Patches

A synthesizer patch is a collection of settings defining the sound a synthesizer produces. The oscillator‘s waveform, frequency, amplitude, cutoff and resonance, the settings for the envelope, and any sound effects are some examples of these settings.

A patch can be viewed as a memory of all the settings necessary to produce a particular sound. The user’s ability to save and retrieve patches enables them to easily switch between various sounds without constantly tweaking all the settings.

The user can combine related sounds by using banks, frequently used to arrange patches. For instance, a user might make a bank of patches appropriate for techno music, while another bank might have patches appropriate for ballads.

Additionally, by changing the synthesizer’s parameters, many synthesizers let the user generate unique patches. A user can produce their own distinctive sounds in this way and save them as patches for later use.