It all began innocently enough. I received a very interesting letter from a reader asking about possible sources of sounds for a Kawai K5, and I can remember putting it to one side whilst perusing upon it. Of course, when I came to look for it, I could not find it (sincerest apologies). And then someone else asked me about Yamaha SY77 sounds, and I got a review set of data cards for a drum machine — and before I knew it, I had the basis of an article!

When synthesizers came with lots of real knobs and no memories, you were forced to patch your own sounds. I can remember reading an interview with Rick Wakeman in which he described how he spent several days twiddling with a MiniMoog until he could get any sound he wanted blindfold. Changing from one sound to another was a nightmare live, which probably explains why the '70s and '80s keyboard player was often obscured by stacked tiers of keyboards on all sides — you changed the keyboard you played, not the patch. Technology eventually came to the rescue, first with a few patch memories, then 30-odd, then about a hundred, and some instruments now come with 1,000 or more instantly accessible sounds.

Ah, the important word: 'sounds'. Patch memories, locations, stores, or whatever you call them, they cry out to be filled. The factory preset quickly replaced the example patch sheet, and we entered the era of the pre-programmed sound explosion. I have heard that Sting had an enlightened attitude to preset synthesizer sounds during the recording of the Synchronicity album — apparently he just used the first sound that roughly fitted. The Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 analogue masterpiece and now almost legendary Yamaha DX7 were both said to often arrive back at the manufacturer for servicing with the original memory contents still intact, if rumour is to be believed.

There are now huge libraries of sounds available for most popular synthesizers, from a wide range of sources and in many different formats. More sounds are being released all the time, for the latest releases as well as older classics and even some obscure gems. If programming is a slow task, then wading through sounds could be almost as time-consuming in the future. So how do you go about making a choice between the cards or disks from the various sources?

The answer comes in the form of two questions. What do you want? How can you make sure you get it? The choice of format comes down to availability (does your instrument only have a card slot and no disk drive?) and speed of access. Cards are fastest for accessing sounds, but tend to be expensive, whilst disks are cheaper but slower to retrieve sounds from. Whatever format you choose, there are probably only two different types of sounds: minor changes and variations to the factory presets; more unusual sounds which fully exploit the capabilities of the instrument. Both types have their uses.

Variations on factory sounds tend to contain the same sort of mix of instrument emulations, and often they have improved versions of the factory sounds which don't quite work — one of the first things a programmer does is listen to the factory presets to get some idea of the possibilities offered by the instrument, so you can be sure that once they get to work it won't be long before the brass sound with too long an attack to be useful has been changed to one with a shorter attack and a similar name. So pick these if you want to do work which is broadly within the idiom suggested by the name of the set of sounds. The well-known names in the instant-sound field tend to produce this type of 'Modern Jazz/Chamber Orchestra/Guitar Rock/Film Textures' themed sound set. In fact, some companies specialise in producing the factory presets for the manufacturers, which means that as their programmers get more experience, you can expect more of the same, only better!

For the fully-exploitative sounds, the programmer listens critically to the factory sounds first, then erases them and starts again from scratch. The end results are probably more personal, esoteric and specific to particular uses than those programmed by a team or those based on a familiar set of instrument types. These serious programmers tend to be solitary, dedicated individuals who are willing to spend the enormous amount of time it can take to produce a good set of sounds which stretch the synthesis technique. A good clue to the kind of sounds such people will produce lies in their other activities — for example, James Chandler Junior has written magazine articles about converting samples to Kawai K5 sounds, and also about general computing topics, so you would reasonably expect that his set of K5 sounds are influenced not only by his familiarity with the K5, but also by his use of a supporting computer and sampler. I doubt if they are anything like the factory presets. What sort of sounds do you think I produce?

Minor edits to the factory presets make a lot of sense if you do not have the time to learn how to make them yourself — work out how much you would be paid for the time you would need to learn how to program and get the best from a given synth, and then you might find that the pre-programmed sets of sounds do not seem so expensive. Conversely, if you want a purely personal set of sounds to define your own 'sound', then you should consider the learning time to be an investment — and therefore potentially a large expense to justify.

In case you are sceptical about these two types of sounds, consider the way that samples of current and classic synthesizers are available. These sampled presets fix the sounds you can make with your sampler to those supplied, whereas with the original synthesizer you have enormous possibilities for exploration. Perhaps calling a sampler a 'replayer' is more correct in this context. Much more creative are the people who sample the basic ROM waveforms or PCM samples from a synthesizer and then use this as the raw material for synthesis, using the sampler as more of a synthesizer.

Music is a combination of sounds and silence. Make sure your sounds are well chosen: the silence may be cheaper but it is much harder to use.