Originally Posted by jpettit
Rather than having a never-ending database of tens of thousands of styles to weed through, let the customers think more about the instruments that they want to use track by track to create their style.

This would cause a pivot in the Hierarchy with more emphasis on the Instrument and style of playing it (swing/shuffle / tempo / note duration, syncopation, pushes, emphases, in pocket/ahead of pocket) but could greatly improve the process of creating music if done clean and proper.
This is an exercise in clean hierarchies with the data they already have.
They improve this some in 2024 but skimped on categories/families/type/technique
With more serious work on their hierarchies and filtering the correct session player with the correct instrument could be found in a matter of seconds.

Top Categories:
- Strings
- Woodwinds
- Brass
- Percussion
- Keyboards

Organize the instrument into category/families
Strings:
- Autoharp
- Banjo
- Bass
- Bazuki
- Cello
- Dulcimer
- Fiddle
- Guitar
- Harp
- Mandolin
- Pedal Steel
- Ukulele
- Violin
- Viola

Woodwinds:
- Clarinet
- Flute
- Harmonica
- Saxophone

Brass:
- Horn Section
- Trombone
- Trumpet
- Tuba

Keyboards:
- Accordion
- Organ
- Piano
- Synth

Percussion:
- Vibes


Vocals:
- Vocal
Drums

Then organized by subcategory
- Guitar
- Acoustics
- Electric

Then organized by subcategory type
- Acoustic
- Nylon
- Steel
Then organized by Technique:
- Strumming
- Fingerpick
- Hammer
- Mute
- Rythm
- Solo

Then Organize by Tempo, Feel, Note duration

EXAMPLE:
CAT-----INSTR----TYPE------TECHNIQ----FEEL---DUR----TEMPO-
Strings > Guitar > Acoustic > Strumming > Swing > 16th > 120 >
Audition and select from a list of 10.

Cleaning up and improving filtering/drill down would greatly simplifying the process of getting the right Session player/instrument.
As mentioned earlier "auto filling the hierarchy list: for a given "band style" would also dramatically improve the time to creating music.

Studio One (latest version), Win 11 23H2 , i9 -10940X 3.3 GHz, 32GB Mem, a 4K 40" monitor, PreSonus Studio Live III Console as interface/controller. secondarily test on Reaper, Cakewalk, and S1 on Surface Pro 3 Win 10 (latest versions).