tons of samples, loops, virtual synths, making less music

[C Heat]

Gettin' caught up in the marketing hype, like the rest of 'em...

Hardware sounds better too.

[Fredrik]

Originally Posted by captain54

I seriously thinking of dumping the whole schmaba and getting a motif or old korg like a used karma or something and just using that to write and nothing else...then dumping it all digital back into the sequencer....

any one else in this dilemna or mind set?

Yes!

What initially looks good can turn out to be a major headache

[theblue1]

My son... the answer is not outside you.

[captain54]

Originally Posted by theblue1

My son... the answer is not outside you.

oh wise one......then what IS the answer?

how do you deal with combing thru 1000's of sounds and spending hours searching for the "perfect" addition to your next hit record?

[Billster]

The more stuff you posess, the more you have to take care of. It´s the same with books, cds, movies etc.

I like to work with just a few powerhouse items (be it soft- or hardware) and get to know those really well instead of twiddling with 1001 plugins and getting nowhere. I know some guys who downloaded about every plugin ever written and don´t even know how to use them or what they actually do.

I hate updating plugins and software with every OS update I posess to many plugs already. Maybe I´ll sell some soon, because some I don´t use at all.

Make music !

Bill

[theblue1]

Well, of course, I could tell you the secret...

... but what is the purpose of this journey we call life?

I'm thinking it's the journey, itself, which teaches us life's lessons.


If I were to hand you the answer... it would be meaningless to you.





But, seriously, I think it's easy to get overwhelmed by our tools if we aquire them so fast we don't really master many -- or any -- of them.

We should be the master of out tools... not the other way around.

[Billster]

Originally Posted by captain54

how do you deal with combing thru 1000's of sounds and spending hours searching for the "perfect" addition to your next hit record?

Some of the best records made are done with a rather small selection of tools. Don´t use every tool out there, use the ones that feel right for you. Get to know them !

When you spend most of your time looking for THE right sound, you

a) don´t know your equipment well enough
and b) lose focus of what´s really important (that´s my experience at least)

Bill

[Fredrik]

Originally Posted by theblue1

My son... the answer is not outside you.

I have resolved this be minimizing my sound bank according to my preferences, in that way I will always have a great start position, and a more personal soundbank.

I do feel that the creativity can be disturbed when I´ll have to start out by looking through 1000´s of sounds.

But thats just my way of organizing things.

[captain54]

Originally Posted by theblue1

If I were to hand you the answer... it would be meaningless to you.





.

it's already meaningless to me.....

I was talking to a Hip Hop dude the other day and the word on the street is a swing back to hardware...FWIW

acquiring a lot of stuff quickly, prevents you from mastering one or some of those apps and becoming proficient.....agreed

if you only have a few apps a your disposal....Like a hardware synth with only a limited number of sounds available to you, then you are FORCED to master that app...who has the discipline to not go exploring everytime you pick up a new toy??

Logic Pro itself is the culprit...it comes pre loaded with 1000's of tools that become overwhelming...at least for a pea brain like me....

[Fredrik]

Originally Posted by Billster

Some of the best records made are done with a rather small selection of tools.

I agree with you on this one, have a few that you can master fully and have learnt every tweak to get you where you want.

[theblue1]

I'm generally agnostic about which is 'better' (I have more than a few of both, though, sadly, I only have one hardware analog synth, a very, very basic single oscillator job) -- but I will say that, by and large, hardware synths do not have the exaggerated latency one can find with some soft synths. And for those of us 'over-sensitive' to latency issues, that can be a tie-breaker, seems to me.

I'm not too bad when it comes to dealing with keyboard latency since I'm pretty used to it... in the old days I was always coming up with cool envelopes that required playing substantially 'ahead'... but now that I have a decent hammer-weighted controller (UF8), when I dial up a piano sample set and it lags... that's weird. [I have a real piano in the garage, and while there's certainly a 'mechanical latency' in the operation of an acoustic piano, if the synth 'version' is too far out of sync with my expectations, the piano feel evaporates. (Where I'm absolutely nuts with regard to latency is in guitar... even routing through a simple digital mixer puts noticeable and unnerving latency in my signal. I have to have an analog chain between my guitar and my monitors. It's not like I absolutely can't play with a couple ms delay -- but it definitely throws me off and makes me uncomfortable. I'm the coal miner's canary of latency on that ish, I'm afraid. [From that do not assume I can actually play guitar well enough to justify that level of fussiness!])

[Stick]

For me, it's about a quick commitment. I've got plenty of toys to flip through, but I go with something I find pretty quick. Sometimes it's what I had it mind, but often it's something totally different. Then, I just go with it.

I take a guess at where I might find what I was thinking, and flip around in the vicinity, and then COMMIT!

Toys are fun.

[theblue1]

I think the notion that keeps coming up here -- have a ready set of familiar tools when starting up a project or part -- makes a lot of sense.

I now have a few templates I've created with sets of tracks, instruments, and plugs ready to go so I don't even have to think about housekeeping when inspiration (or the requirement to feed my daily podcast) strikes.

I just start a new project file with my go-to template [okay... I just wanted to use "go-to" once before I permanently ban it from my personal lexicon] and hit the red button on either the mic or my current fave GM wavetable and start working.

There's always time to worry things to death later after the white hot glow of inspiration has passed.

(OK... these days the glow is more like a warm reddish gold... but... you know.)

[JHOOKS]

agree! when i first started out i had just an asr x. nothing else. i mastered this tool. then moved on to the mpc2000 xl and triton rack. i knew the in's and outs of my gear. i stood by these 2 gadgets for 5 years. i learn how to create my own sounds, and i learned how to reuse old sounds. the point is that you really have to get to know your gear. with reason, softsynths, cubase, albeton. etc etc. its easy to get caught up! i knew after using the mpc and triton for 5 years, when i moved to the daw world i was lost!!!! way to many things to use, and 90 % of it is garbage! find a few good tool buddy! and make them work for u! learn learn learn! ur gear!

[Mario-C.]

limiting your options can sometimes be a good thing

[captain54]

here's an example of what I go thru when I sit down to crank out a normal tune:

step one...drums

do I use a)Drum kit from Hell Superior/Custom vintage
( choice of 25 different snares, 15 kicks, 20 cymbals, 10 hats and toms)
b)Discrete Drums ....12 CD's worth of grooves
c)GarageBand jam Pack collection of drum grooves plus another Gig of
apple drum loops, acid loops 4 cd's worth
d)Ultrabeat....infinite amount of grooves, could spend hours here
e)Platinum Drums....grooves plus individual hits loaded into exs 24
f)personal collection of grooves banged out on acoustic kit
g)Spectrasonics ambient and liquid grooves..2 gig worth of material

step two ...bass

a)Zero G creative essentials
b)Logic Pro stock bass guitar samples (further processing with Bass
Amp plug in
c)entire gig of bass guitar samples from Gigasampler converted to exs
24
d)bass guitar from roland xp30 synth
e)bass guitar from Logic Sculpture
f)Scarbee bass guitar samples for exs 24
g)not to mention all the synth bass choices from albino, moog
modular, fm7, absynth, and logic synths
h) 2 gigs of apple and acid loop bass gutiar riffs

step three...keys

I'm afraid to even get started here....scarbee, evp 88, native
instruments elektrik piano, lounge lizard, roland synth, absynth,
stock Logic EP and acoustic, Bosendorfer 290, Giga Piano....not to
mention processing with Scarbee FX, apple loop and acid loop rhodes
and wurly ep grooves

step three ambience/strings

even more afraid to go here.....absynth, fm 7, albino, spectracsonics,
Korg triton exs 24 sample set, roland xp 30 synth, 1000's of stock
logic Pro choices, .....there's other stuff I have I'm sure but I can't
remember I haven't used it in so long

step three guitar.

if I don't have a real guitar player, these choices could go on until I'm
in my 80's in a wheelchair


so you see, there are mountains and mountains of stuff to sift thru....I've used pretty much everything at one time or another, ...it's hard to get rid of anything because I like em' all....create a standard template? it seems almost impossible, unless I am forced to pare everything down a very minimal set of tools to work with...

but what?

[theblue1]

Well, you know, if it's all working for you, that's the most important thing.

I'm reluctant to completely get rid of tools... but sometimes I like having a basic set within reach (and then maybe keeping the rest 'nearby'... so I can get at them quickly if I need, but I'm not stumbling over them or being distracted by them).

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by captain54

I've found that I've accumulated a massive array of softsynths, loops, samples, etc and am getting less done than ever before.....
any one else in this dilemna or mind set?

Hell yeah, I thought for a second I'd written your post! (Well, except for the part about softsynths, I've still got a rack full of "vintage" late 80's MIDI modules for bogus globulent orchestral cheese.) But I used to go into what was supposed to be the Writing Room and spend three hours auditioning drum loops in ReCycle without ever committing a note to tape (er, disc). All the dicking around with loops & samples is fun as all get-out, sure, but at the end of the day I realized they rarely served as inspiration. I needed to separate my Music Production time from my Music Creation time.

I made 3 changes recently that seem to be going a long way to digging me out of that hole:

1) I leave the Mac powered up all the time, with my DAW program loaded. I only ever quit the app once a week to do routine computer maintenance.

2) I borrowed a set of Yamaha electronic drum pads, horked them into the trigger inputs of my Alesis DM5, and leave that set up in the back of the control room. Screw canned loops, I can pick up a pair of sticks & throw down a groove in 10 minutes. (I was a drummer in high school, so it's not as pathetic as you might imagine. Then again, high school was 30 years ago, so it's not as grooving as *I* might imagine either!)

3) I leave an SM58 permanently plugged in, sitting on the console. None of this dicking around trying to find which mic works best for this voice, or waiting for my swanky tube mic preamp to warm up...it's a Writing Room ferchrissakes! I push one button to route the 58 to an armed track, disable the monitors & throw on the headphones (which are also permanently plugged in and lying right there on the console) and sitting at the console holding the mic in my hand I sing whatever needs to get sung. I can worry about fixing things (or, more likely, replacing them) later, *after* the tune exists.

[h2000]

Originally Posted by captain54

here's an example of what I go thru when I sit down to crank out a normal tune:

step one...drums

do I use a)Drum kit from Hell Superior/Custom vintage
( choice of 25 different snares, 15 kicks, 20 cymbals, 10 hats and toms)
b)Discrete Drums ....12 CD's worth of grooves
c)GarageBand jam Pack collection of drum grooves plus another Gig of
apple drum loops, acid loops 4 cd's worth
d)Ultrabeat....infinite amount of grooves, could spend hours here
e)Platinum Drums....grooves plus individual hits loaded into exs 24
f)personal collection of grooves banged out on acoustic kit
g)Spectrasonics ambient and liquid grooves..2 gig worth of material

step two ...bass

a)Zero G creative essentials
b)Logic Pro stock bass guitar samples (further processing with Bass
Amp plug in
c)entire gig of bass guitar samples from Gigasampler converted to exs
24
d)bass guitar from roland xp30 synth
e)bass guitar from Logic Sculpture
f)Scarbee bass guitar samples for exs 24
g)not to mention all the synth bass choices from albino, moog
modular, fm7, absynth, and logic synths
h) 2 gigs of apple and acid loop bass gutiar riffs

step three...keys

I'm afraid to even get started here....scarbee, evp 88, native
instruments elektrik piano, lounge lizard, roland synth, absynth,
stock Logic EP and acoustic, Bosendorfer 290, Giga Piano....not to
mention processing with Scarbee FX, apple loop and acid loop rhodes
and wurly ep grooves

step three ambience/strings

even more afraid to go here.....absynth, fm 7, albino, spectracsonics,
Korg triton exs 24 sample set, roland xp 30 synth, 1000's of stock
logic Pro choices, .....there's other stuff I have I'm sure but I can't
remember I haven't used it in so long

step three guitar.

if I don't have a real guitar player, these choices could go on until I'm
in my 80's in a wheelchair


so you see, there are mountains and mountains of stuff to sift thru....I've used pretty much everything at one time or another, ...it's hard to get rid of anything because I like em' all....create a standard template? it seems almost impossible, unless I am forced to pare everything down a very minimal set of tools to work with...

but what?

Dude, you got wayyy too much stuff IMO (why do you need 4 different EP sims.?).

I would find a few good tools/sounds and stick with 'em. Part of producing is filtering the soundset to something unique.

Anyway, that's the way I look at it.

[greggybud]

Originally Posted by captain54

I've found that I've accumulated a massive array of softsynths, loops, samples, etc and am getting less done than ever before.....

I've starting to long for the days of the hardwared synth with a few patches.....

I've tried organizing it every which way....there's no way getting around the fact that I spend a lot of time looking for that perfects synth, sample, loop rather than going with what i have...

I seriously thinking of dumping the whole schmaba and getting a motif or old korg like a used karma or something and just using that to write and nothing else...then dumping it all digital back into the sequencer....

any one else in this dilemna or mind set?

What kind of music do you write? Does the music drive your technology or does technology drive your music? For example you can sit down and find a very cool unique synth patch and a drum loop and or sequencer and build a song from it. Thats technology leading your music. Or you can create a song on a piano and build arrangements around the song....the traditional way. If you dont mind technology leading the way I don't think there is anything wrong with being overwhelmed with loads of stuff as that is when happy accidents happen. Yes it is a distraction, but through those distractions song ideas are born.

Depending on your gear if you have lots of hardware synths you might look into a librarian editor such as Soundquest. You shouldnt ever have to sort through hundreds of sounds searching.......let a librarian do that for you. Let the libaraian edit your syntheiszers, especially the rack synths with a 1x2 inch screen and a hundred menues. My librarian classifies thousands of sounds and patches in my Emu Moprheus, Matrix 1000, Yamaha TGX802, Ensoniq VFX-SD, Midiverb, Vintage Keys, and Waldorf. Unfortunately with new keyboards and software synths the wave of the future has almost made librarians a thing of the past.

If you work the traditional way force yourself to have just a few "go to" tools. Maybe basic keyboard, drums, and bass. Once you have a great song....meaning one that doesnt need gimmics, then go back and dig deeper to see what works best. Maybe instead of a piano a vintage wurlitzer piano will fit.

I have expierenced exactly what you are going through. When I write, I have just 5 "go to" hardware synths to create a song. After the song is complete and sort of "stands on its own" then I will go back and sometimes dig very deep. For example I will open up Reaktor 5 and with the options of hundreds of syntheiszers I will try to focus the sounds I want often replacing a basic Nord hardware synth patch with something I feel works better from a Reaktor ensemble.

From start to finish most of my euro-pop/trance pop rock songs take months. I can get the basic song down in a day or two. A lot of people would probably say leave it and move on. But for myself, the real fun begins after I have written a basic raw song.

Good luck.

[FFTT]

So true!

I did so much with my Tascam 488 and my Mackie 1604 and now years later,

I'm doing zip trying to put the right digital combo together.

I'm beginning to think great outboard hardware and Garageband might be the answer.

[mitchell]

I'm a Logic nutter as well, but when I embarked on doing my super new wave band project, I just made a bunch of rules. Here was the basic thing-

Linn drum samples in EXS24 for drums (separate instances for kick, snare, hats, etc. for processing just like real mic'd up kit)

Synth bass only, almost always 1 osc analog sound (instead of trying to make the biggest bass in the world, If I want more, I just layer in something chorusey or distorted).

ES2 and Pro-53 analog synths, NO modern digi-slice/dice/julienne synth plugs. No presets, I make all my own patches, but I'm really into that kinda thing.

Epiphone hollowbody with P-90's thru AC-30 (Line 6 version, but it actually sounds pretty darn good)

I break the rules occasionally; sometimes I layer in real bass, and I use Ultrabeat here and there for toms and handclap smash madness, but this is the basic setup, and it greatly reduces the amount of time I spend in pointless tweak-land.

Tempting as it is, you REALLY don't need a million plug-in synths. Lots of guys made some pretty great records in 1979 with a Prophet-5 or a Minimoog.

mitchell

www.celebutantemusic.com
www.myspace.com/celebutantemusic.com

[greggybud]

Originally Posted by mitchell

Tempting as it is, you REALLY don't need a million plug-in synths. Lots of guys made some pretty great records in 1979 with a Prophet-5 or a Minimoog.
mitchell
www.celebutantemusic.com
www.myspace.com/celebutantemusic.com

Classic records were made in that era with just a Prophet or a Minimoog! Today we are bombarded with a ton of soft synths so unless you have great discipline you have no time to really learn any one synth and all its possiblities.

[jlotto]

if u use all in one joint like gigasampler reason, kontakt, etc. set up templates w/ synths/drums, etc. that u can recall open opening

[gsilbers]

use what works. youve problably made some cool stuff already. youll usually go for the same type of sounds/synth etc. so keep on going for the same.

i do also have tons of stuff. 300gb of sfx, 120gb of sample loops etc. , and about 200
virtual synth/audio processors. and tons of songs/ideas.

i had/have the same problem. but the solution came to me in a futuremusic magazine little article. plain and simple, make a song in 10 hours.

1 hour drums

1 hour bass line

2 hour melody/chord progression

1 hour arrange

1 hour overdub real intruments

2 hour vocal session

1hour mixing

1 fix stuff up polish etc,


you dont have to do an hour for each specially if you have a 9-5 job.
but setting a time limit for each part is really good. try to do it like an assignment/ exercise. do a song in 4 hours. itll problably wont be that good but youll learn and browse through your patches/samples waaaay faster.
learn patches and prodution techniques. and find that special patch/sample youll use like if its the only one in your arsenal.


and when i am not on the computer i grab real analog stuff ...my guitar, to make the song/ideas.
then usethe song i came up in different styles, from hiphop to house to trance to pop.

when i am uninspired or my wifes makesme watch chick fliks, i browse through my patches sample loops. i dont like using other poeple patches but use them as a starting point. specially if its a softsynth like linplugs octupus with 8 oscilators and lfos with their envelope ets.. ill start from a cool patch then teak it.
and then save it to my preset folder. so i know all the patches/samples from my foler.




wel , hope that helps

[captain54]

your post made me realize that most of the problem is over production....not being able to leave shit alone when it already sounds pretty damn good...

that's what leads to the endless browsing and noodlng with samples, loops and synth patches....not being able to commit to something and moving on..

[kennyd03]

I've been digging the "record of the moment" philosophy lately. Specifically, when I write/produce, I'll find what strikes me at that particular time and stick with it. At the beginning of a project, I'll sit down with my synths/loops and samples and go through them, and make a list of patches/files that I connect with to fit the particular mood/project. When I feel like I have enough choices in each instrument/sound category, I'll start building the track from the list. Sometimes I veer, but this process has definitely helped me from spending forever digging through all my soundware at every step along the way.

Good Luck!

-Kenny D

[captain caveman]

Originally Posted by captain54

oh wise one......then what IS the answer?

how do you deal with combing thru 1000's of sounds and spending hours searching for the "perfect" addition to your next hit record?

Perhaps this....

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?id=kore_us

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