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rayman612 wrote:im thinking about deleting all mine & saving the breaks...

im scared tho

VirtualMark wrote:It says i started this thread, but i didn't! Weird.

nnny wrote:I couldn't imagine starting from scratch every time. My latop AND external HDD died on me at the start of the year. I'm still feeling the effects from it. Been so long since I've made anything.

Lost all motivation/inspiration completely

outdropt wrote:So i am realizing now that it is time to get my patches and samples into order. Thought i would give some reason as to why you should organize as well.

Some of you will probably say you should organize from the beginning, naming and dating everything you make. Yes this is ideal but in the beginning that is not my mind set, every time i started a track i would literally build the drums and sounds from scratch, just to get used to the process and capabilities. Now we need to put things in order to make use of those countless hours of sound design.

So now i have a mess on my hands, 80+ projects (ableton) maybe 20-30 with some decent playing material, 40-50 with some good concepts/sounds but the song as a whole sucks, and a few duds.

If you are:

1. Your spending a lot of time sorting threw old projects
2. You like some of the sounds melodies you previously did but the song as a whole is not going anywhere
3. Spend a lot of time developing sounds
4. Find it harder to come up with new ideas
5. Recycle old ideas with new techniques
6. Have a shit load of old material

You should try and sort some of your material out. This will help you create songs from start to finish a lot quicker, and make it easier to find a specific sound.

Here is how i would suggest sorting.

Lets start with bass, now it is up to you if you would like to keep effects and sub bass on your patches and in your bounced clips. I personally do not recommend keeping sub bass with your bounced audio because it will be effected by whatever processing you do when you bring the patch up in a new song (unless you plan on splitting bands of course).

Create a folder, Name it Bass sounds.
Inside the folder we are going to create two folders,
1 is for Bounced clips the other is for patches. (this is to preserve bass lines that you have already created and automated)
Naming the sounds is up to you, Most of the time i will state which project the files from and ether a number or an explanation for the sound (yug, growl, ect)
If your going to have multiple clips of bounced audio for the same patch create another folder within the bounced clips folder, named with the project file its from.
In the patches folder create a folder, name it whatever project you got the patch from.

Drums i suggest making a drums folder,
Inside the drums folder make folders for snares, kick, cymbals, ect.
All my drum sounds start and finish as audio clips. I would bounce to audio with whatever effects are on the sound (Do not include compression, i would wait until its in the context of whatever track your using the drums sound for)

For high end synths and sound FX's it is up to you how refined you want to get with the folders
You can base it on
Frequency- roughly where most of the sound sits
Onamonapia's- (Swoosh, buzz, ding, pshhh, ect)
Effect names- (Sweep up, sweep down, ambiance, lead keys, ect)

Just some ideas for why and how you should go about getting organized. This will help you get ideas down quicker and you will now know where to go to get specific sounds, instead of sitting there playing through a sea of clips. Hope this helps!