The way i design the sound of my songs has changed a lot since the Ice Ages debut album. With my first synthesizer I already had a lot of different sounds, but could only change them to a very limited extent (fade-in, fade-out time and the like). So when I composed a song, I would go through all the available sounds and after a while decided on the most suitable one. It wasn't much different with the two successor synthesizers (even if there were more effects - more in the link to an older post from me in the comment section).
When I was finally able to create my very own sound using Native Instruments Reaktor, this old approach was no longer necessary. I began to construct a synthesizer for my needs, which made it possible for me to change from a smooth sound flowing into a rough sound, a harmonic sound into a sloping etc. - by means of numerous faders. Instead of having to click through predefined sounds forever, I was able to implement exactly the sound that I had in my head. From this point on, the sounds were created together with the song and their creation was part of the song creation process.
At best you can imagine it when you think of a classical painter, who usually has a palette of a few colors. If, for example, he wants to paint a meadow in a picture, he does not look for the green that fits best from thousands of available colors, but instead begins to mix exactly the green from the basic colors of the palette, which he will then use to paint this meadow.
And that's exactly how you have to imagine my sound process. I play around with the keys and try to find a melody or a rhythm, while constantly changing the sound so that my ideas are represented as perfect as possible by the sound. For me, this approach is much more creative than the one before and will remain so in the future.