Do you ever do what you're not supposed to do?

[Auplant]

Do you ever go against the rules and do weird things with plugins and samples? For example, it might make no sense to put compressor in between a distortion and an EQ, followed by another overdriving distortion, but that can make the compressor work as something new... It can make the distortion effect sound more tight with the right tweeking. That's just one example.. So do you ever say "Screw the science!" and take a more alternative approach to sound design?

[vurt]

er...
yes.

[Spencer Maddox]

My Entire workflow is literally doing weird stuff and seeing what works. I probally would make a Mixing Engineer have a stroke with some of the weird stuff I try.

[V0RT3X]

I think most people do this, at least from what I've seen.

Following the rules kind of goes against what it means to be an artist.. usually.

[Auplant]

I think most people do this, at least from what I've seen.

I have a feeling that many will not admit it. While it looks unprofessional, it can obviously be profitable.

[chk071]

I once used a reverb behind a delay.

[RamblinWreck]

I made a lead that I really liked this way. I noticed vibrato was usually brought into a sound later after starting from nothing, via something like the mod wheel or delayed LFO. I decided to see what it would sound like if I had a typical pluck envelope control the vibrato rate and depth so that it started out high then settled to the more typical levels. The result was a neat, kind of funky twang at the start.

When I first dove deeper into Omnisphere's oscillator controls, I decided to see what would happen if I frequency modulated a bowed guitar sample with noise, then ran it through the waveshaper. The result was a really weird but still tonal scifi-sounding noise.

[thecontrolcentre]

There are rules? Who knew ...

[whyterabbyt]

who defined what i was 'supposed' to be doing, and how do i kill them?

[AnX]

Do you ever go against the rules...

what rules

[Auplant]

Do you ever go against the rules...

what rules

Hehe I guess there are no specific rules really, it was just paraphrase. But there is a way of using a plugin "incorrectly" so to speak.

[vurt]

yes, don't use it underwater


anything else is fine

[vurt]

I once used a reverb behind a delay.

ive had fuzz/phaser/delay/reverb/delay/reverb/fuzz

on a guitar before now

[Freemrshkreli]

In situations like this, I always refer to the saying "know the rules so you can break them".
On one hand I think breaking the rules is what pushes us forward into new territory;
on the other hand I see a lot of kids on YouTube just throwing shit at the wall because they
don't understand sound design. I remember the horror I unleashed when I opened up a
Cymatics Future bass (Serum) preset pack lmao! There was way too much irrelevant processing...
For simple pluck sounds they'd have the Flanger, Phaser, Distortion, Eq, and Chorus effects all
running with Env/Lfo modulation on all of them! If you can take it away from the sound, and
have it be virtually unaffected, you should take it out of the sound... 'cause It's just eating CPU.
I also remember showing one of my extremely lush pad presets to YouTuber "Rocket Powered Sound"
and having him call it "boring", and then throwing the "flng" filter effect on it to make it sound "interesting".It bugs me when a sound designer can't even explain their decisions in their sound design process.Don't get me wrong, comb filtering on lush super saws can sound great in certain applications,
but it irks me when people just do things out of muscle memory...
"I'm not sure how to make it sound better, so I'll just throw a flang filter on this pad, because I always do that!" Anyway... I'm just ranting at this point lol. Basically break the rules, but know what rules you're breaking.

[vurt]

sometimes. but the gf says "no!" then gets moody eith me.