Each week we open our mic to readers and lurkers alike to come out of the woodwork and tell us your thoughts and opinion, your experiences and mistakes, what you love and what you hate. We want to hear from you, and here’s your chance.
It doesn’t take long to build up a sizable collection of files when you get into audio. Now’s a great time to sort them out. What advice would you give to a beginner about organizing their files?
Enjoyed this Post?
Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!
By Adrian Try
Join our newsletter!
Create a Tutorial, Get Paid!
Have something to teach the world? Want to earn money doing it? Tutorials, screencasts, and articles published here on Audiotuts+ are largely contributed by readers just like you! We'll pay you great money for good content. Find Out More
Be as descriptive as possible when naming/renaming sound files. Then later when you’re searching for that perfect sample, you’ll have some key words to plug into your search. Once you’ve used a sample or midi file in your DAW, avoid re-naming it or moving it to another folder. This will lead to confusion later.
I sort (sound) files into folders as follows: Bass sounds, Beats, Breaks, Dialogue, Field Recordings, Guitar sounds, Hi-hats, Hits (short decaying sounds), Kick Drums, Percussion, Snare Drums, Sounds (non-melodic), and Vocals.
My advice: organizing is pointless if your data doesn’t exist in more than 2 places. Back your stuff up!
I’ve lost session data before. It’s….embarrassing.
Be as detailed as possible with filnenames. That way you can find what your looking for, both in a folder and with a search. I can’t tell you how many times a filmmaker has sent me a file titled something like “lockedcut.mov” which is absolutely useless when sitting on my desktop. Or how helpful are “drums.wav” or “guitarsolo.wav”?
Every file should include: the project it belongs to, the title of the song or the cue number, what this specific file is, version information, initials if there are multiple people contributing to the project.
For example I tend to name my files like this (for film scoring):
FilmTitle_1m2_Demov2_RL
FilmTitle_1m2_FinalMixv2_RL
If it was a stem I might call it:
CoolSongv3_Drums_RL.wav
And if something needs to change on the drum stem it becomes:
CoolSongv3_Drumsv2_RL.wav
If you just labelled the new drum stem the same thing as before, are you sure the engineer deleted the first version before downloading the second? The version number makes it clear they are different. This way there is no way to confuse what project it goes to, which version is the newest, and who worked on it.
And avoid the words “new” and “old”, they are completely meaningless and confusing beyond two versions.
Great tips, Ryan!
I use 3 folders for working projects (I archive released works):
– Sounds : contains ideas of sound or samples, be descriptive in filenames as stated above
– Ideas : contains harmonic, melodic or rythmique ideas for inspiration or reuse
– Demos : contains actual songs I’m working on
Demos should be named using date with format YYYYMMDD to permit easy name sorting showing immediately the more recents version. Ie. “Demos/Project 1/Compo X/20111228 Compo X (Final mix)”
Aside from that you should always backup your data (using automatic daily/hourly backup ideally) on *external* drive. And you should backup working versions on DropBox too.
Date naming + DropBox is really useful for collab.
Check out my band Figures at http://www.figures.fm :)
Exactly! That’s what I tend to do, a mix of previous technics and also like you said adding first the date using format YYYYMMDD.
As an amateur musician having very few time at the moment for that it helps me a lot when I want to find back my band projects on which I’ve already partially worked on weeks ago and quickly find the last modifications without losing time looking after it.
Is there any software that can tag and sort sounds? For a PC. You’d think Windows 7 could use tags or have some kind of sorting mechanism, but I haven’t found anything.
What I presently do is sort sounds according to the company they are from, but not sure if I’m getting any joy from that technique.
Sorting by company/foundry name is great if you use those samples a lot (que: Wilhelm Scream)
If I were you I’d look at the Windows Appstorm site for something along those lines. I agree that the OS should have some sort of tagging convention by now, but that could get hairy with people having misaligned tagging conventions.
From a web design background, project/file management is crucial to me, so developing a consistent file structure was the only way to solve my problem of switching between numerous projects.
I usually follow a project structure similar to this:
Project Name
Samples/Assets
Sounds
Recorded Audio
…
Physical project file (delimited by version number per Ryan’s comment)
Batched files (mixdown samples mostly)
…
Add/remove as necessary.
As for asset management for your library, I tend to lean towards having a samples folder sorted by company name, since most samples I’ve seen are prefixed by the (abbreviated) name of the company that produced them. This makes samples easy to find and allows you to keep that company’s end user license(s) with the assets, so if the project you’re working on requires sharing of resources, the license is there with the assets.
An added benefit is if you download an upgrade or more samples from the same company, you can keep them together better. If you make your own samples, then simply create a folder with your name on it. And always remember, KISS ;)
Cheers
The formatting was stripped out on the file structure, lets try it again.
Project Name
– Samples/Assets
– Sounds
– Recorded Audio
– …
– Physical project file (delimited by version number per Ryan’s comment)
– Batched files (mixdown samples mostly)
– …
I find that naming my files with obscenities (i.e. dicksmokerperc_1, muffdivelead_2, dogs**tsandwichhats_3) makes them easier to recall from my subconscious when I need them. Doesn’t always work, but at least the task of trolling through old files can be made somewhat entertaining.
Stop trolling a valuable site such as this. It is not needed, wanted, or helpful in anyway. Find another site to spoil.
Project Folder
– Recorded audio
– Samples
– Original
– Edited
– Bounce
[project file]
Naming project files is important as several others have mentioned. My personal method is:
[Project Name ((same as Project folder**))] _[important/relevant info]_ MX [DATE: MMDDYYYY], with no spaces
Ex.
ExampleTrack_wGuitarSolos_MX12312011
-cheers
oops! The Sample Folder contains the subfolders, “original” samples and “edited” if manipulated from original. So to avoid confusion:
Project Folder
– Recorded audio
– Samples
…..Original
…..Edited
– Bounce
[project file]
I use Springpad (http://springpadit.com) to organize ideas. It’s like Evernote but better in that 1) the interface is better in my opinion 2) they give you unlimited storage and 3) notes can contain text, audio, and pretty much any kind of attachment. On top of all this you can create folders and assign tags to notes. Very handy for cataloging ideas.
If you’re using Komplete, figure out everything there is to know about the various databases for NI’s massive sample set. Figure out how to back it up. In fact, if you’ve already figured it out, post it here because I need help figuring it out for effective backup! :)