Help - How Do Your Organize Your Projects?

F:\Cakewalk Projects

• Bapu Projects
• Forum Monkeys
• CHB
• Other Collabs
  • Philz
  • Daryl
  • The Other Guys...

Under each folder (or sub folder) is a project folder for the song.
 
Simples. Like me.

I use a 3 tiered folder structure:  first is by project type, then by artist name, then by song
 
Cakewalk Projects\
- Conservatory Projects
   - Performance Name
          - Song 1
          - Song 2
- Other Artist's projects
   - Artist 1 Name
         - Song 1
         - Song 2
    - Artist 2 Name
         - Song 1
         - Song 2
- My projects
   - Song 1
   - Song 2

   I have settled on a file structure similar to those listed above. However I have also been spending (wasting?) a lot of time building up a SONAR spreadsheet. It has columns for Title, Artist, Key, Starting Chord, Style and Tempo. It also includes columns with hyperlinks to the project file and Word files for lyrics. There is a third set of columns for Drums, Bass, Rhythm Guitars, Lead Guitars, Lead Vox, Back-up Vox, etc...
   I started this to have an easy way to find projects that needed Bass if a Bass player is in the room or projects that need vocals if the pipes are working well on a given day, that kind of thing. I had no idea it would take so many hours (months) to complete.
  So now that I have gotten it pretty much up to date, I figure the bakers will re-vamp the browser to make this kind of sorting available within SONAR.
  

Hi. I do pretty much the same as Bapu (and several others). 
Cakewalk Projects, Year, Artist(s), Projects (in their separate folders).
All the best.

I knew the Giant Forum Brain would come through. I think I'll end up combining some of these approaches, and end up with something that's tailored for doing a wide variety of projects. 

C:\prog project june 2013
 
which turns into a real song
 
2016 - where's that f'ing song called 'X'
 
 

bitflipper
My method: every 10-12 years have your computer stolen along with backup drives. Clean slate. Things are much simpler now.

  I can relate...
 
But overall, my "method" is
H:/Music/
- Various Artist folders I've worked with
- project [+yyyy]
      Sub folders include:
           Work on this first
            Work on this later
            [name of finished project]
There is only one audio folder as I typically compose primarily in midi/vsts now.
 
 

audio dir
cakewalk projects
-Songs
-Band
-Practice
-Studio
  -group/project name
i use a date for the initial song file name so it is filed sequentially... 20160908
after I have a firm name for it then I save the file with a name after the date... 20160908 Radioactive Dog
 
i also have these directories under audio and under the win10 quick access dirs
1 WAV renders       (where all sonar renders go)
  -album 1
  -album 2
  -xxx project
2 mastered wav flac 
  -album 1... like above
3 16 bit wav mp3     (VAR max bit rate for mp3s)
  -album 1... like above
4 mp3 128 bit          
  -album 1... like above
 

A picture would be easier to understand. 
 
I have a  1 TB data drive for all my Studio files, there are other data drives for back up etc. 
The studio data drive is what I point Sonar to always open and save to. Wave Lab also works from there. 
 
There are 20 or so main folders at the top of the tree. Some of these are what I call Album folders. They are named for either a band, solo artist , originals and the biggest one is all my solo performance backing track project files. 
These folders are dedicated to either Sonar projects, mix down files or live stereo recordings. 
 
The Sonar "album" folders contain a folder for each song on the album. in that folder is everything to do with that song, CWP, MID, lyrics, mp3 of original cover tune or rough demo. but  minus the stereo mixdown which I keep in their own top of the tree folder. Within the mixdown folders you'll find a WAVE and a MP3 folder of the album. 
 
My solo act performance folder has sub folders for midi files, sonar templates, drum machine midi and then a folder for each song ( project). Because there's over 150 folders ( songs) I put a number in front of the special folders = 1-Templates, 2- MIDI files. 3- Drum patterns,  so they show at the top of the list. 
 
So pretty easy for me to find any Sonar files.   
I back up and date the whole Album folders as I work on them with clients or myself. I might end up with 4 of those back up folders which I do not delete until the album is a done deal. What actually happens is I upgrade drives and those back ups are pulled and sitting on a shelf. I have a shoe box of HD's going back to 2000. 
 
I have a separate data drive that contains the masters of about 50 albums I've recorded. Once an album is finished it is stored in that drive.  I digitised and remastered most of my older analogue tapes. I also have countless stereo recordings from doing live sound.  Of course the contents of this drive is stored multiple times and sitting on shelves or in external drives. I have 6 external drives right now.. 3 old school and 3 newer TB's. I think I have 30 hard drives!!!
  

noynekker
My method, like some others here, is tons of per-project audio folders, with a database to search, and it's all backed up in 5 different places, including my truck.

I like the database idea...Since I am a developer myself I can custom make one to fit!
Now off to design the database...Let's see Artist, date, etc.,  etc.
 
 
 

I work in the default folder and when something is released I move it to a folder based on the year of release.  Around the beginning of a new year I do a cleanup moving the zombies to an attic folder.

bitflipper
My method: every 10-12 years have your computer stolen along with backup drives. Clean slate. Things are much simpler now.

That's painful to read Bit...and I feel your pain...but appreciate your diffidence in adversity...
 
Garry

Hi, the following structure is what I am using.
But first some comments: The main idea is to be able to find the root of a final song or sample set easily by the folder structure, but having a clear separation between rough stuff, work in progress and finished stuff. My first computer language was BASIC - so I like numbers.
 
The structure for songs: Everytime I am Jamming around, I let SONAR record it. Sometimes I find something nice and this will go into the sub-folder (of) 110 or 120. My song ideas will go into a genre specific folder. Typically I note the code of the used hooks. Later on, I can easyly find the root idea via the original hooks and the first Jam.
Since I don't want to be distracted by other stuff, I start a new session for arrangement (300). The naming convention helps me to find the original song sketch via reverse going through the folder number (back to Song idea, Hooks, Jamming).
Recording (400) is a serious thing, so after written a song it will be recorded properly. This means to get guitars right, print VSTs to an audio track and patch the right synth sounds... The naming convention brings me back to the root. Same goes for Mixing (500) and Mastering (600)
It seems to be very oversized, but it is a great time saver, if you have to deal with a lot of projects...
 
Sampling
The idea is the same, going from the rough recordings to the finished sampler program. If I explained it right for a song, you will get the structure and the relationships easily. Otherwise: I have to explain myself better...

• 100 Jamming – Rehearsal
  • 100-101 Date of Jam
• 110 Hooks
  • 110-100-101-001 Best Riff ever!
• 120 Rhythms – Bass
  • 120-100-101-001 BattleHits
• 200 Song Ideas
• 200-100 Doom
  • 200-100-001 Masterpiece xyz (100-110-001/004/009)
• 200-110 Ambient
• 200-120 Industrial
• 300 Song Arrangement
  • 300-200-100-001 Masterpiece xyz Version 01
• 400 Song Recording
  • 400-300-200-100-001 Masterpiece xyz Recording
• 500 Song Mixing
  • 500-400-300-200-100-001 Masterpiece xyz Mix 01
  • 500-400-300-200-100-001 Masterpiece xyz Mix 02
• 600 Songs Final Versions
  • 600-610-500-400-300-200-100-001 Song Final Steams
  • 600-620-500-400-300-200-100-001 Song Final Tracks
  • 600-630-500-400-300-200-100-001 Song Final MIDI
  • 600-640-500-400-300-200-100-001 Song Final Documentation
  • 600-650-500-400-300-200-100-001 Song Final WAV
• 700 Sampling
  • 700-710 Samples Rough
    • 700-710-101 Sample Session xyz
  • 700-720 Samples Edited – Looped
    • 700-720-710-101 Edit xyz
    • 700-720-710-101-100 Cut and Rename
    • 700-720-710-101-110 Looped – Edited
      • 720-720-710-101-100-110-001 Nasty Pulse
      • 720-720-710-101-100-110-002 Red Noise HiHat
    • 720-710-101-120 Arc Versions (Zip)
• 730 Sample Programs MPC
  • 730-720-720-710-101-100-110-001-01 Keygroup Nasty Pulse
  • 730-720-720-710-101-100-110-002-01 Drummap Red Noise HiHat
• 800 Archive
• 900 Learning
• 900-100 Sonar Tipps and Tricks
  • 900-100-100 Sample Editing
  • 900-100-100-001 Article xy

Remember: If you have time to lean you have time to clean sort your stuff...

The physical order and location of completed projects, current work, idea snippets, live sound, and whatever else you have - can all be objectified as data fields in a database, where finding things can be done via searching the database, down to whatever level of detail you created in the design.
 
You may not be able to create a column for 'snappy jazz feel vamp' or whatever, but you can store details about completion date, synths used, artist/client name, instrumentalists who played on which project, song style, whether or not the project is tied to some work-related article, etc.....
 
One of the utilities developed by a forum member provides an automated spreadsheet of various details obtained by reading project files (CWP) - you can look at the utilities sticky post to see which utility I am referring to - this could provide data about projects on each of your computers, and could be fed into some database that would include the location information on which project resides on which computer, etc..
 
I guess the best thing to do is to figure out some sort of balance between how important it is to have such information, balanced against the effort in obtaining whatever level of granularity you actually need.
 
The thing about using some sort of a database is that you can retrieve it in any grouping detail that you wish, down to whatever level of detail is captured with the columns in that database.  It would be far easier to tweak the SQL to retrieve desired data than to try to invent some giant spreadsheet and get all the way done only to find that it needs to be done differently.
 
Then again - if you decide that nothing created prior to 2010 matters, then you can archive that stuff and move it off to some offline location and then not worry about it, until such time as you decide that 2007 WAS a good year after all, and then you bring that set of files back into your active storage scheme.
 
Bob Bone
 

USB drive for each project and saved as a CWB file.