How Do You Organize Your Samples?

hookiefree

Beat Monster
ill o.g.
The biggest blower to me is when I'm vibing and try to get an idea down but it takes 20 mins to find the right kick. Then 20 more to find the snare etc. I know most people save loops by tempo but I'm talking about 1 hitters and soundfonts. Do u have a folder with nothing but kicks, one with all snares etc? Or do you separate them by the feel of the instruments?
 
M

MIKELABZ

Guest
i seperate per instrument.. kicks in one folder, snares the other, hip hop drums all fit into one big folder with sub folders with the appropiate instrument represented in each of them... same with samples... old school samples, intros, classical, movie trailers all have their folders... it makes beat making that much easier and organized.

L-Rock
 

bigdmakintrax

BeatKreatoR
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 123
Hook get at me man! look if you use fruity loops use the slicer you can find loops with FAT drums on em.....put it in the fruity slicer or use RECYCLE and chop em.....chopping is a part time thing for me because you always searching for the phat kick or snare....then you can layer, but layering isn't always necessary if you find a good loop from either vinyl or find some loops yourself....and then once you slice them you can edit the slice and snatch the one shots...this to me a very important aspect to get good samples and it's fun too......do you have any vinyl that might have good snares and kicks?

I recommend getting Recycle, its fast and clean and you can either export to a soundfont or to rexx and use in Reason or Fruity.....

I have about 3 or 4 gigs of kicks and snares, some meticulously lifted and some collected and traded, I trade with Drumatic a lot, he's a member but he doesn't post on here a lot, he's another Philly cat, I actually sold my SP12 to about a year ago....

OH on top of saving to folders I create kits in Fruity loops as say a template and name them according to how hot or useful the kit is with a kick and snare already mapped, that also makes for faster production too and I even put a bass or guitar and string on there too and leave a blank channel to load a sample if I feel the beat needs one....
 

hookiefree

Beat Monster
ill o.g.
D I don't even use Fruity. I use Recycle though. I was really talking about organizing the samples I already have so I can find them quickly. How in the hell do you scroll through 4 gigs of samples??!!
 

bigdmakintrax

BeatKreatoR
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 123
I use Cool edit or Soundforge and go to the folder you can scroll over the sample and quickly preview it and then open it......do you use reason? you can set favorite folders in there too so if you organize into
Snares, kicks, hats or sumfin like that....but heres what I do, I don't always scroll thru em.......I have picked all of the hot ones I like and put them in another folder called something like......HOT Snares, Hot Kicks etc....you see what I'm talking about?
 

hookiefree

Beat Monster
ill o.g.
yeah that sounds like a plan.
I'll just put all my favorites in a separate folder. What about Redrum though? Can't u make ur own kits in that? That would save time too to just call up a kit and have all the tight snares, kicks and shakes etc. together. I'm going to check into that.
 

bigdmakintrax

BeatKreatoR
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 123
Now as far as making the actual REASON format for redrum I don't know how you save it like that...but you can load regular wave samples in there to each redrum channel and save it..... you search for samples when you right mouse click over the redrum or any device, now when you search for redrum patches instead of just plain ol samples, it has to be in the reason format, but you can save a kit either way by creating the set first and then save it....so when you open up the saved settings it will search for and load the samples or patches.......
 

mod1

ILLMUZIK Bell-Boy
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 5
I do mine like this...

Example:H-1
H-2
H-3 and,so on.
 
M

MIKELABZ

Guest
he names his hats... hat1, hat2 and so on

in other werds he individually renames his samples.

L-Rock
 
E

Equality 7-2521

Guest
I organise them by instrument

DRUMS
PIANOS
GUITARS
HORNS
VIOLINS
VOCALS

and within each folder i have subfolders for the samples i have already chopped and the ones i havnt chopped yet
 

boneyboys

50 Million Year Trip
ill o.g.
I just got it set up drums basslines melodies misc then them split into instruments. Can still never find anything but I kinda like the 20mins spent trying to find something and then ending up with something completely different from what I was looking for
 

K.C

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
I make monthly folders for stuff I sampled myself, and another folder with subfolders of kits/drums
 
M

MIKELABZ

Guest
thats interesting...monthly folder... i make yearly folders with projects... (ie- FLP 2004)

L-Rock
 

hookiefree

Beat Monster
ill o.g.
I just decided to use Redrum and save and save the kits in there since a lot of my samples are in soundfont files and I don't know how to get them out anyway. I made a smokin ass neo soul kit saturday.
 

SpinDoctor

The Lovable Rogue
ill o.g.
I have mine in different folder labelled drums, sfx etc. it is helpful when you want to find a specific sort of sound
 
D

dr_fr3sh

Guest
i've got my samples organized by instrument, then by artist. i also have different categories like intros, efffects, vocals, etc. and then i have a ill loops folder with all the samples i've taken that are too crazy to categorize or just too dope to file away, these are usually the samples i use straight away...
 

Chrono

polyphonically beyond me
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 5
I think one of the most important things for me is to delete any bunk samples. Samples that you obtain that are techno based. Then Organize the Drums and Percussive sounds seperatly. Drums are huge by themselves. But mainly... take your time becoming familiar with your stash. I use FL STUDIO and have learned how to change the colors in the sample browser to any color i want, so its easier to distinguish things. I have over 8 gigs of soundfonts and wavs.... so its easy for me to get lost. But i am more familar with over 100,000 seperate and unique files than i ever thought i would be. When you get that many you have to become familiar with it using a mental map. And don't constantly change the pattern up.
 
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