Decision exhaustion: deciding which samples to keep

[thermionic]

Anyone have a tip for how they decide which samples to delete and clear out?

There’s got to be a better way than going to Nord Sound Manager, matching the sample to the patch, loading the patch to hear, then deleting from sound manager and cleaning up the program?

The idea of spending so much time auditioning and lookup i can get over i guess to have what i want, but i’m hoping i’m missing some obvious trick.

Thanks for any suggestions, I’m loving my electro so far but trying to customize.

[Hlaalu]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

You probably already know this but in theory the Nord Sample Library web page allows you to listen to each sample. This holds for pianos as well. I say "in theory" because of course what you hear there is going to inevitably be a quite different experience from what you actually hear when you load the sample/piano in your instrument and play... I find this to be especially true for pianos, less so for samples maybe. With pianos, the differences is big enough for me to basically ignore what I hear in the preview and to make me actually load the piano and try it out, before deciding to keep it or not.

[FZiegler]

I have my Stage for less than a year and didn't have so much time to dig into what's there. So I still don't know all the possibilities and limits of the instrument. Which made me leave all the sample programs (in the sense of example) as they were. With the idea of taking notes about ways to tweak your sound. But that approachs slows me rather down.

Others have reported to have erased everything and started custumising their instrument from scratch. Simple method. But that way, you should know a bit of what you want and what's feasable.

If you read the "my favorite piano samples" threads on the forum, you'll find out that for a lot of people, customising their Nord isn't a process that's done once, but every now and then.

In my eyes, customising a Stage or Electro doesn't start with loading other samples, but tweaking sounds to your needs. That way you will learn what possibilities are lying in a single sound.

[cphollis]

As above, simply auditioning all the samples and deciding on a subset is just the beginning of the fun. It's amazing how much sculpting you can do to a given sample: envelope filtering, EQ, effects, layering with synth/piano/organ and more. What might first sound as thin and unexciting can transform into intriguing and compelling with a bit of work.

Finding the "right" sound seems to do less with what sample you start with, and more about what you do with it.

[thermionic]

Thank you! I appreciate understanding how you all work, and it’s helpful even knowing that others have the same... not “frustrations” exactly but an adapting to the model. I’ve adapted to Elektron for its strengths and as someone with mild anxiety I need to deep dive to put the time into making it “mine”

[alex78]

As the others said, the customization of the instrument is something you do gradually according to your current needs and not once and forever. It is a life time procedure I would say!
I would suggest you first of all to think "what kind of sounds I definitely DO NOT NEED at this moment?" Having this in mind create a simple initial program and start scrolling the samples already on the board one by one, fiddling around with each and tweaking the effects a bit to check how the sample behaves to the various alterations. After spending a few minutes with a sample you can consider if it could be usefull or not. If not then delete it, you can always load it again if needed.
After making enough space in your memory start creating your own programs with the samples left and load new ones only if you can't do the job with those you already have.
As you get into that procedure you may have to re-visit some of your programs, test how they work with new samples, replace samples etc, but this will be an evolving procedure as mentioned before.
With nord you will always have the freedom to change things according to your needs. It's like you can return your clothes to the shop and exchange them with new ones as you loose or gain weight!

[thermionic]

Yeah, the trick was just to blow away all piano, samples and programs and start from empty, building patches is exceedingly easy now.

Next frustration to overcome is that I can't access https://nordusersounds.com/ :p

If the sample manager let you audition them directly it'd be better, but auditioning them live on the synth is still easier for me than listening to each preview on Nord's website.

[PolishPrince]

When I first got my Nord, I opened the Sound Manager and went to both split and organize view.. I sorted the programs by Size (largest at the top)... Then I'd play that program and know right away if I think I'd ever use it. At the same time you can see which sample is causing the program to be so large. Bottom line is that if it's a large sample and you don't have any use for it, blow it away and free up space. Keep doing that until you've got some major memory freed up to load what you want from the Nord Sample library or other third party sellers. Split View and Organize view in the program manager is the first place I'd suggest.