So I have a decently large sample library at the moment, im sure this is a common problem but Im wondering if anyone has some tips for keeping your library tame? I guess would be the way to put it, I have lots and a lot of them I dont really use, but I want to keep them for multiple reasons, I would like to have them there "just in case" I keep telling myself, like "you never know you might find it useful" But also just having them there is a bit overwhelming because theres a lot. And I find myself digging through a bunch of subfolders just to explore one set of FX and what not. Or just 1 set of drums, then I have to open like 5 subfolders to get to 1 packs set of kicks... Ya know?...
Any suggestions for this? or should I just suck it up lol
(Side note)
I recently downloaded the Leviathan 2 pack and I love how they had it all laid out. No digging through subfolders they just had everything laid out right then and there. Open the packs folder, boom. its great..
Tips for organizing
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- KVRer
- 6 posts since 15 Mar, 2017
I have all my samples organized by category. My starting folders are Drums-Percussion, FX & Experimental Sounds, Acoustic Instruments, VOX, and Synth Sounds. The drums folder is divided between one shots and loops as well as between electronic and acoustic. The instruments folder is brass, guitar, keys, pianos and organs, strings, and woodwinds. Synth sounds is divided into ambiences, bass (divided by genre, ex. dubstep, hip hop, electro), melodies, and risers. VOX is for vocals, and is split into folders for spoken, sung, grunted, or robot, as well as split by female or gender.
I now have a rule not to collect more samples until I use or delete whichever samples I have, so as not to have too much. If I do end up getting another sample pack, I immediately listen and sort. It's a bunch of subfolders, but I know I don't have to search my whole library for one sound; it's all categorized. My library is around 30 gigs, but that's not including the content that comes with Komplete 11 Ultimate, which is conveniently sorted for me anyway.
I now have a rule not to collect more samples until I use or delete whichever samples I have, so as not to have too much. If I do end up getting another sample pack, I immediately listen and sort. It's a bunch of subfolders, but I know I don't have to search my whole library for one sound; it's all categorized. My library is around 30 gigs, but that's not including the content that comes with Komplete 11 Ultimate, which is conveniently sorted for me anyway.
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- KVRist
- 286 posts since 9 Jun, 2015
Our Universe is defined by a Big Bang. We start our life with a Big Bang. When you buy computer it's another Big Bang and you start dumping into it everything and creating chaos. Then, after some time "galaxies" and "solar systems" and "planets" start to form in a shape of folders, subfolders and files and you start organizing stuff so that it makes sense.
There's no mother or wife in your computer to go after you to clean up your mess, you're on your own.
So, you need to find "patterns" how to organize stuff. For example, I have one partition only for sound libraries, Kontakt, sfz and sf2 files.
Samples and loops are organized by instruments, but 95% of them are just drums and percussion.
I still have samples which I created back in 2003 by sampling my guitar and drums. I know exactly where they are in my PC, just like I know where everything else is because you need to be a nazi when it comes to organizing stuff like this.
This is especially important when you start creating your own sound libraries and customizing sound libraries you have.
Some 2-3 years ago I switched to FL Studio's FPC, abandoning stuff like Addictive Drums, building my own custom drums with samples and FPC is basically working like Addictive Drums and similar VSTi's, you dump a bunch of samples in it, different velocities, round robins, then you save that as a pad preset. Combination of different pad presets gives you a drum kit which you then save as FPC preset.
Then you start working on your song, you don't like snare or kick drum, or hihat, you load another pad preset and build another drum kit.
The same way you work with Addictive Drums, but you created the content. Of course, you need to get one shots like Analog Drums Snare City or stuff like this:
https://iwantthatsound.com/nir-jeff
to name a few, to be able to start building your own good sounding drum kits.
For many people anything is good enough, they want things that work just out of the box, but since I'm a drummer I'm extremely picky when it comes to drum samples, I simply need to fine tune velocity layers on my own and to make everything to works as I want it to work.
Then, when you are faced with gigabytes and gigabytes of content, thousands and thousands of samples, dozens and dozens of folders, you NEED to be extremely organized or else working in a chaotic environment is a lobotomy. As soon as you unzip the content, you start renaming stuff and putting it where it belongs. The choice is yours, you will either spend 1-2 hours of putting everything into its place or you'll keep losing 1-2 hours every 2nd day by scrolling through countless folders and searching what you need.
As soon as you stop keeping everything organized and stray from the path, things start to be chaotic.
All my FL Studio projects, since Fruity Loops 4, are backed up on Google Drive.
All my drum kits and sound libraries which I created are backed up on Google Drive.
Every single thing, even if it's one simple hihat sample about which I have second thoughts gets shift+deleted. I just want the best stuff to be on my hard drive and not having 100 hihats in folder and 5 hihats which I'll actually use.
That's what creates the chaos, unnecessary files are creating the chaos.
I have folder in samples folder on Google Drive called "B-Sides" in which I dump everything that maybe one day can be useful, stuff which is good, but not that good and that stuff gets deleted from hard drive on my PC after I upload it to Google Drive.
So, you get yourself 100 drum loops. 70-80% is horse shit which you'll never use. Pick the best, shift+delete obvious horse shit without regret. Move on. If you keep everything you'll start scrolling and searching for the best stuff all the time.
If you have serious doubts about certain ones, upload them to Google Drive or whatever service you are using for a backup. SAME THING with everything else, every single hihat, kick drum, toms, cymbals, whatever.
I know 2 guys who are into psytrance. One guy has like 70 kickdrum samples and 150 snares which he uses all the time. The other guy is buying and downloading crap all the time and has thousands and thousands of kickdrums and snares. The first guy gets into creative process in 10-15 minutes, the other guy is scrolling through folders and searching for the right kickdrum and snare for 2 hours.
In the end, results are the same. The first guy has created a good track, the other guy has created a good track. The other guy is just fooling himself how having 5000 of samples is an advantage, while he'll never use at least 80% of them, EVER.
Take a look at Angus Young from AC/DC. The guy is using the same 2-3 guitars (same model, SG) and the same amps (he uses 7-8 Marshall heads which are connected to sound as one, while having only slight changes in knob parameters) for 40 years. AC/DC has sold more albums than Rolling Stones and Beatles. AC/DC are extremes when it comes to that, absolute freaks of habit.
Then you have some schmuck that has 50 pedals in front of him and uses 10 different guitars, like:"Take a look at my equipment, bro" and his biggest achievement is having 5.000 of views on Youtube.
The whole thing is universal. The same way you have artists/producers in EDM that used 2-3 synths for the last 10 years and they have millions of fans and then you have some tone deaf schmuck that owns 50 soft synths and owning those synths is his biggest achievement in his music career.
Then we move down to samples, it's the same thing. The more you start narrowing things down and keeping the best stuff, the more you'll get creative because you'll start pulling maximum out of things you have.
People in many cases destroy their creative process by keeping all the horse shit they don't need and scrolling through hundreds of samples, drum loops, whatever, it gets tiresome and that way they suffocate their creative process.
That's because they didn't eliminate trash from the start.
Download, unzip, listen, eliminate, pick the best, rename it to makes sense for you, put it where it should belong.....or suffer.
The choice is yours.
There's no mother or wife in your computer to go after you to clean up your mess, you're on your own.
So, you need to find "patterns" how to organize stuff. For example, I have one partition only for sound libraries, Kontakt, sfz and sf2 files.
Samples and loops are organized by instruments, but 95% of them are just drums and percussion.
I still have samples which I created back in 2003 by sampling my guitar and drums. I know exactly where they are in my PC, just like I know where everything else is because you need to be a nazi when it comes to organizing stuff like this.
This is especially important when you start creating your own sound libraries and customizing sound libraries you have.
Some 2-3 years ago I switched to FL Studio's FPC, abandoning stuff like Addictive Drums, building my own custom drums with samples and FPC is basically working like Addictive Drums and similar VSTi's, you dump a bunch of samples in it, different velocities, round robins, then you save that as a pad preset. Combination of different pad presets gives you a drum kit which you then save as FPC preset.
Then you start working on your song, you don't like snare or kick drum, or hihat, you load another pad preset and build another drum kit.
The same way you work with Addictive Drums, but you created the content. Of course, you need to get one shots like Analog Drums Snare City or stuff like this:
https://iwantthatsound.com/nir-jeff
to name a few, to be able to start building your own good sounding drum kits.
For many people anything is good enough, they want things that work just out of the box, but since I'm a drummer I'm extremely picky when it comes to drum samples, I simply need to fine tune velocity layers on my own and to make everything to works as I want it to work.
Then, when you are faced with gigabytes and gigabytes of content, thousands and thousands of samples, dozens and dozens of folders, you NEED to be extremely organized or else working in a chaotic environment is a lobotomy. As soon as you unzip the content, you start renaming stuff and putting it where it belongs. The choice is yours, you will either spend 1-2 hours of putting everything into its place or you'll keep losing 1-2 hours every 2nd day by scrolling through countless folders and searching what you need.
As soon as you stop keeping everything organized and stray from the path, things start to be chaotic.
All my FL Studio projects, since Fruity Loops 4, are backed up on Google Drive.
All my drum kits and sound libraries which I created are backed up on Google Drive.
Every single thing, even if it's one simple hihat sample about which I have second thoughts gets shift+deleted. I just want the best stuff to be on my hard drive and not having 100 hihats in folder and 5 hihats which I'll actually use.
That's what creates the chaos, unnecessary files are creating the chaos.
I have folder in samples folder on Google Drive called "B-Sides" in which I dump everything that maybe one day can be useful, stuff which is good, but not that good and that stuff gets deleted from hard drive on my PC after I upload it to Google Drive.
So, you get yourself 100 drum loops. 70-80% is horse shit which you'll never use. Pick the best, shift+delete obvious horse shit without regret. Move on. If you keep everything you'll start scrolling and searching for the best stuff all the time.
If you have serious doubts about certain ones, upload them to Google Drive or whatever service you are using for a backup. SAME THING with everything else, every single hihat, kick drum, toms, cymbals, whatever.
I know 2 guys who are into psytrance. One guy has like 70 kickdrum samples and 150 snares which he uses all the time. The other guy is buying and downloading crap all the time and has thousands and thousands of kickdrums and snares. The first guy gets into creative process in 10-15 minutes, the other guy is scrolling through folders and searching for the right kickdrum and snare for 2 hours.
In the end, results are the same. The first guy has created a good track, the other guy has created a good track. The other guy is just fooling himself how having 5000 of samples is an advantage, while he'll never use at least 80% of them, EVER.
Take a look at Angus Young from AC/DC. The guy is using the same 2-3 guitars (same model, SG) and the same amps (he uses 7-8 Marshall heads which are connected to sound as one, while having only slight changes in knob parameters) for 40 years. AC/DC has sold more albums than Rolling Stones and Beatles. AC/DC are extremes when it comes to that, absolute freaks of habit.
Then you have some schmuck that has 50 pedals in front of him and uses 10 different guitars, like:"Take a look at my equipment, bro" and his biggest achievement is having 5.000 of views on Youtube.
The whole thing is universal. The same way you have artists/producers in EDM that used 2-3 synths for the last 10 years and they have millions of fans and then you have some tone deaf schmuck that owns 50 soft synths and owning those synths is his biggest achievement in his music career.
Then we move down to samples, it's the same thing. The more you start narrowing things down and keeping the best stuff, the more you'll get creative because you'll start pulling maximum out of things you have.
People in many cases destroy their creative process by keeping all the horse shit they don't need and scrolling through hundreds of samples, drum loops, whatever, it gets tiresome and that way they suffocate their creative process.
That's because they didn't eliminate trash from the start.
Download, unzip, listen, eliminate, pick the best, rename it to makes sense for you, put it where it should belong.....or suffer.
The choice is yours.
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- KVRer
- 4 posts since 29 Sep, 2017
Do you categorise by brand or by instrument?
Pros and cons to both...
Pros are by instrument all your kicks are in one place.
Cons are it takes ages to filter through.
Pros to brand:
You can easily navigate to your preferred sample
Cons:
This may lead your music down a road where everything sounds similar :/
Pros and cons to both...
Pros are by instrument all your kicks are in one place.
Cons are it takes ages to filter through.
Pros to brand:
You can easily navigate to your preferred sample
Cons:
This may lead your music down a road where everything sounds similar :/
MixButton Mixing Studios https://mixbutton.com/
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- KVRAF
- 1666 posts since 28 Jun, 2007 from Amazon rain forest
My way or organizing my samples is very standard: kik folder, snare folder, hihat folder and subfolders like "hihat house" folder, "hihat electro" folder and so, to get more specific. I found it's too tedious to listen to 200 kickdrums in order to find which one fits the song/style so I started to make "styles" folders to have the more common samples used by genre (house, trance, electro, etc). It makes sample choicing a lot more faster and it's important because you don't break your workflow. Usually I have 10 to 15 samples in these folders.
After the project starts to take shape, I may feel it would benefit from different sounds so I start digging the main folders in search for the apropriate sound.
After the project starts to take shape, I may feel it would benefit from different sounds so I start digging the main folders in search for the apropriate sound.
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- KVRian
- 1153 posts since 21 Nov, 2005
Wise words indeed. Has to be said, with regards to drum sounds, with layering, pitching and filtering surely there's only so many initial "types" of drum sounds one might need (e.g. click, punch and boom for kicks, body, wood and air for snares, etc) that then go to create what is required for a particular tune. Beyond kits that require a certain acoustic realism (as you mention in your post), synthesis or stacking seems to be a better option and probably much quicker than browsing endless libraries.brainzistor wrote: I know 2 guys who are into psytrance. One guy has like 70 kickdrum samples and 150 snares which he uses all the time. The other guy is buying and downloading crap all the time and has thousands and thousands of kickdrums and snares. The first guy gets into creative process in 10-15 minutes, the other guy is scrolling through folders and searching for the right kickdrum and snare for 2 hours.
In the end, results are the same. The first guy has created a good track, the other guy has created a good track. The other guy is just fooling himself how having 5000 of samples is an advantage, while he'll never use at least 80% of them, EVER...
...Then we move down to samples, it's the same thing. The more you start narrowing things down and keeping the best stuff, the more you'll get creative because you'll start pulling maximum out of things you have...
...People in many cases destroy their creative process by keeping all the horse shit they don't need and scrolling through hundreds of samples, drum loops, whatever, it gets tiresome and that way they suffocate their creative process.
I find creatively that it's much better to just use a placeholder sample while you get the groove together and, if you're using MIDI, much easier to swap out at a later stage when you've got the rest of the track down and know what will fit better with the other instruments.
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- KVRAF
- 44184 posts since 11 Aug, 2008 from clown world
You are looking for some Tips for organizing your stuff? What is the suggested amount? $5? $10? $15? Do you have a PayPal Account?
All joking aside, I like to keep my receipts, so I tend to keep purchased products in their own complete folders. I do organize the contents within those folders to suit my needs.
From there ...
1. By Company.
2. By Developer.
3. Single Hits Folder for old Drum Machine samples or Products that are purely Drum Hits.
My advice is to think about your own workflow and organize things around that.
PS; Take a look at Loopmasters Loopcloud. It's a great tool for products purchased at Loopmasters.
All joking aside, I like to keep my receipts, so I tend to keep purchased products in their own complete folders. I do organize the contents within those folders to suit my needs.
From there ...
1. By Company.
2. By Developer.
3. Single Hits Folder for old Drum Machine samples or Products that are purely Drum Hits.
My advice is to think about your own workflow and organize things around that.
PS; Take a look at Loopmasters Loopcloud. It's a great tool for products purchased at Loopmasters.
This is the same method MJ used when he was working on Anthony Marinelli's Thriller.