I HAVE TOO MANY SOUNDS !!! How do you handle it ?!

[creepy_lord]

Hello, from France !

After a while of gathering thousands of sounds over the years, one might get frustrated with having only 3 sound browsing "windows" in Live, with pretty much no functions at all.

I was wondering if anyone heard of a way to enhance Live's browsing system ; one thing I think would be great, is the ability to assign keyword tags to each samples, and be able to browse through them by typing keywords (or selecting categories checkboxes), keywords that are not necessarily in the name of the file - ans we would also be able to assign one sample to different categories, like a bass line could go into bass / house / loop / funk / vintage / shuffle... etc... all at the same time

I guess this doesn't exist though...

So what other way have you guys found to organize your sound banks when you really have a lot, and be able to find a sound real fast during a live session ?

Cheers

[shamburglar]

Are you on Mac? Audiofinder is a fantastic app for this... its a fast file browser with search capabilities and a built in sample editor... I've found so much audio I forgot I had since I hooked this up. I believe it also allows you to metatag your samples like you are asking.

[creepy_lord]

yes I heard about it, seems pretty cool, but having to switch apps, drag the sample from the audiofinder app into the Live clip... thus hidding your audiofinder browser window when live pops back up in front... during a live session...

[D-Jam]

I just have things organized in folders:

Bass Loops
Bass Stabs
Drum Loops
Drum Stabs
Midi
Sound Effects
Synth Loops
Synth Stabs
To Chop Up (songs, or accapellas I want to use multiple pieces from)
Vocals (mostly vocal stabs and samples)

Some of those folders get some subfolders, like the Drum Loops I put in several genre titles and put the files in folders where it seemed appropriate. Like a folder of breakbeats and one of house beats and one of rap/hip-hop beats. The Drum Stabs folder I just divided up into sounds. Kicks, Cymbals, High Hats, etc.

The rest I leave alone and just shuffle through when I want to find stuff or ideas.

[creepy_lord]

thanx d-jam !
ok so you chose to rename your actual folders and use that to build your browsing system

of course that's an option, but I have so many damn sounds, I'm sure after 15 minutes of organizing, I'll be finding a new category for each sound I try to put away

I was hoping there might be some patch extension hell junk somewhere, to add to Live these missing file handling features...

[Figgy]

Something that has helped me...I made a folder called Factory. I dump all of the stock stuff in here so it doesn't take up room when looking for instruments. If I happen to go through it and find something that I like, I through it in a folder based on the instrument. Also read up about how to load your drum sounds into a multi sampler, using a selector. Hugely helpful in organizing. I have multi samples with 128 synth kicks, 128 sampled kicks etc, all assigned to scroll through sounds with a click.

[emef]

you can bookmark folders in ableton
i hardly use all three browsers, i go straight to my bookmarks

right click the folder you want instant access to
click 'bookmark folder' from the drop down menu
click on the top bar of the browser, your bookmark is saved there

its a shame ya can't re-order the bookmarks but its better than nowt

[creepy_lord]

thanx for your inputs !
emef, that bookmark thing I did not know of - in a world with no useful search features at all, a little thing like that might help a lot !

[Hermanus]

I Use a partition only dedicated to music_ You can also dedicate one to wav sounds only.

Man this topic inspires me... We could create the I NEVER HAVE ENOUGH SOUNDS 'topic

[creepy_lord]

lol
well I actually use an external hard drive on which I just put sounds
but it's organized by sound bank, which isn't very convenient
but I don't wana spend a week re-organizing thousands of sound files geeeeeee

and YES MORE SOUNDS MORE SOUNDS MORE SOUNDS
but let's just have them auto-categorize themselves into the right categories when you buy new ones, one click, and hop, everything is in the right place, the computer guesses everything chop chop - new feature... really cool

[andrew_]

I would also go with the folder categorizing option. If you have so many sounds that the folders are going to be way out of control, there's probably no super-effective method of organizing them anyway.

[arafel]

I'm actually going thru my EXS library... transferring over to Sampler.

IMHO - Taking the time to actually go thru your sounds is really helpful.

I've deleted a ton - as they were total crap, or very similar to those in an instrument already, or where not mapped properly.
I've catagorized even more, and placed in the right folder according to instrument type/ sound (drums, pads, leads, keys, etc)

[hurlingdervish]

IMHO - Taking the time to actually go thru your sounds is really helpful.

can be quite relaxing too

[Raddler]

I really wish some sort of color coding feature for the device library will be added in Live 9.

[outershpongolia]

We could create the I NEVER HAVE ENOUGH SOUNDS 'topic

+1