All

As I sit here wrapping my year end archiving and general cleanup of the DAW to get ready for 2023 - in which I am vowing to record more music, be more productive (and buy less stuff!) - I started to notice a troublesome and somewhat annoying pattern developing.

I would open a track (that is in a truly embryonic phase) that was done say in June 2020 - and S1 would instantly complain about this Kontakt library missing or this sample suddenly missing from Impact or a specific (older) version of a plugin that was used in the track now missing.

Then I would need to spend x amount of minutes rummaging around trying to replace, reconnect or possible give up - if said resources are no longer present.

All this instantly made me admit that I am a complete slob when it comes to any sort of proper archiving or preservation process of ANY session when leaving a track mid creation and then possibly not revisiting it for a long while (I realize this in itself is another issue for another day)

I do not take notes. I do not indicate what actual Kontakt patch was being used on what track or from what library. No indication of what plugin version or parameters are used. No paths noted for where samples "were" located back then vs where they are now and on and on.

In 2023 - I need to be better. I need to ensure that each track - regardless of what state I left it in - is accurately documented, opens clean and most importantly exists (at ALL times) in what I would call a mixable state - which means printing/freezing/transforming ALL MIDI to audio - so I have a historical record of what a specific patch sounded like and so I could take the stems and rework them as necessary.

So - what are your S1 song documentation/archiving workflow tips? Are you like me and have inspiration strike for maybe 42 minutes here and there every 3 weeks and then leave little S1 song carcases all over your SSD in various states of disrepair or do you dive in, record 24 beautifully balanced tracks, bounce everything to audio - document it all and mix and wrap the track the next day? Day after day.

Would love to know what others are doing with S1 (or any audio app actually) to improve my workflow and hopefully get some better music out there as a bonus.

Happy New Year!

VP