Drums - how to sort them?

[Lazy Eyes]

Yo i'm kinda sorting my drums out at this time.. and i'm wondering what's the best way to sorten em out..

For instance i got like 1000 snares... right now i dropped them all in the same folder to put them in logical order.

But what type a snares have you got and how do you guys name?

How many subfolder have you got in your snare folder:

Right now i got this:

Snares:

snappy snr

crispy snr

lo-thud snr

big snr

dist snr

I want to make it so that i could easily find my drums and now what folder to look in, for that type a sound..

Thanx in advance!

 

[DJ Redrum]

That sure sounds like alot of work to do, i'd perfer to just have a set of favourite folders for each collection of snares,claps,kicks, ect.. than a whole set made for everything.

 

[Lazy Eyes]

yeah but what do u do with the other drums you don't have in your favourite folders, u just never use em??

And on the MP, you don't have favourite folders and you can't preview samples.. so it's real usefull to have a good structure when you are sorting your drums

 

[Chrono]

alot of people, including myself in the begining, think that the more sounds the better. fact is, the more sounds you have the more confusing it becomes when choosing a sound if you are not very familiar with the sounds. in-fact sorting gigs of anything is an art within itself. if i were you i would start off my sampling drums from a hiphop instrumental very carefully and then add affects to what you clip like reverb or whatever. this way you are working for your sounds. in reality what you pay for you appreciate more and utilize to a fuller degree. also, do no waste your time naming your snares. use your ears and choose the sounds that would fit your instrumental. i now like to create my drums for each project by cutting them from a source and tweak them to my taste once i have an idea of what i want the atmosphere of my instrumental to be like. this way when i use a snare or a kick they are unique and the sound is specific me to and me alone because i tweaked it. chances are since i tweaked it i am the only one with that specific sound signature. after all what makes big cash are unique and addictive drums and claps that compliment unique and additive melodies.. just choosing something you have downloaded is ripping off your musical opportunities. if i were you i'd stop downloading gigs of anything and find a new and unique source each time. this way it alleviates you having to find and sort anything and will assuredly give you more intresting sounds. also, do like other famous artists like tom waits and mic unusial things. i had an idea yesterday after playing with my moms dog to mic me lighlty tapping his stomach and using it as a kick. we all know that sound but in a song the listener would not recognize it but it would be familiar and would sound very nice.. i believe subconsciouly it would get more attention since it is a unrecognizable but familiar sound and the beatmaker could charge more or in my interest it would just make the instrumental more mine since i dont sell beats. anyway, hope this has helped

--CT

 

[LDB]

Yo i'm kinda sorting my drums out at this time.. and i'm wondering what's the best way to sorten em out..

For instance i got like 1000 snares... right now i dropped them all in the same folder to put them in logical order.

But what type a snares have you got and how do you guys name?

How many subfolder have you got in your snare folder:

Right now i got this:

Snares:

snappy snr

crispy snr

lo-thud snr

big snr

dist snr

I want to make it so that i could easily find my drums and now what folder to look in, for that type a sound..

Thanx in advance!

What you're doing is cool to a certain extent but as you increase your drum samples you'll run out of names real fast. I started out the way that you're doing it. What I do now is name drum sets...not individual samples. For instance, you have a standard hip hop set, R&B set, Westcoast set, Midwest set, Derty south set etc ect. Have 2 or 3 diff't kix, snares, open hatz, closed hatz, and various percussions for that subgenre of music. Now a days you can't call your tracks eastcoast, westcoast etc if you don't have the essential elements. Of course you could always substitute a kick here a snare there etc etc to change your drums up a bit.
I use Reason so I really don't have to use folders of various sets anymore. I can just make a refill and name it with all my drum samples for that genre of music in it. I find this to be alot easier and it gets you creating your music faster as oppose to going thru all your drum samples and trying to match shit up. You can lose a vibe real fast doing that! I'd implement some of what Chrono is saying as well but I wouldn't create a whole diff't set everytime I start a track. Make some of your own drum samples and just swop them in and out as needed to change up your drum patterns.

 

[Lazy Eyes]

Yeah thanx guys, thing is a lot of my drums are sample and run through SF with Batch processing with nice compression en some EQ so i od have my own kicks.. and i do have original drums i just have to many.. so i need to find a way to make it logical.. i don't even want more drums, i have plenty i just want the order in which they are placed to make sense.. i don't like working with prefixed kits, cus every beat needs different drums..

But thanx for the support!

 

[trebeatz]

i have like 80 gigs of unsorted samples and if im bored not making a beat ill usually sort samples, if i like the sound and find it useful i will give it a prefix like SN for snare and name it with the first thing that comes to my mind to describe it, it could be SN-crunch or SN-crocodile, whatever the sound triggers in my mind, and if i like the sound and use it often i can usually remember it by name or by sight because of that association

 

[samuelock]

i can't help you, really...i don't organize my drums, so it takes me forever to do anything. oh well, suits my style.

 

[KurtisRich]

i dont know about u guys but i actually reuse all my drums sound... i've only been working with only a few drums sounds and i filter, layer and resample them as i go along. the reason why i do this is cuz i'm a lazy ass mofo. too lazy to find other drums sounds so i just recycle and reuse. I just organize them by putting it in the same folder so i know it aint going anywhere. Too many folders = too much frustration..... keep it simple

OFF TOPIC: over 1000 posts.... i can't believe it.

 

[Low G]

I'm in the middle of trying to organize all my sounds... So far I have a huge deathtrap folder that's full of everything and I'll go into that and pull out sounds and drop them into folders like Str8 Snare, Snare with Hat, Snare with Stab all in the main folder called Snare. Aside from those 3 basics anything else will go into the other folder that doesn't match those descriptions. Repeat that for all your major drum kit sounds and everything should be relatively easy to find. I have so many sounds tho it would take days to organize everything so every few days I'll spend some time taking more sounds out of the huge folder and organize them. Slowly but surely things are starting to take shape. I'm really glad I'm doing this as well because now when I make a beat and want a str8 kick drum I just go into that folder and in no time flat I got exactly what I was looking for. It speeds up the sound searching process immensely compared to the way I used to have things setup.