It all depends on the musician/producer but some of us create too much material. For a long time, every time I sat down at my DAW tinkering, I saved the results — just in case they would get better later. Well, in 999 of 1000 cases that won’t happen.
I noticed that today when going through my project folder with material to see if I could fix or reintroduce any of that material, just now going back to 2007, the rest is stuffed in archives.
Shortly, I have a very simple directory structure for projects:
- Attic — anything that is good to have but just needs to be stuffed aside resides in there
- Work in Progress — This is where the work is happening
- Released — Released material
- Private — all kinds of private material I need all the time but will never release it.
So the Work In Progress folder started to get really full. I always prefix the projects with a running number as well, so I could follow the always increasing number of projects, sigh. Some of the material was just very much outdated, too. I’m in the middle of cleaning this all — and got an idea I will test out starting now.
There will be a new folder called “The Oven.” What this oven is that every time I start working on something new, it will start in the oven. If it does not work out well, the cake is badly cooked, I just salvage the little I can from it, AppleLoops and so forth. Then I just throw away the uncooked product. If it makes sense and it is baking well, I move it into the Work in Progress folder.
I think this will somewhat eliminate the huge amount of wanna-be products that should not even be saved as they don’t make sense.
Does any of you have similar schemes concerning avoiding drowning in half-made projects that most likely will never be finished? Any other ideas?