I'm not sure how to explain it myself, but it's something like that, yes.
it's like, when working with real instruments, you get ideas in the form of "so the piano plays this melody and the guitar plays the rhythm" for instance. How do electronic artists go about in their craft? do you start with a synth texture and then create a melody or whatever, or do you create your melody and then mess around with sounds for it?
most of the time, I tend to think of instruments, before notes. it's like I get textures in my head, but they are called "piano", "guitar", "sax", "violin", etc
so yes, part of my question is pretty much "how do I make patches" or "how do I get the sound that's in my head". I know how subtractive synthesis and its parameters work, though my head kinda spins at how many possibilities there are, in contrast to just "a piano"... I can add a crapload of FX, and I'm not afraid of doing so, but first and foremost, it's a piano.
Finally, when it comes to other forms of synthesis, I just simply don't know how they work.