Charlie, your approach seems fascinating. Like a Samurai with no doubts that just acts.
Do you always trust your initial decision and never consider going back? And have you ever gone back to revisit a library and found sounds that you like now but had initially dismissed? Or maybe sounds you selected but then don't like that much?
My perception of stuff (anything from synths, movies, books, food, etc) changes constantly. I like to think it's because my taste/perception gets better, but I'm not always sure about that. Sometimes I dismiss a book and then a couple of months/years later I revisit it and see how good it is. It's just that I wasn't ready for it yet.
I always trust my initial decision. That is the essence of curation. That is one thing I've always been good at - forming an opinion quickly and without regret or second-guessing. I can hear a sound or a song once and decide if I think it is awesome or if it sucks balls.
Of course, when it comes to sounds, that decision is tempered by experience - if I think Juno-106 pads suck and therefore didn't buy the synth when it was brand-new, but then later find them useful when playing one at an outside studio, then maybe I update my preferences. (But this example actually never happened. I think the Juno-106 is weak sauce and although I got one in a trade at one point it never made it onto a track and I swapped it for an MS-50 I think.)
I still like all the stuff I liked when I was young: Boston's first album, AC/DC, 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda convertibles... but things get added as they appear: My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, Simple Minds "Sons And Fascination", 2006 Dodge Magnum SRT-8, etc. Those new things don't replace old things, and they don't make me like the old things any less.
Like, I don't know how to make music like AC/DC, I don't want to know how, and I would never need to know how to do that - but I can tell that the music is good in more ways than it needs to be.
In terms of sounds, early on it was kicks and snares from Zeppelin, then add to that the drums from The Power Station's "Some Like It Hot" and Bowie's "Let's Dance", etc. They all stack up in my preferences file. That's why I need such big hard drives!
This past couple of weeks I've been transferring tons of DAT tapes into the computer, and I found complete versions of sample libraries that I had previously culled ruthlessly, like Zero-G DataFile 1+2, X-Static Goldmine, etc. Stuff from v1 of the sample CD era. I had reduced these collections massively, discarding about 80-90% of the sounds, but when I found the complete DAT tapes I transferred them into the computer, did a "strip silence", re-evaluated what to keep, and then compared my 2020 picks to my 1995 picks. Almost identical. Like, scary accurate.
So I guess I am lucky that my tastes don't really change. They might expand, but still... suck is suck regardless of decade.
