How do you organise your Refills?

[tobypearce]

Hi there,

I've got quite a few refills bought over the years. I'm sure others have too.

In fact, the number of refills makes it hard to navigate. The new R9 organisation is really nice, with all sounds split into basses, leads etc.

This isn't possible with refills, of course - they are so different from each other! I'd like to reorganise the whole folder. Currently I have this:

Screen Shot 2016-06-10 at 08.08.53.png (117.71 KiB) Viewed 2613 times

It's an unhelpful blend of:
* Studio (Nucleus Soundlab, Pink Noise etc)
* Genre (World)
* Type (Drums, FX etc)
* Concept (Classic synths)


What a mess.

There probably isn't a perfect solution, but I'm interested as to how others approach this, and whether you've found a way to organise your refill folder in a really useful way.

[decibel]

an impossible task lol, just gotta do the best you can yeah

[Melody303]

I save (duplicates of) my favorite presets from refills and categorize those as I wish.
I don't deal with the refills directly in general.
Every year or so I go through the refills again to see if I want to refresh my palette.

[tobypearce]

Decibel: you're right, of course. I just have the feeling I could be making much more of the refills. In fact, I use them quite minimally and would like to do so more.

Melody303: That's a good idea!

Any more?

[bitley]

Hehe

[joeyluck]

I organize them using favorites and just leave them alone in their actual folder. Since many ReFills contain many categories of sounds... So I have a fav category for 'Piano' which links to the entire ReFills, or folders inside ReFills containing piano patches.

[boggg1]

I file them under their source but I create shortcuts (I am a Windows user) to the ones I learn are useful. The shortcuts sit in folders with names such as Keyboards, Ethnic, Sound Effects and Synthesisers and within these are sub folders (eg Retro Organs and Acoustic Pianos and lie within Keyboards and Jiggery Pokery and Amazound lie within Retro Organs within Keyboards in my case). To make these special folders move to the top of the sorted list in Reason (and to be clear they are link folders) I name all of them ++Keyboards rather than Keyboards. The system can be any classification which makes sense to the user and it gets more and more useful as cross-genre refills are discovered - just categorise them in multiple genre folders. Jiggery Pokery's organs are both keyboards and synthesisers in my way of thinking so they get two shortcuts and if one of his organs can make drum sounds (I forget) then they might get a drum shortcut too. The important point is to design the the system you need and morph it as your tastes change. And to repeat I am making shortcuts not multiple copies of refills.

I personally do not create instrument folders - there is no Antidote folder in my system. It is the sound (not the instrument) which matters to me. But that might be different for those who have love for particular instruments or for whom a musical sound is defined by one instrument. Hey, why not have folders for instruments and folders for sound genres.

My version helps me most when I know the sound I want but are prone to forget less obvious refills. It does not stop me blindly wandering around and stumbling on the right sound - nothing wrong with that. It is productive when I need to be productive, when the sound is in my head.

To put it in perspective, I think I am 10% through full categorisation and it helps me already. Categorisation can be approached at any pace you choose - I have my "goto" refills categorised fully but there is a long way to go. It is simpler than it sounds to do and Reason will follow the shortcuts beautifully.

I discovered piano sounds in an obscure refill the other day and it is now in my categorisation system for when it is just the right sound for the moment.

[WongoTheSane]

Nothing like a strong sorting method.

sort.PNG (7.05 KiB) Viewed 2553 times

[challism]

I basically just have them sorted by developer. Each developer has their own sub folder under the "~categorized by developer" folder. I put the squiggly in there so it stays on the top of the alphabetized list. In order for a refill to go into a sub folder, I need at least 2 from the same developer. If I only have one from a developer, I just put it in my main folder with all the other misc patches, etc. My personally made patches I keep separated in a folder marked as such. I feel my system is pretty well organized. I can usually find what I am looking for.

[yeahright31]

With my refills I have created a folder called Reason Refills 2016 then I put them all in.

Before I create a beat I tend to just pick 2 or 3 refills and start from there and if needed then I use an RE, usually the RE I use is for effects.
Other wise I go the other way around and choose 2 OR 3 RE & using one refill trawling through sounds till I find what I like.

If I have writers block then I create new drums in Kong or make a bonkers combinator so when I start my next beat I got something inspiring to work with.

[16BitBear]

I store all of my Refills and Rex files by developer on an external hard drive.

Then on the local disk, I have a smaller library of always used Refills and Rex files. As I work on projects, I will copy over more for use in a specific one. If it becomes a favorite, then it remains on the drive as well.

On the external, I have over a half a terabyte on the external drive. I usually only have around 50 gigabytes on the internal at any one time. It makes it much easier to manage and work with I have found.

I treat all my samples this way whether they are wave, SFZ, sf2, Wusik, Giga, Kontakt, Akai, Ensoniq, etc. The entire library is stored on external drives, and a small portion of favorites and current project files are on a partition in the internal drive.

[adfielding]

My current setup looks pretty much the same as yours. I guess it just helps to know which Refills work best for a particular purpose and go from there, really.

I had a big clean up a few years back and stuck a load of Refills into a "Legacy Refills" folder, and now I have my main Refill folder sub-divided into folders based on author - so, one for Propellerhead Software, one for Nucleus SoundLab, one for Tom Pritchard Sound Design, and so on. I did find it quite refreshing to move a load of my rarely used Refills out of my main Refill folder, I wouldn't consider myself a Refill hoarder by any stretch of the imagination but it does accumulate over time.

[tibah]

91 ReFills here, which may be small or large, depending on your view.

If it's a collection e.g. the Booster Pack, all stays in one folder, with the corresponding name. Same goes for collection of the same developer e.g. all Soundcells or all Tom Pritchard. If a ReFill only contains patches for one synth, like "Lizard's Placebo - v.1.0 - Refill for Antidote", it will be in Patches -> Antidote.

So, everything not part of a pack, by the same developer or dedicated to one device only, will end up in "ReFills", without any sub folders.

Then of course, there is the actual Reason browser thingie, which is far more important:



ReFills I want quick access to have a direct shortcut. Then there is the generel ReFill folder who has them all, to browse lesser used stuff. Booster Packs because they are still new purchases. Soundcells collection and Tom Pritchard collection. Rest is dedicated to samples.

[marcuswitt]

Hi there,

I've got quite a few refills bought over the years. I'm sure others have too.

In fact, the number of refills makes it hard to navigate. The new R9 organisation is really nice, with all sounds split into basses, leads etc.

This isn't possible with refills, of course - they are so different from each other! I'd like to reorganise the whole folder. Currently I have this:

Screen Shot 2016-06-10 at 08.08.53.png

It's an unhelpful blend of:
* Studio (Nucleus Soundlab, Pink Noise etc)
* Genre (World)
* Type (Drums, FX etc)
* Concept (Classic synths)


What a mess.

There probably isn't a perfect solution, but I'm interested as to how others approach this, and whether you've found a way to organise your refill folder in a really useful way.

I've organized my collection of Refills the following way:

01) PURCHASED (40+ regularly bought Refills)
02) TRIALS AND DEMOS (cut-down demo and trial versions of purchasable Refills)
03) SELF MADE (as its name suggests, they're self made, such as tons of old AKAI S1000 libraries converted into Refills via Reload)
04) SHARED AND FOR FREE (some nice and very usable free Refills picket from the Internet).

[moneykube]

a snapshot

[Skettalee]

I've actually just came up with what I thought was the main way to do it by putting all the refills directly into ProgramFiles\Reason 8\ right there, with subfolders for different instrument patches and such directly there too. And its super easy to search in reason, just select that programfiles folder and do your search for everything.

And obviously its in the Applications Folder in mac, but here is a Screen shot of my files:


http://www.337studios.com/images/refills.png

[jam-s]

Putting refills/patches/content in the application folder is a very bad idea, as you might loose all of this when you uninstall/reinstall Reason.

[kuhliloach]