Hi there,

I mostly use samples for my drums(.wav format). I like the goldbaby drums , and a few other "well known" libraries.

My problem is with these libraries that they are sooooo big. Its not fun for me at all to scroll 300 sounds when they sound just slightly different to each other (e.g. Kick/ 808BD_T1D3_X2) It is such a boring process. And plus it kills my workflow when making a track.

In general, not just drums, How do you deal with those huge libraries?

I thought about it, setting a day strictly for sample management and strictly for composing is something I may benefit from.

 

Last edited: Mar 27, 2016

I make it a point to have sessions where I just make Drum Kits. I also make it a point to save the drum kits that get used in my songs.
After making about 20 or so Drum kits, I find that I don't really feel the need to make new drum kits as often. But I do anyway, just for inspiration. It helps me not have to think about finding that perfect drum sound so much...just find a kit that I already made that works with the song I'm making.

I use FXpansion Geist to create and save my kits. You may use your own fav drum sampler. As long as it can save a collection of sounds, you're good.

I use this approach with presets and patches too, saving my favorites to a personal subfolder. In my case, I use Studio One, which let's me save the preset from outside of the plugin.

All this helps to get me going quickly with patches and drum kits that have already been proven to be inspirational to me. It allows me to make songs in front of people and get going quickly.

...Or you could go the hard way and go through all of your drum sounds, handpicking all the really good ones and then delete the rest. But that depends on how long you've had this collection of drums attached to your workflow...Not being able to find the sounds you used in songs you really like will just piss you off. After trying that way a few times, I decided on my current approach. Now, I do my best not to give in to adding that next sample library to my collection.

 

What you experience with the abundance of options every time you want a snare hit is something I think we all experience in various forms to some extent - the tyranny of choice. As your libraries of instruments, samples and production tools expand, so too does the time and effort - and creative distraction - involved in every task. While computer-based production has compounded the problem in recent years (and not just in music production), this is something I think creators have contended with as long as we've been creating.

Stravinski had a wise take on it, embracing constraint as creative liberation: "My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit." (Poetics of Music)

Taking my cue from Igor, when I'm arranging and I want to limit the distractions, I deliberately limit my choices, initially at least. I stick to the basic Kontakt factory library, and the stock Logic processing plugins. This way I find I get ideas down faster, before the muse wanders off on me. Later on I revisit all those sample and plugin choices, when I've taken off the composer/arranger hat and donned that of the producer/engineer. For me this is the only way to combat the tyranny.

 

Yeap...Same as Real (again)...Drum kits and geist.
Make a few "typical" dk (808, 909, obviously but also dk with pairs of kicks, snares, Ohh, Chh and percussions that go well togeither) which you can use as a starting point either if you already have melody, harmony or just a rythm idea to get things rolling as soon as inspiration comes, it's a workflow killer to have to browse through a hundred libraries before starting to create.
Spend some times knowing your collection make a few typical drumkit and use a sampler that can handle them and you'll be good to go imo.

 

Yes, you are 100% right. Classic example is the hip hop producers from 80s/90s, there sampler did not have much memory and were forced to work with what they had. The best hip hop came from that period IMO.

The same thing applies for softsynths ATM, I have loads of them. I already deleted most of the softsynths, but limiting myself to one or two might be even better.

 

You need to realize that you can't hold onto samples because "someday I might need it". You have to be honest with yourself... how often do you actually use some of the stuff? If never, then get rid of it!

Just set aside a day to sort through samples to make yourself some drumkits and a hard drive of just the stuff you intend to use frequently.
Aside from the aforementioned, samples do not make the artist. Nor do libraries or patches, etc. You can create a musical masterpiece with pencil and paper. That's how they did it for hundreds of years before you were born... so saddle up cowboy!!

I just cleaned house, of about 2 TB worth of Kontakt libraries alone!!
I was honest with myself. I also went through some of them and saw when I had last opened it and used it (I'm on a Mac). What a relief it is to be streamlined again... and yes the workflow definitely will benefit from it.

 

if you learn how to treat the basic sounds to sound the way you need it you will manage with a small amount of diskspace - just go thru the libs, take the sounds that sound best for you and arrange it by drummaschine or type or both. often you get varieties of filters used on them or different velocity levels etc. pick the ones that arent treated and sound nice and treat them to fit your track. you can apply a filter but you cant unfilter anything - you can bitcrush but not un-bitscrush etc. you get the point - keep the untreated raw drumsamples. having a longer sustained 808 always gives you the option to let it sound shorter via envelope but its hard to expand a too short one - you dont need an 808 in 100 sustain flavours same goes for toms and hihats cymbals. if you dont want to remove anthing you can still have the important stuff in root dir and the less important ones in a sub dir - you will manage

and dont forget the drumsynths :D you will synthesize a kickdrum faster than finding the right sample, and stacking ;)

 

This is how I do it....In Ableton Live/Drum Rack

What's nice about this way is you can change out samples on the fly while your midi is playing. Just by turning a knob on your controller.

 

Last edited: Mar 28, 2016

Hi Alex921.Since you use samples for drums I think that Kontakt is your answer.Just drag and drop all your samples from each kit in your library onto the keyboard in Kontakt...name it and save.That's it.Do this for every kit and most of your headaches of searching through umpteen samples will come down.Open your saved kit and bang on the keys.You can map every drum sound(any sound for that matter)through the whole keyboard range.Simple.Good luck bro.

 

Yes, thank you for the tip. I have used kontakt for about an half our , but I did not like its interface... So I dumped it.
If I get kontakt again, and load the samples on the keyboard, would I be able to use them with any sampler?

 

Geist looks pretty fun. Is it any good? Do you use it for drums only? I saw some vids on youtube, reminds me a bit of FL studio.

 

You can produce anything in Geist : your drums, bass lines, leads. You just need the samples. It has a sampler included, you can make loops from what's inside you daw or record the loops you've just made in Geist and rechop them, remix them, whatever.
It's a sequencer associated to engines (8 engines) which includes the patterns (24 per engines) and the pads (16 per engine with each 8 fully articulatable layers) (pffouh) and it's a modulation monster : each pad sequence features velocity, repeats, tune, aux send,cutoff, etc all edditable per step. In addition there is all the FXPansion goodness : their filter, delay, reverb, it has 16 outputs, 4 auxes, the master, you can route everythin everywhere, handle all your samples from inside geist, make kits, etc.
You seem to be in Hip Hop : it's awesome for that. It's on the sister site if you wanna try it. There are good video tutorials online.

 

Yup! Everything Talmi said!

I love it. Worth every penny. And I don't even use the built-in sequencer to build tracks. I could, but I don't. I use it strictly as a drum kit and sample chop library. It's the closest thing to a software MPC...aside from the App Store Ipad/Iphone versions. It lets you layer up to eight sounds per pad and set up round robins, chokes, ADSR, built in FX that are pretty damn good IMO. It even let's you sample from within your DAW.

All of my production templates have Geist pre-routed to tracks so I can just pick a kit and go to work. I actually end up using two Geists in my tracks, one strictly for drums and the other for sample chops and other miscellaneous sounds. like kits of Riser and impact FX that I already created.

Making beats in it is fun too. Simple. I just prefer to make my music using S1's sequencer, since it does everything I need it to do.

 

You're absolutely right Real. It's really worth every penny. It's fun to use and there are so many possibilities that many workflows are possible.
And no template of mine without Geist, no way.
Regarding the MPC, I actually have one, but I don't use their software (I have to run it in my daw though or the pads won't work), I use the pads and qlinks only with Geist.
I also love the ADSR in Geist, you see it nicely, it's easy to use to modulate, and Geist 2 should have the whole fxpansion transmod system in it, that should really be insane, some LFOs, enveloppe followers, Finally a resizable GUI, I can't wait.
And yeah I'm kind of oldschool, I've used sequencers before daws, that's why I loved the Guru concept and now Geist. I don't mind sequencing in my daw the main kicks and snare but for hi hats or snare rolls, playing with pitch, repeats and filter, the sequencer in Geist is pretty practical, I don't manage to pull as many stuff in Reaper or Samplitude (my two main daws), although I've never really tried, I'm so used to working this way now. And I love the "live randomnisation" feature on the lines of the sequencer of Geist for slightly changing the starting point of my samples every times they hit, that and the round robin, it makes things not repetitive. And by using Geist sequencer I can use all of it's swing features (in the lines I edit the shifts and on the engines there is swing setting), I have a few groove monkeys libraries that work with Geist, so many possibilities there.
But any time I talk with someone about this beast, I find out new ways to use it, it's really neat !

 

Wow. Looks like I need to spend at list a LITTLE more time with Geist's sequencer then.
OMG I can't WAIT for Geist 2. It looks awesome!