Stuff I've learned not to do

[DSmolken]

I've been making free samples since 2013, and selling them for about a year and a half. So, here's some mistakes of mine y'all can learn from.

1. Wrong dynamics. A lot of my earliest stuff has really stupidly loud loudest dynamic layers, because when you're playing one note in isolation you can really dig in much more than when realistically playing a fast part. The end result just sounds thin and shrill, and the lowest dynamic layers end up the only ones that are useful in real life. OTOH, not being a drummer and generally avoiding playing with drummers, I tend to not hit those nearly hard enough. So pay attention to this stuff, and what the idiomatic dynamic range is for the instrument and style you're going for.

2. Buying stuff to sample. It's not the money, it's the time it takes. I went looking for a matching bass for Secret Agent Guitar, ran across some old Polish and Estonian drums, bought those about a year ago, and spent a few months of my life on them. In the spring I bought something nice and expensive just to sample, and it's sitting there untouched because other opportunities popped up in the meantime - cellist wanted to record, the girls in Ghana organized recording sessions, someone was passing through town and could loan me a weird drum for the weekend - and it's just gotten pushed off into the future for a half a year now.

3. Not making a bigger variety of things. Again, this is about time more than money. I can't really predict how well something will sell, at least not yet, though I'm getting slightly better. The bigger variety of stuff I release, the more I can learn about what people actually want sampled the way I sample it. But in general, anything that isn't drums sells better than anything that is. Apparently, my approach to bowed strings, guitars or choirs is more like what people are looking for than my approach to drums. So why do I have three drum kits for sale, plus a library of snares, and only one guitar, one cello and one choir? Should have stopped after two at most, and tried a variety of other things, to see how those do.

[lfm]

I asked long ago for Line6 Variax to implement more etnic stuff - which I would find very useful. All kinds of stringed instruments bouzoki, mandolins, ballalajka(excuse english spelling of this) and so on.

In addition to acoustics and electrics that is. They even have various open tunings without retuning the guitar.

But don't think it happended yet - or if it can be done well on keyboard based samplers. Playing a stringed instrument is so expressive - probably hard to replicate with keys. Maybe a better chance with breath/wind controllers or something.