that my Oberheim sawtooth pad is a plugin and not a real OBXa. 

 

If I flip back to my start when I only had a Roland D-20, I explored the crap out of it. I didn't have anything else and while I'm not an expert at many things, I've pushed a Roland D-20 as hard as someone can. I know what that instrument can do. I don't have that same luxury of time (or constraint) today with the instruments at my disposal.

 

One thing that I do when I get a new plugin is immediately rate the sounds. Most of them have a rating system and I mark the junk as one star and the good stuff as four or five stars. I would delete the garbage presets outright if I could (some are really bad or not to my liking), but that's not always possible with factory libraries. Even with 1,000 presets, I might only find 20-30 that are five stars and maybe another 20-30 that are four stars. And maybe there are another 20 to 40 that can be tweaked into something decent. The rest (in my experience) is garbage, or just not in line with my tastes. 

 

Todd

[Al Quinn]

Overchoice is something I consciously avoid. I usually take it to the opposite extreme where I put constraints on all but one or two aspects of the music. Doing this narrows my scope and allows me to go deep into those one or two things. When I go deep things show themselves, develop, grow, and get ingrained in my subconscious — sounds and emotions connect. I usually have a goal and focus in on it while constraining everything else. If I become undisciplined and allow myself too much freedom I get overwhelmed, discouraged, and grouchy. This applies to everything except performance. When I perform I just play (i.e., no constraints or rules).

[bill5]

  

18 hours ago, CyberGene said:

How do you overcome overchoice?

Still working on it   

 

I am at kind of a crossroads with synths and plugins in general. A few years back, it was all new to me...once I discovered the world of plugins and all these synths/VIs, I was like a kid in a candy store, esp with so much stuff, including a lot of really good stuff, free? whoo hoo......I was trying/buying/downloading everything in sight. Why not? All these new synths and sounds/presets available, it was great. I was trying and writing down my impressions of all presets for all synths I tried...not just how much I liked it, but what kind of sound it was so I could have this great reference source later on.

 

Until I realized what a ridiculous number of synths and esp presets there were and how I would never have time to browse all of them much less document them, though I tried initially (Omniscape boasts some insane number of presets and that is precisely why I wouldn't want the freaking thing even if it didn't cost so much). Also I found that many of the synths overlapped with very similar sounds, and also how many diff sounds did I really need? Ozric Tentacles I'm not. So while I still browse presets here and there, I gave up trying to document them all as I planned and just working with mostly a few that I really liked and just having the others in my back pocket if they have a "niche" sound which I might need on occasion (like retro synths etc). 

 

I guess in a nutshell I overcame overchoice by taking a page from Nancy Reagan and just said no.