Tags again. Yes tags. No seriously. Hear me out on this.

  • In my studio and among those around who come to it, there are more than 30 guitars. Everything from teles to superstrats to shredders to semi-hollows to les pauls and back again. It seems ridiculous to have to sort through almost 14,000 RE rigs and however many personal ones, to find ones that are suitable for a guitar and style. Especially more than once. If I can define my own tags, and then sort or filter by those tags within RM or on the KPA, I can VERY easily change guitars/styles/whatever and then find only the appropriate rigs I'm looking for.


    To that end - Rig Manager should allow me to create my own tags, associate them to rigs in some fashion, and send them to the KPA.


    I imagine changing the template for rigs is, at this point, not going to happen. So - a different approach to user-defined tags will be needed. *** see below***


    On RM (for the sake of simplicity right now) allow me to create keyname:value pair tags.


    For example:


    Let me create a tag called "guitar".


    Let me assign arbitrary value(s) to that tag such as "lespaul" or "shredder" or "gretsch".


    Let me create another tag called "style". Assign it values such as "metal" or "jazz" or "knopfler".


    Now - allow me to associate tags to a profile while working in RM.


    From the main rig view, right-click -> edit tags. A separate window opens with my created tags and values available via check-boxes.


    The KPA will need to have the ability to do some manner of association based on this description and workflow as defined from RM. BUT - that "code" would only need to be in effect when changing/selecting items (e.g. rigs, performances, etc.) i.e. it becomes part of the sorting/display/selection code/workflow on the KPA.


    Any time a tag-associated rig is pushed to the KPA, all user-defined tags are also updated on the KPA. This keeps the mapping in sync. It may be better to not allow this feature (editing tags) directly via the KPA interface and force it to be managed via RM, in an effort to prevent any de-synchronization.


    So why is this useful?


    When sorting through rigs or performances or whatever on the KPA (or RM) you can limit the scope of what you're looking for in exactly the same way you sort today: by date, name, etc. So for example -

    • If I have 500 rigs on my KPA but only 17 are tagged "guitar:gretsch", then by selecting that tag via e.g. the top-four button(s), (today it's All Rigs / Sorted by Date / Delete / Autoload) you can reduce the scope of your rigs from 500 to 17. It's a LOT easier to find your rig in 17 than 500, no?
    • Or - perhaps you have 500 rigs, and you've associated "guitar:strat" to 250 of them. You've also associated "style:jazz" to 115 of the same 500 profiles. If you combine the search to require both tags, you may only have a dozen rigs that match both. There are your 12 rigs for strat+jazz.
    • Lastly let's say that on your RM you have 4500 rigs that have some user-defined tags associated with them. You're not sure which rigs you want sent to the KPA so you need to quickly audition rigs associated with tags "guitar:lespaul" and "gain:heavy". You merely apply the tags in way similar to how you sort from the top tag bar. Your 4500 rigs might now be 45. Numbers are arbitrary of course, but you get my point.

    CK and crew will have to think about which UI buttons/knobs make the most sense for browsing via tags on the KPA. I'm just proposing what I did because we're used to this workflow.


    With a good tagging system, you *might never* need to sort through all the rigs within RM or on the KPA just to find what you're looking for.


    *** I am not recommending tags be attached to the rigs themselves or sharable - at least not via RE. I don't think people want the headache of seeing someone else's nonsensical tags attached. Keep this kind of tagging local to RM and the KPA. Allow others to export and share their tags, but in a fashion similar to how one would backup and restore their RM content.


    I hope this is clear.

  • I'd say we're in-agreement, mate. This is what I posted here last year:


    I've mentioned several times that I'd like to see new categories and their attendant "sub-fields" added to the tagging possibilities.


    I wish now that I'd made a list of them 'cause I can't find any of the posts, but they went something like this:


    PU's

    SC / HB Type

    SC / HB Position - neck, middle or bridge


    Woods

    Body, FB & neck


    Body Type

    Solid, Chambered, Semi-hollow, Hollow


    Guitar type

    Strat, SuperStrat, LP, Piezo Acoustic, Resonator, Dobro, Banjo etc.


    Pics

    Amp, Cab, Guitar etc


    The fields would be "user-definable" just like the existing ones; I'm not suggesting cookie-cutter choices.


    The only issue I see with all this, pictures excluded, is that every guitar is still different even when Rigs are sorted according to any of the above criteria, meaning that even if every Profiler's tastes in sound were the same, he or she would have had to make subtly-different settings choices on the amp and with mic'ing technique in order to get there. Then of course what sounds good to each Profiler's ears is different as well.


    If you only ever bought from a single Profiler, the system would theoretically work, but even then, this would rely on all other factors such as mic'ing techniques' remaining constant throughout.


    Hence we come full-circle in the sense that IMHO these additional fields would find their greatest utility when employed on a user-defined basis. IOW, taking the OP's situation as an example, his "problem" could only be properly-solved if he were to fill these fields in himself according to what works best for him with a given Rig, be it the guitar type, PU's, woods or whatever.


    In summary:

    Whilst the specification of PU's (probably the most-important of the variables IMHO) and so on should theoretically be useful within a given pack / session from a Profiler, the same may not hold true when one brings the plethora of free and other commercially-available Profiles into the mix.


    EDIT:

    How could I have forgotten? Welcome to the forum, mate. :)