Organizing Sounds

Accent · 2013-11-09T18:27:17.000Z

A common scenario for me:

I sit down at my gear and start tweaking knobs on the Mono, get something going that I like. Start making a beat, sequencing other gear, go back to the Mono. Eventually I end up with a couple of bits that work well together, but not as a whole; that upbeat Mouse on Mars synth bit is not going to work with the Autechre-esque robot sex sound. At this point, I usually end up making a decision and scrapping one part for another, but that seems like such a waste of potentially good ideas.

I find it a little discouraging that the only way to save a sound is to link it to a pattern/kit. Do you guys just make kits specifically for sound design, and just copy parts over as needed?

sicijk · 2013-11-10T07:13:20.000Z

Sometimes yes.
I have a snapshots i use for experimenting. Otherwise, if you’re not +Drive you can dedicate last 28 kit slots for specific sound kits.
I have Basses, Polys etc…
then if i need some of those tracks i load the kit-copy the track- then paste it on the working kit.

But i swear you…i am really bad in organization !!

FreeFall · 2013-11-10T07:57:40.000Z

The short answer to your question, is YES!

I have a +Drive, so running out of space is not a worry. I make lots of pattern variations and copies at will, and I save kits for specific patterns a lot too. When I’m messing around and experimenting, I don’t worry about what kit is linked to which pattern too much. But as I get things tightened up, I weed out the stuff I’m not using and organize patterns in a way that makes some sense. I end up with a bunch of unused kits in the Snapshot/project, but because of the +Drive, I don’t even worry about deleting them. It’s actually really good to have a kit for each pattern once the general sound palette is worked out, because you can adjust volume levels differently in each pattern, giving the sound a more organic and lively feeling (hence the magic of P-Locks).

I generally end up creating every sound from scratch, because I like to, but I’ve also started creating Snapshots that are aimed at containing kits of a certain kind of sound, such as DrumsSnap >> SnareKit (KickKit, RideKit, etc). Sometimes I sit down and make a bunch of kits for my “sound bank” Snapshots, and I’m trying to copy and paste sounds from projects i’m working on, into my sound bank as well.

It is a lot of work, and I yearn for a preset menu sometimes, but the lack of a preset menu seems to force a person to really contemplate the Pattern/Kit relationship all the time, and in turn showing the user how important P-Locking and modulating pattern(s) is in order to take the MnM to it’s maximum potential. It’s a crazy fucking beast!