File Organization?

  • Thread starter Thread starter punkin
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punkin

punkin

Univalve & Avatar Speaks
Ok...things are starting to get a little out of hand. I'm looking for some ideas on how to best manage my computer music files.

As most of you probobly do, I've downloaded all kinds of stuff off the www. I've got midi files, I've got Tab files I've got .wav, .mpg so on and so forth then, In addition to all the internet collected stuff, I've got my own project files. Some of them are Cakewalk .bun and midi and then of course my own mixed down stuff in the form of mpg, midi and wave as well.

I've got two drives. My recording software and all my applications are on the "C" drive which leaves me a complete 80GB hard drive for data only.

What sort of file sorting/management practices are you guys using? I look forward to your suggestions.


Thanks
 
Generally before I start tracking I go to my D: drive which is audio only. I create a new folder and rename it to the song name. It may be in a sub menu. When Im tracking all the tracks for that song go directly to that folder. So, all my songs are in a sub-menu under (My Songs) and my clients songs are sub under (Client songs) and so forth.
For Midi files and MP3 files you can do the same thing. A main menu for the files and sub-menus for categories, etc..
 
What I do is cram everything somewhere, and then when I can't find it later I redownload it all and stick it somewhere else where I'll lose it. Occasionally I actually record stuff, and when I do I usually forget to set my preferences up and the wave files go directly to the recycle bin (for all intents and purposes). This allows me to concentrate more on not wanting to record anything, thus spending more time on the BBS.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Everybody's his/her owxn way of organising...

MY way: 2 comps, one for internet/office, one DAW - that's already a good separation between internetfiles and audio/music.
(the office box is hooked to the monitors, so I can listen to HR.com/mp3forum as well)

On the DAW there's two HDDs (no swap file):
1:
C - apps
D - archived (finished) projects, not burned to CD yet
2:
E - active projects
F - audio archive (reference music, samples/HALion/Refills/...)

The content F and C almost never changes, thus no defrags needed, E is a smaller drive (10Gb) thus faster defrags

Projects each get a full-size directory name containing reversed date - author/client/whatever - project title
(eg. 2003-06-18 - punkin - organizing demo)

Audio archive has different directories containing different content: eg. MIDI-grooves, Samples.HALion, Samples.wav, Music, Samples.Loops


Hope this helps,
Herwig
 
Say Mr. Slack...I feel like you just got into my head...I don't feel comfortable with your intimate understanding of my organizational techiques.

As for the Stealth Tech and the DeadPoet...I really like some of your ideas. I'm thinking now of partioning both my drives to better define areas of work space. I've actually got my D drive set up as a raid 0. I'm not so sure I really need this. Freeing the third drive up would make for an additional 80GB logical storage location.

I guess I would ask for just a little more detail on how you catalog your caputured/downloaded MIDI and/or music? Do you sort them by artist (sometimes they're unkown) or do you catalog by genre' (Blues, Rock, metal etc)? What about the little tools like sampled drums or backing tracks stuff like that.

Some really good ideas...thanks.
 
(actually most of my drives resemble Slack's way of doing things ;) )

I personally never felt the need for RAID.. Safety ? if I need to have something save I'll write it on a CD...
80Gigs go a long way.

punkin: I don't know how your recording/life/music is organised, I'm guessing you're doing a lot with MIDIfiles/karaoke kind of things ??
Sorting by genre is something I gave up a long time ago.(classic example: are The Beatles rock'n'roll or pop music ???)
I keep an .XLS around which contains about all music I have, ordered in a few columns: name, first name, song/ablum title, storage location. Excell lets you search, sort by name, whatever...

backing tracks have their own directory (midi.drums) but doesn't contain a lot, I'm working on that. Everytime I have a new project that contains patterns or loops I extract them and store them there.


In my opinion you must be able to work efficiently in any studio-type situation. As a player I will always try to be as 'invisible' as possible, meaning carrying the right instruments/tools to the job, not complaining too much and not getting everyone nervous.
Same thing on the other side of the window. If I have someone recording something here in my (VERY) humble home setup I will always try to be prepared, to know how any tool/program we might use works and to know my shit, so to speak. For instance not wasting time looking for some particular sound or loop. It'll comfort the client and will make work easy(/ier).


BTW: organising a computer is utopia... :p :p

Herwig
 
Just to add .... CDR's are cheap back up your sessions offten.. Not that I have ever lost anything.. :rolleyes:
 
Thanks Mr. Dead.

You've hit it on the head. I hate the maddening search for that something...you know it in here somewhere. Time is precious even when I'm working on my own stuff (this is a second, developing career). I need to get stuff done quickly and efficiently.

I guess your idea of putting all the projects in progress onto single and individual CDs isn't a bad idea. If I borrow a loop or what ever from my "master" I could simply dump it on the project CD....in effect load all the project support files and everything on the same CD unit final mix...not a bad way to archive old work as well.

I'll ponder this awhile...in the mean time, the RAID is on it's way out. This is simply a waste of hard drive at this point. Three drives are better than two right now.


Thanks DP!
 
On my d partition i have

Audio src
Home Recording
music


among many others

"audio src" has a sub folder for each of my projects. This folder contais the project and all imported/exported wav files, mixes and encoded mp3s. I typically mix down to mix.wav and master to master.wav.

"Home Recording" is where all my mp3 downloded from homerecorders go. I only have sub folders for challenge stuff so far

"music" is misc mp3's with various artist subfolders

I like to use my desktop a lot, but don't usually have audio projects there anymore, just "in the queue" to listen to mp3s.

edit:
I also have a folder ineptly named "instrument" on D which contains samples, plugins (still zipped) and any other crap I've downloaded from the net. The sub folder structure is pretty free form within it. Samples and plugins "in use" sit in a sub folder of the audio programs. If want to use special samples for a project they get stored in a sub folder of the project. Sample folders are the only project sub folders I have so far.
 
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The only advise I'll add is this: Save any Cakewalk/Sonar projects as .BUN files. I wish I had learned this sooner. I use Cakewalk 9, doing all audio, and CW saves these damn cryptic file names all over the place. I have hundreds of .WAV files which I have no clue what project they belong to. And I never seem to find to time to completely finish any projects, so they just keep growing. So I just keep buying a bigger hard drive! Saving as .BUN files makes organization a whole lot easier.
 
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