Presets are great–I especially love exploring reverbs and delays. You’ve probably seen first-hand the value in presets when it comes to mixing; whether it’s big reverbs or biting distortion–but do they make you a better mixing engineer?
Here’s the thing: Scrolling for presets is a very limited, short term gain. They give you a quick “win” for your current mix, but they don’t teach you about mixing or how to use that plug-in yourself.
Not only that, but presets are often inefficient for your mixing workflow. Think about it this way: it took 30 minutes testing out the whole list of plug-in presets, when it could have taken 30 seconds to find the right settings manually.
Whether it’s a compressor, a saturator, or a reverb effect preset, your mixing knowledge will gain a lot of power when you have a sense of how the preset is working.
If you’re not sure about that, think about this for a second: Are you confident that the same presets on compressors, reverb, delay, saturation–the same presets on every song you work on–will they always give the best help to the track, every time? Or your mixing skills?
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For example, if I’m working with a plug-in, here are some questions I would ask myself when looking at these presets: Why does this equalizer boost here and cut there? What kind of sound does it assume the track has or needs? Why does this compressor suggest these settings for a kick drum or a vocal?
This is especially useful when working with a new plug-in you’ve just purchased and are exploring for the first time. Even if you don’t technically know what a parameter does, you can gain a sense of how it contributes to the preset’s effect on the program element.
Next time you’re mixing and you find a preset that you like, take a pause. Adjust the parameters away from, and then back to where the preset has them, so that you can understand how each parameter affects the sound–and then you’ll know what to adjust next time if any preset doesn’t immediately fit just right. It’s a lot of fun to scroll through presets and to experiment with how they sound. Enjoy presets! But study them, too.
