There's also a middle ground - where you use a choice few soft synths to carry the load. That's my routine. I don't have time to fiddle forever - I have a trusty stable of about 6 or 7 softsynths that I use for specific sounds and tasks. I know them well. I'm not doing film scores where I have countless tracks. I'm pretty much a folk/rock/R&B focused composer, and for that, I don't need GM's 128 voices. I play my own guitar and bass and keyboard tracks.

I don't do brass parts. To my ear, to get a non-casio sound for brass requires way more finesse in programming the midi than what I'm willing to invest in to get a realistic sounding part. No harmonicas or reed instruments either. Either the real deal or nothing. I've heard some Ketron stuff that sounds pretty darned good, but I can't take the time to finagle the controllers to get it that close.

So I stick with keys, guitars, drums and outright bonafide synth sounds. I do have to bone up on programming strings - I'm on the hook to do some short film underlayment bed tracks that need strings. A Kontakt sample library is likely in my near future for that stuff.

BTW - I'm not in a real studio. I'm in my basement with all it's warts.

-Scott

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