Hoarder

Elsie and I have been watching Hoarders quite a bit lately.  Today I had to deal with almost a decade of hoarding myself.  On hard drives.  I'm not sure if this seems strange or not, but I have everything I've ever recorded laying around on hard drives.  There are external hard drives everywhere.  I even have every computer I've ever owned, and every hard drive- even the ones that have crashed- as well.  The problem is, nothing is labeled correctly.  When ever I start a new song, I just create a temporary file name for it like, "November Drums", or "Piano Idea".  These names on the folders never get changed.  What makes it worse, is that I create MANY different files throughout the process of writing.  For instance, on one particular song, there were a series of files that went like this (these files are the actual recording project files for songs):

Nov 22

Nov 22nd 2

Nov 22 timestretch

Nov 22 newkey

Nov 22 newkey newchorus

Nov 22 final

Nov 22nd final

Nov 22nd ACTUAL final

Open This One

Open This One 2

That represents a lot of different stages that the song went through.  And ALL of the songs are labeled like this.  

So, someone has requested instrumental versions of all my songs.  I had to go through and actually make these versions, but first, I had to find all of the songs.  This took several hours.  Next, I had to re-mix the song for the instrumental version, and bounce it down to an mp3.  There was a very tragic third step that just about ruined my day:

As I was going through all of these old songs, I wasn't too surprised to hear that all my mixes sounded terrible.  So, I tried to do a quick mix on them as I went through; but they still sounded pretty rough.  However, it wasn't until I actually finished mixing ALL of the songs from Salvation Club, that I realized I was working with older versions of the songs.  They were older demos, and I had moved everything to a different drive as I retracked a lot of it.  How did I not notice I was not working with the final versions?  I don't know.  It may surprise you, but I probably haven't listened to that album since it was released.  

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

 

Comments

[Corey C]

i feel your pain

[Elaine]

I'm a photographer and a graphic designer. I do the EXACT same thing that you do but with photo versions and different stages of graphic assignments. I always use temporary file names and the one that made me laugh was "Nov 22nd ACTUAL final" because I always use "REAL final." hahaha Good luck with re-labeling everything! It will be SO much more useful when you're done!

[Leanne]

Being a Photographer I do the same but I always end up with "final final" followed by "final final FINAL" and also I end up with folders inside folders that have the same files in them as the folder their in.
x

[jesslonett]

sometimes i think digital organization is more daunting than real life organization.

[A Thrifty Mrs]

I feel your pain re digital organisation. I have two inboxes to tackle this week which are making me feel a bit sick.
Re the Hoarders programme. I can't watch it. I usually like that type of programme but something about that particular one nearly have me a panic attack and Im SO NOT a panic attack kinda person.

[Jared]

I fall into the photo/design group as well and it's nice to know I'm not the only one with a ridiculous filing system that includes several "finals." I actually tried being organized which resulted in me way overdoing it and having to go like 12 folders deep trying to find stuff.

[Eric]

I do the same thing when recording. I'll take the song in a new direction, throw some question marks on the end, completely restart recording, etc. The files really build up, and it gets confusing!