File Management (Part 1 of 2)

Okay. I know I said I'd talk about surround mixing. Next week. I promise. This post is of a little more critical matter. File management. There's so much material to cover, this will be a two part series. I hope I can keep straight which part is the first part. That reminds me of a Marx Brothers movie.

I love the right brain. Its creativity and knack for problem solving are unparalleled. The stories it can weave are so out there. Our musicality comes from there. The right brain can take us to new far away lands when we read. And yet, as far as it can take use, it can also dig us a deep hole.

I've been involved with a project intermittently for over two and a half years now. Before I was involved it had been dormant for over twenty. It had its challenges from the start. Thankfully, analog tape keeps everything in one nice neat package. Of course, in the days of yore (I've always wanted to say that), we all kept copious notes as to what was on the tape, how fast the tape ran, what the calibration level was, who worked on it, when and where. Right? Right.

Today's digital medium has the same challenges. With the cost of hard disks so low, we can afford to be file junkies and pack rats. Most of us now don't give a second thought to having a more than one copy of a picture or a song on our drive. It wasn't that long ago we were careful to minimize the duplicates. Let's take a trip back in time.

During the 1960's, multi-track tape was coming around. The Beatles started recording on four-track tape machines. They would use a method called "ping-ponging" to combine three tracks to one. For example, they would record drums on one track, bass on the second and perhaps a guitar on the third. They would mix those down onto the fourth track. This would free up the first three tracks for further recording of vocals and keyboards or strings and horns. One had to plan which tracks to record and in which order. One also had to commit the mix. Once the guitar, bass and drums we combined to track #4 and their original tracks recorded over, there wasn't any going back.

Tape machines became larger and added more tracks. The first machine I ever multi-tracked on was a 1" 8-track machine. The first Led Zepplin albums were recorded that way. I figured if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me. Soon after, I was blessed to have access to a 2" 16-track machine. I thought I was in heaven. There was no way I'd use all those tracks unless I had a guitar player who kept asking, "how many tracks are left"? You know who you are. I advanced to a 2"24-track machine and thought it was the bee's knees. I thought, "Bring it on guitar players!" Then, we were able to synchronize two 24-track machines together to get a ridiculous number of tracks. This was in case we wanted to have a mic for every other person in a Mahler orchestra (I really only need four mics for an orchestra)

The early days of digital were much like the early days of analog tape. Very simple, crude and yet huge advantages over the previous technology. The first digital audio workstations (DAWs) were basically two track editors. And, of course, they worked on the principles of analog tape. Hard disks were expensive then too. A 2G Barracuda would run $1,200. At the time, it would have taken a year to fill that up with audio. Now, a computer's operating system takes up more space than that.

Nowadays we don't take as many notes. As long as we keep our files organized in a decent manner, we're fine. But, how many of us keep our files organized? How much time have you spent looking for a file or an email?

In Part 2, we'll discuss how we can plan ahead and keep our digital files organized. I have developed a good method for backing up Pro Tools sessions and trimming the excess audio to save space.

Until then,

Rock. Roll. Repeat.