How the heck do I organize all of these patches???

[Paulie]

So I bought Kontakt Ultimate earlier this year, then went crazy on Black Friday buying Omnisphere 2 and a bunch of other sound packs for Massive.

How do you all organize your patches and libraries? For example, I've got about twenty Massive collections. I'm thinking of organizing the patches into sections for leads, pads, arppegiators, basses, fx, etc... is that just a waste of time? Looking for ideas so I don't try to re-invent the wheel.

[mikeymike2000]

This should automatically be done when you load them in. Then when you open your engine to plug the VSTs into the MIDI track you will see everything broken out into exactly what you are talking about.

If you mean taking it from this point to then organize it into a "custom" folder, I have no idea but I would say that if you were to do that it will take a ginormous amount of time AND you may not have found a sound you need in the future.

I have found a bunch of cool patches by going through the list and auditioning samples after the composing is done and the arranging / mixing begins. This way I am not taking 'creative time' to do it but I also find random cool shtuff in the process I never knew I had! That is half the fun, dude. Then I commit the location to memory if I want to use it again.

That is my work flow, anyway...

[Len911]

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/s ... e-browser/

It would be much simpler to do a search ?? Bass, piano, synth ...

There's probably a way to color or rate the patches that are a favorite, then when you search synth, then you can see your favorites hi-lited in red or something.

Next is tagging your patch. Audition the patch in standalone mode or your DAW. Determine which style it is. navigate to the attributes tab and select the genre, style or timbre etc. Add any extra info like “portamento event needed etc” or anything that might be useful for future use.Now click on save. The next time you search the categories you selected the saved preset will show up. If you work on multiple projects, always add the project name as a tag. You can add a tag by putting the tag in the comment box in the attributes tab. Once saved with a tag, you can always find the patches of the project quickly. Simply by doing a search for the tag in the browser tab. Anything entered in the comment box is searchable!

http://durkkooistra.com/2010/12/cant-op ... practices/

[Paulie]

Yeah, I'm looking to take it further than the standard organization that each application provides. For example, Massive has it's internal patches (three different groups), and I can search by keyword like bass or pad, but it gives me a whole bunch of patches to choose from, many that are not exactly basses or pads. Same for Absynth or Alchemy. Some of the tools have ways to provide star ratings or create custom lists, but I haven't figured out how to best use them yet.

I may make a duplicate copy of all of my Massive patches from the various libraries and sound packs into one folder and then audition all of them into different categories: leads, plucks,pads, basses, risers, boomers, toppers, etc... then import that into Massive. Who knows... my ADD might kick in again and I'l end up SQUIRREL!!!

[Len911]

http://forums.taxi.com/topic131817.html

remember this?

I thought Alchemy and even Kore has one of the best browsers. You start on the left with the broad categories, and each category gets more specific until you only have a few patches.

Of course if your search was more specific, like slap bass funky, you might get better results.

Cubase Media bay may be closer to what you are describing. You can get absurdly in depth classifying and tagging and organizing, but like Mikey said, it is very time consuming, and it's doubtful you will ever need it, because you will know where everything is by the time you get finished,lol!