I'm a simple guy and I like to work from presets, which is perfect because there are a bunch of affordable preset packs out there, on top of the ones included.
I'll admit I'm not great at programming my own sounds from scratch. With a nearly infinite amount of modulations, this is a thing where your imagination is the only limit to the sounds you can create. This being said, even though there’s a bit more menu-diving than with your typical vintage emulation, most of Serum’s parameters are only a few clicks away, and pretty easy to access. This is the synth of the future, baby! This thing is straight out of Blade Runner 2049. Serum doesn't look like a synth from the past because it's not a synth from the past. At first sight, Serum doesn't give you that intuitive knob-per-function experience you'll get from the synths of yore. At the time I was enamored with analog synths and in a committed relationship with the Arturia V Collection. Yet, I was skeptical when I first got Serum. There are 3 things that make those instruments dear to me: 1) their power, 2) their quality, and 3) the variety of their presets. Here are a few of the VST synths I've been using in all my productions lately. Using sounds prepared by pros also really helps me streamline my creative process and stir my beats in unexpected directions. I like to tweak the sounds of my favorite presets and make them my own.
Personally, I'm always on the lookout for new and cool synth sounds, whatever is out there. Of course, there will always be purists that think you can’t make authentic electronic music without hardware instruments, but whether you're just starting out in the world of beatmaking, or you're trying to update your sound, there's no shame in using plugins and their presets as a jumping point for your musical journey. From a smooth analog compressor to a wild filter, VSTs have been on some kind of crazy quantum leap lately, getting better-sounding and more creative by the day. That clunky and nerdy designation is used as an umbrella term for pretty much any program that helps you make dope music on your computer. Do you like making music on a computer? If you answered yes, congrats because a) you live in the 21st century, and b) you're probably already familiar with virtual studio technologies (or VST, for short).