Oh yeah I think we all at one point or another adopt that mentality. And I think it's a good thing. Frame of mind is so key to beat making and music creation. And "tricking" yourself" into channeling that buzz you felt in earlier times is a great idea. Especially if you've built up a lot of gear, sound sources and software. Perhaps just pick any 25% of your setup and just focus on that. Maybe do it again after duration and swap some of your other stuff in and out.
To your specific question, for me it was ending up with so many sounds that I needed to streamline the process. I'm lucky that I have an ungodly amount of sounds on my main sample HDD on my computer. But most are sounds I would use. I really don't have many that I'd want to prune even though less is more does apply at times.
But yes labeling is key. But using MPC's we are forever up against the character limits in file names. When it's your own sounds you can bear that in mind when titling files. But as you mentioned, you go years without doing that it's a mess to clean up.
At this point I don't chop on the MPC's, not on Maschine either, or Geist or whatever I'm using. Occasionally I will, but it just for me is too time consuming. I prefer to have that stuff done when I'm organizing my sounds. I always know how I'll use chops later so it works well for me. I know many like to make the chopiing more spontaneous as they are doing the tracks and I get that. I admit I'm likely in the minority the way I approach it.
So what I do is chop in Recycle. First I trim the loop and save a WAV. Then I chop it. I save that as a REX file for Reason and DAW usage. Then I turn off export as one sample. Usually turn the stretch knob for tail decays to zero unless the chop benefits from it. And then make a folder with the individual hits exported. Also if it's a loop that actually loops seamlessly I save a MIDI file in the same folder. But I seldom use whole loops that way. But it's just one extra button press so why not cover myself anyway?
As far as titling, yeah I get "BW_MG_001-016" as the titles. I've got a pretty good memory so I'd know that's Barry White Midnight Groove later. Such simple titling may not work for everybody. And of course I have no indication of BD, SD, HH,OH etc until I preview them.
Then for the MPC's I use MPC Editor for XL PGMs. That will add even crazier titles Like "4756&%~"
So I'm relying on the folder and already having a PGM file to save me there. For 1k and 2500 I use MPC Maid.
I also over the years got in the habit of ignoring the old standard MPC MIDI Note # mappings. Most software would have Pad1A as Note # 36 and then go ascending chromatic numerically from there. I set everything that way. So then my MIDI files can be used on MPC, computer DAW and even my iOS stuff.
Lastly I always on extending the mentality I mentioned above map - lowest 4 pads = 4 kicks. Next row =clap, snap, snare, clap. Or 4 snares. Next row = OH, HH, OH, HH. Top row = Perc of all types, maybe toms, crashes and cymbals. Sometimes toms on the BD 1st row too. Or if I have a bunch I put them on a bank B setup.
I'm sure preferred layouts are going to differ a lot for different people. I think the main thing is to have some general order that benefits how you play the pads and also streamlines you sample editing and PGM making process. But as I mentioned my methods only work for me as I have no issue seldom or never chopping on the machines having seen I'm faster just setting aside time and chopping literally 100-150 things in one session for later use.
For the 8 and 16 character limit stuff, shout out to Lampdog for hipping me to CKRename a nice bit of freeware for batch file renaming.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Fil ... name.shtmlAnd Google is showing a newer app called just Rename that some user quotes (or developer quotes...
) are saying is better the CKRename
