Workflow for storing patches&ideas together

Here is what I seem to waste a lot of time myself:

  • Select synth
  • Start going through the 2000 presets it has
  • Find something, immediately improvise something that sounds cool for that sound
  • Continue going throught patches



    Is there a way to snapshot VSTi settings onto track, so that I could just hit record and play some stuff and it would select correct patch automatically. Currently I need own VSTi for each patch’s ideas, which is just silly.



    I’m using Cubase 5 (soon 6), but way to do this on any sequencer would be nice to know. (I’d probably change my DAW for this)

[quote]jalava (01/05/2011)[hr]Here is what I seem to waste a lot of time myself:

  • Select synth
  • Start going through the 2000 presets it has
  • Find something, immediately improvise something that sounds cool for that sound
  • Continue going throught patches



    Is there a way to snapshot VSTi settings onto track, so that I could just hit record and play some stuff and it would select correct patch automatically. Currently I need own VSTi for each patch’s ideas, which is just silly.



    I’m using Cubase 5 (soon 6), but way to do this on any sequencer would be nice to know. (I’d probably change my DAW for this)[/quote]



    not sure what you mean exactly?



    you do need a separate track with a new vsti on each track if you want them to have 2 different patches loaded

Actually if I just want to store multiple ideas with different patches back to back, I can use just single track, provided I send patch changes and other control messages at start of every patch change.



If there is way to “store” VSTi settings into midi data at start of each clip, I believe this is possible to do. Only way to do this for now, is to first start record and then change patch on VSTi by hand and then play the idea on keyboard. I’d like to automate this so that everytime I press record, it writes VSTi settings into start of the recorded clip, but haven’t yet found out easy way to do this kind of “smartloops”.



Other way of course is make notes on each patch and map those notes to each melody idea (motif).