Four Tet on his production process: “I pretty much only use presets”When it comes to making music, less is oftentimes more. Such is the case for Four Tet, who admits that he “pretty much only uses presets” for his tracks.
The electronic artist – real name Kieran Hebden – appears on the latest episode of the Tape Notes podcast where he dives deep into his creative process and the reason he prefers to keep things minimal during production.

READ MORE: Jacob Collier: “Another thing I recommend to people is to try and make the worst song in the world”

Sharing his love for preset sounds, Four Tet says: “I pretty much only use presets on things.”
“I’ll get a sound, I’ll get the melody, notes I want, and then I’ll get it up and running on Omnisphere. I’ll be like, ‘All right, what are the bass sounds?’ And I’ll just cycle through loads and loads of them, one after another, until I find one that’s quite nice.”
“I’ll just choose a preset and that will be it,” he says. “I’m not doing any sound design type of stuff particularly on any of my things. I’m definitely not one of those people that’s like, ‘I’m going to start with a sine wave, and then I’m going to do this, and then do this’ – I don’t really mess with any fundamental stuff like that, usually because I’m in a rush.”
“I get asked these questions, like ‘what’s your plugin chain on this and that?’ Like I showed you on the sessions, on most of the stuff, there’s nothing, there’s no plugins on there,” says Four Tet.
He continues: “Ideally, you’re doing as little as possible. I pretty much never want to put a compressor on anything. If I have to put a compressor on something, it’s to deal with a problem, usually… Mainly, I want everything to be as dynamic and open and natural as possible.”
Rather than obsess over the technicalities, musicians should instead be “thinking about the song as a whole” and “what narratives [are] being achieved throughout the piece of music” during production, says Four Tet.
Listen to the full podcast below.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Four Tet dives deeper on his production philosophies, explaining how he works with texture and subtlety to create a connection between the listener and the music.
The post Four Tet on his production process: “I pretty much only use presets” appeared first on MusicTech.