In Short
Labelling your stuff as you go is a good habit to get into, ignore this simple but essential part of the process and regret it later.
In Depth
Working in a modern studio requires us to wear a lot of different hats.
For those of us working in music production then it can mean songwriter, musician, engineer, producer and mixer. As if that isn’t enough, it also means computer and gear technician, office manager, accountant, to name a few.
If you work in post production then it’s a similar list, perhaps with a few more creative and technical tasks thrown in to boot.
It’s a small wonder we can miss things, after all, some of the above list we didn’t sign up for. Plenty of us do it out of necessity rather than choice. Who wants to do tax returns for fun?
Things To Remember
There’s a few technical things that can trip us up. Checking gain on the way into pre-amps, making sure we’re not clipping at the digital stage. Have we set the correct sample and bit rate?
Given all of the above, it’s surprising we don’t make mistakes more often, although muscle memory, presets and other technical shortcuts can help us avoid them.
So of all the dumb mistakes I make time and again, would you believe it’s labelling. Or should I say, thinking I can save a few seconds here and there by not labelling tracks, files, presets, in fact, you name it, almost any part of the project with a little more thought than I often do.
Take A Moment
It’s happened too many times I’ve lost count. I recently spent a significant amount of time trying to find a song I knew was on a hard drive. Could I find it? First line, First line of chorus, I tried all sorts of possible things, trying to second guess what I was thinking when I saved the song… it seems given the outcome I wasn’t thinking!
It was a song idea that had undergone significant development, but it seemed to allude my search. I eventually found it after opening about 40 Pro Tools sessions, it was called ‘Guitar Idea.’ Of course it was! I must have opened the session hundreds of times when working on it, at no stage did I think to myself, “Hey Russ, you may want to give this session a name that makes sense later on.”
If this was a one-off then I’d not give it a second thought, but it happens more than it should.
Now it’s not that I don’t label them at all, I’m not one of these people’s who has sessions full of tracks called ‘Audio 1’ ad infinitum. However, I do try and use shorthand for labelling, saving seconds now and losing hours later when I need to find important stuff.
I Never Signed Up For This!
I’m somehow part jealous/part ‘get a life’ of those who have carefully arranged templates, specific colours for their layouts and meticulous labelling of everything on their studio computer. We have five coloured tea, coffee, sugar etc. containers in our kitchen, I can’t even remember which is which with those, what chance do I stand with a 100 tracks in mix. I wish I didn’t have to think about it.
However, it’s a part of the modern recording process that I ignore at my peril.
So, of all the jobs I never signed up for, filing clerk and archivist are also on the list. It’s another, simple, but essential part of running a modern studio. A discipline I find hard to get into this thick head. Am I the only one?
Training welcome!