Logic Pro 8 organizing sounds

R

rainguitar

Logician
Hi,

My ever-expanding system is starting to become a bit disorganized. At the moment I have, for instance, bass patches in a number of locations depending on where the sound originates. My FM8 bass patches are in one location, Zebra 2 bass patches in another, XP-30 in another, es2 in another ect. ect. Its taking a lot of time finding the right patches. Even within Logic itself its own bass sounds are spread around a number of menus depending on whether they're part of a channel strip setting, in the Garageband instrument section, a EXS24 sample set or part of the individual factory or user settings for the various logic synths. I've even thought of setting up a data base where I could search for various instrument sounds by attributes for my whole system, similar to the system in FM8. Then I thought maybe such a beast is already out there and I don't know about it. What are you folks using for sound organization?

Greg
 
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There's no specific way to sort, search, and organize all your patches from all your different plug ins all in one place within Logic.

The only common point of access they can all respond to are the Channel Strip Settings. You can create and name individual Channel Strip Settings for each patch you like, from whatever plug in you want, and with or without effects plug ins associated with it. But there's no way to do this automatically.

Maybe, as you're working and find patches you like and may want to refer to again in the future, save them as a channel strip setting. Then organize your User channel strip settings folder however you like. You can group bass patches from different instrument plug ins there easily.
 
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Eli said:
There's no specific way to sort, search, and organize all your patches from all your different plug ins all in one place within Logic.
Click to expand...

Hi Eli,

I was pretty sure that was the case and, even if I were to use the channel strip settings as you suggest, I'm not sure that would work for my Roland XP-30 external synth settings. What I actually had in mind, though I know this would take a lot of work, is setting up a searchable data bass external to Logic in which I could enter the name, source and attributes of each sound. Then, when I needed a specific sound, I could search for it in the data base while keeping Logic open. The problem is I know next to nothing about such programs and wondered if there might be one out there thats either designed for this kind of thing or easily adapted to it.

Thanks,

Greg
 
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Thanks for the tip. I checked out the linc and was trying to determine whether or not this program could also find patches for non-sample-based software instruments. I'm thinking ES2, Sculpture, Zebra 2, FM8. It wasn't clear to me from reading the information on the site whether or not it could do this.

Greg
 
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I think, from what you have been describing, that you are looking more for a database type of application. Audio Finder is great; but it won't help you catalog the sounds on your outboard gear, or presets that might not have the name of the sound in the preset name, etc.
 
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Hi Eli,

I downloaded Bento 2 and it seems to do the job. But it will take forever to catalogue all those sounds. It took me half an hour to do 13 patches and I have somewhere between 6000 & 10,000. That's a lot of time away from the creation of music. Maybe I'll just catalogue the sounds I really like. I checked out your site and sampled some of the training videos. Well done! I wish I'd had access to them when I was at that stage.

Greg
 
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rainguitar said:
Hi Eli,

I downloaded Bento 2 and it seems to do the job. But it will take forever to catalogue all those sounds. It took me half an hour to do 13 patches and I have somewhere between 6000 & 10,000. That's a lot of time away from the creation of music. Maybe I'll just catalogue the sounds I really like. I checked out your site and sampled some of the training videos. Well done! I wish I'd had access to them when I was at that stage.

Greg
Click to expand...

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the compliment - glad you liked the video samples.

It seems to me like cataloguing everything the way you like, not only would be an unwieldy task, but of limited use as well. Once you searched your database, you'd still need to then manually (or otherwise) locate and load up the sound/patch/program change in question. Better to compile a list of favorite's IMHO. Nowadays with all the apps, plugins, presets,channel strips, etc; it's not realistic to think we can remember or know what each and every single patch from every source sounds like. Noris there time to check each and every possibility out.

Limit the choices - that's the only way to get any work done! :D
 
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Ok, here's what I'm doing: Whenever I find a sound that I like, I save it as a channel strip preset.
Being in a situation where I'm even thinking of working more in, say, Cubase (I'll probably even build myself a powerhorse of a Windows machine somewhen during this year), this might not be too clever, but when using Logic, this is the absolute best way I could imagine. I really hate having to deal with numerous file formats and browsers, so channel strip presets are the best way to adress this issue. I do create subfolders for synths or subfolders per instrument and may add the synths name to the patch (such as "BigBass_Z2", which would indicate it's Zebra 2 used).
In addition, in Finder I have a permanent link added, taking me to my channel strip folder instantly, so in case I want to reorganize things, I'm there pretty quick.
Regarding all this, Cubase 5s media bay is a *lot* better than what Logic offers. Maybe in the next update the channel strip preset and media browser will finally see some improvements (if there's gonna be an update at all...). That'd be much needed, IMO.

- Sascha
 
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