Sound Design Process for Patch Libraries

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I would be grateful to know how any of you that are sound designers of various VI patch libraries go about creating a library. I'm not asking how you design a sound technically, I already know that. I'm asking about the process of putting together a patch library for sale for some VI or other.

Do you decide you want X number of pads, Y number of basses, N number of leads etc? Or do you just create a bunch of patches, and then put a library together from those?

How long does it typically take you to put a library together?

When you have a patch library ready to go, what's the process of getting it "out there" for others to buy?
Is it better to have you own website, or do you contract with some existing 3rd party patch library website?

What are the economics? How many copies of a good patch library can one expect to sell over, say, a year? I can't seem to find any good information on the business side of sound design. If you do a deal with a 3rd party, what's a typical arrangement?

Would appreciate any information. Thanks

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Anyone?

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You go with the flow.

I doubt anybody is going to divulge their financial arrangements either. I certainly ain't! :wink:

If you want to know whether you can make a living from sound design the answer is yes, but you'll never earn big money out of it. Even to earn a basic wage takes a couple of years hard effort at least. If you create patches for a commercial synth, the dev's are usually more interested in your relationship with them, your reliability and your ability to deliver work on time than anything else. You don't just turn up and ask for a gig, it doesn't work that way.

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tehlord wrote:You go with the flow.

I doubt anybody is going to divulge their financial arrangements either. I certainly ain't! :wink:

If you want to know whether you can make a living from sound design the answer is yes, but you'll never earn big money out of it. Even to earn a basic wage takes a couple of years hard effort at least. If you create patches for a commercial synth, the dev's are usually more interested in your relationship with them, your reliability and your ability to deliver work on time than anything else. You don't just turn up and ask for a gig, it doesn't work that way.
Well, I'm not asking for specifics but what is standard industry practice. For some reason, this all seems to be a closely guarded secret. Of course I would never expect to "just show up and ask for a gig" (I'm a lot smarter than that!), nor did I even imply that. I'm just trying to get some info on the process! No one seems willing to say!

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I don't think it's really secret. But in doing business it's very important to know some persons in key positions.

So what are the options?

1. Sell patches to synth developers as factory presets. Maybe give away some. Get them to know you via alpha-testing, providing great feedback and show them what you can squeeze out of their creations.
Example story: https://www.kvraudio.com/interviews/eri ... 16992?id=9
Eric Persig is about the only super star of patch design I can think of that became rich. Oh, maybe there are plenty of others. Most are composers also or work in the video game industry.

2. Find out who are the premium sellers of patch libraries and try to get your work noticed and work for them.

and/or, it gets somewhat easier by:

3. Create your own web shop for patches. Maybe start simple and give some away for free with a simple Joomla or Wordpress site. Try to get noticed that way and work your way up. Have a portfolio to show online.

Heck, maybe getting work as a sound designer is more difficult than getting a record contract as an artist! Lots of similarities... Get yourself noticed is important, but knowing the right people will get you further for sure! Maybe use Twitter to build up a network.
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DonaldM75 wrote:
Well, I'm not asking for specifics but what is standard industry practice. For some reason, this all seems to be a closely guarded secret. Of course I would never expect to "just show up and ask for a gig" (I'm a lot smarter than that!), nor did I even imply that. I'm just trying to get some info on the process! No one seems willing to say!
It's not a closely guarded secret, it's just that you're assuming there's a massive industry out there for sound designers, and there isn't. I know at least a dozen peers who make a living out of doing it (including myself) and everybody started a different way and got work in different ways. There's no 'going rate', but there is an average of what you can be paid for creating presets for 3rd party synths. One of my clients pays me less than half what another one does, but they give me a lot of other work so I'm cool with that.

As far as it being a 'secret', well you're asking people to divulge information that's (with respect) none of your business. My soundbank sales figures are between me and my wallet.

In a way it's like asking how you make money out of music. There are hundreds of ways of doing it, you just have to find out for yourself.

Without a portfolio, you have nothing. So just start making presets and banks and then figure out what you want to do with them.

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That's helpful info, thank you!

BertKoor wrote:I don't think it's really secret. But in doing business it's very important to know some persons in key positions.

So what are the options?

1. Sell patches to synth developers as factory presets. Maybe give away some. Get them to know you via alpha-testing, providing great feedback and show them what you can squeeze out of their creations.
Example story: https://www.kvraudio.com/interviews/eri ... 16992?id=9
Eric Persig is about the only super star of patch design I can think of that became rich. Oh, maybe there are plenty of others. Most are composers also or work in the video game industry.

2. Find out who are the premium sellers of patch libraries and try to get your work noticed and work for them.

and/or, it gets somewhat easier by:

3. Create your own web shop for patches. Maybe start simple and give some away for free with a simple Joomla or Wordpress site. Try to get noticed that way and work your way up. Have a portfolio to show online.

Heck, maybe getting work as a sound designer is more difficult than getting a record contract as an artist! Lots of similarities... Get yourself noticed is important, but knowing the right people will get you further for sure! Maybe use Twitter to build up a network.

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tehlord wrote:
It's not a closely guarded secret, it's just that you're assuming there's a massive industry out there for sound designers, and there isn't.
No, I not making any such assumption. In fact, I'm quite sure the market is limited. But HOW limited is something I'm trying to get a handle on. In most business ventures, one tries to gauge the potential market and potential for sales. That's so one can assess risk/reward and time vs reward and all that. Hence I asked for some basic info. If I'm going to invest X number of hours to create a product, then I want to have some idea of what I might see in sales - assuming I do all the other stuff necessary as well, which I would, of course. I've been frustrated trying to get some picture as to what this particular market looks like. That's why I am asking these sorts of questions.
tehlord wrote: I know at least a dozen peers who make a living out of doing it (including myself) and everybody started a different way and got work in different ways. There's no 'going rate', but there is an average of what you can be paid for creating presets for 3rd party synths.


I'm not looking to make a living at it if by that you mean my one and only means. But, would be interested in seeing if I can make something from it that would be a good return on time investment.
tehlord wrote:As far as it being a 'secret', well you're asking people to divulge information that's (with respect) none of your business. My soundbank sales figures are between me and my wallet.
Of course it is. Again, I'm not asking for anyone's specific numbers, nor would I. But there has to be some way to gauge the potential market. That's what I can't seem to get any metrics on.
tehlord wrote:In a way it's like asking how you make money out of music. There are hundreds of ways of doing it, you just have to find out for yourself.


Yes and no. I didn't have much trouble figuring out how much I could make scoring for videos, which I've done because I could gauge what my time was worth and what I could realistically bill, and I could provide a reasonable estimate on how much time a project would take. But for doing sound design of this sort, I'm coming up blank on that kind of info! Anyway, thanks for responding.

Without a portfolio, you have nothing. So just start making presets and banks and then figure out what you want to do with them.[/quote]

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I'm not someone who is making money off their patches at the moment, but I've thought about it. I don't think there could possibly be any one answer to how successful you could be doing this as there are just so many variables.

If you're happy to follow genre trends and work with popular synths then you could potentially be quite successful - but then of course you've also got a lot of competition from everyone else who's doing that - so you'd have to really be nailing those genre sounds (and for me at least, this is generally uninteresting work). You could just specialise in one thing - eg pads but then you're alienating everyone who doesn't want pads. You could do a well-rounded variety bank, but most synths have those already and I can't ever imagine myself buying one. Everything will probably be a risk.

There is also a lot of hidden extra work too - many sound designers have quite polished portfolios/videos/tracks etc to entice people to buy in - if you can't do that right then you're already behind - even if you've got the sound design chops to make a decent bank. To do that right is a lot of effort - enough to put me off, at the moment at least.

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Here's my process (and you can view/listen to my sound sets at https://www.likenoorange.com) <- see what I just did there?

But seriously, typically I'll pick a synth, usually its one that I actually want patches for or like the sound of, and I'll just start making patches. If its a new synth I really haven't designed sounds for it may take 15-35 patches before I make something that sounds 'good', this is typically because the filters, envelopes, and oscillators all react differently in digital synths. For example Massive took me a while to get used to the filter, coming from designing sounds with Reason's Thor synth; just the way the resonance and LP filter affect the overall sound was weird to me.

Once I pass the initial 15-35 then I start producing some sounds I like. I find that either pad sounds, bass sounds, or FX are the best to start with. Pads allow a lot of leeway as far as adding a lot of modulation sections, bass sounds are typically more basic and help me to get used to the oscillator sections and types. Creating an 808 bass sound in any synth will help reveal how the synth parts interact with each other and what the synth is good at. Reason Parsec for example is good for pads, glassy sounds and bass. Massive is a good all rounder. Diva is way better than most at bass, but with polysynth sounds you have to be careful or will get too filled up.

There might also be a specific type of sound I want to recreate, so I made a Boards of Canada sound set for UHE Diva because it was the first digital synth that could emulate some of those Roland hardware sounds - part of this is because I want those sounds myself and part is because the synth 'leads' you to that type of genre. Tone 2 Gladiator on the other hand will give you every trap/ Lex Luger sound you can ever want, its extremely good for hiphop so if I made a sound set for that I would go that route.

I try to not take more than 30 days to make a sound set (depending on the size), so if you make 5 patches a day (which could take an hour) then after 30 days you have a 150 patch sound set. I typically max out at 10 patches in one sitting unless I really have a number of concrete ideas of what I want to make. Quite often I can just mess with a sound until I get something I feel sounds good, it is a mix of technical knowledge and control because if you just push buttons and twist knobs things will sound like crap. And you also want your sounds to sound good in a mix, so after you have the main 'sound' your going for thats where you dial in the filter and fx a little more so that it sounds 'clear' enough.

Pricing: selling soundsets in other peoples stores means they get a cut of it, it can be as much as 50%. What your paying for is their outreach and marketing. If you have your own site you get 100% but no one knows about your products. If many of the known online stores took 0% or 5% of your products then you could actually make a decent living off of sound design. But as of now its like anything else, you need to consistently make high quality products over time that people actually want. Even if your sound sets are awesome, if its not a part of a genre that people are interested in then you wont make anything on it.
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thank you so much. This is the kind of info I was looking for. Your process sounds similar to how I've been doing things. Like you, I've found it takes me 10-20 patches to finally get to something I actually like.

I'm not a novice at this sort of thing either. I've been doing synths since the 80's, and learned programming on Moogs and Arp2600s at the start. I've got many, many patches I've made for several VI's over the years, but now I need to comb through and put together a decent set, see what's missing and go from there.

It is nice to know that my approach is similar to someone else who's done it!

As I mentioned earlier, I've done more in the area of composing and producing tracks for videos and also some mixing for other's projects. But, always try to design my own sounds along the way.

What you shared below is very helpful. Thank you!!
LikeNoOrange wrote:Here's my process (and you can view/listen to my sound sets at https://www.likenoorange.com) <- see what I just did there?

But seriously, typically I'll pick a synth, usually its one that I actually want patches for or like the sound of, and I'll just start making patches. If its a new synth I really haven't designed sounds for it may take 15-35 patches before I make something that sounds 'good', this is typically because the filters, envelopes, and oscillators all react differently in digital synths. For example Massive took me a while to get used to the filter, coming from designing sounds with Reason's Thor synth; just the way the resonance and LP filter affect the overall sound was weird to me.

Once I pass the initial 15-35 then I start producing some sounds I like. I find that either pad sounds, bass sounds, or FX are the best to start with. Pads allow a lot of leeway as far as adding a lot of modulation sections, bass sounds are typically more basic and help me to get used to the oscillator sections and types. Creating an 808 bass sound in any synth will help reveal how the synth parts interact with each other and what the synth is good at. Reason Parsec for example is good for pads, glassy sounds and bass. Massive is a good all rounder. Diva is way better than most at bass, but with polysynth sounds you have to be careful or will get too filled up.

There might also be a specific type of sound I want to recreate, so I made a Boards of Canada sound set for UHE Diva because it was the first digital synth that could emulate some of those Roland hardware sounds - part of this is because I want those sounds myself and part is because the synth 'leads' you to that type of genre. Tone 2 Gladiator on the other hand will give you every trap/ Lex Luger sound you can ever want, its extremely good for hiphop so if I made a sound set for that I would go that route.

I try to not take more than 30 days to make a sound set (depending on the size), so if you make 5 patches a day (which could take an hour) then after 30 days you have a 150 patch sound set. I typically max out at 10 patches in one sitting unless I really have a number of concrete ideas of what I want to make. Quite often I can just mess with a sound until I get something I feel sounds good, it is a mix of technical knowledge and control because if you just push buttons and twist knobs things will sound like crap. And you also want your sounds to sound good in a mix, so after you have the main 'sound' your going for thats where you dial in the filter and fx a little more so that it sounds 'clear' enough.

Pricing: selling soundsets in other peoples stores means they get a cut of it, it can be as much as 50%. What your paying for is their outreach and marketing. If you have your own site you get 100% but no one knows about your products. If many of the known online stores took 0% or 5% of your products then you could actually make a decent living off of sound design. But as of now its like anything else, you need to consistently make high quality products over time that people actually want. Even if your sound sets are awesome, if its not a part of a genre that people are interested in then you wont make anything on it.

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