I find myself tryin to think of name for different beat ideas I'm working on & haven't come up with a name/number system that will help me keep more organized & also help me distinguish one project from another. I have a tendency to name them random shit that might pop in my head because its on TV when I'm tryin to think of a name or it might be somethin I see out my window at the moment. I sometimes use whatever instrument might be the focus of the beat up to that point but lookin in my projects folder at the 300+ random names needs to be put to an end.

Have you guys had similar problems & if you have, did you find a solution/system that worked for you?

 

Difficult problem indeed if you have lots of sketches...

What I do atm with my tracks is:

[Genre]- Description/Name (tonality, BPM)

So e.g. I have:

[TechHouse] - Berghain 2.AM (a, 123)

So I can sort by genres, and I see what BPM and tonality I work on.

Then I bounce some seconds of the sketch and put it in the project folder for fast preview.

P.S.

My Folder structure is sth like this:

1. Drafts (Loops, Ideas, tracks still in Session Mode (in Live) etc.)
2. Work in Progress (Projects in full Arrangement)
3. Release Candidates (almost there, only polishing/FX to be done)
4. Masters (finished tracks for publishing)

Of course on could refine those structures, but I guess too many folders/subfolders makes things messy (at least for me).

 

I label all my beats date and time, like this 102220131246PM... that is until they have lyrics and are an actual song, then they get a real title... you could go further with it by separating the beats by month

 

I mostly always call my projects drums, because I find my self always starting with some drums...once I get somwhere with it I give it a pretty nice title...then fuck the song up and ditch it and feel sad that I created such a nice title for the track and now I can't use it

Sometimes I come up with better names for my songs than the actual songs

 

Thanks all for the responses! I'm considerin puttin a mixture of some of the suggestions in place & seee how they work out for me. If you got more, keep em comin. I know my disorginization has been hinderin my creativity lately. I'm probably not the only one, so the more suggestions,t they better.

 

I can only recommend colors.
Once you use colors on each track/type, you wil get used to it.
I usually do red for drums, synths blue, vocals green, effects grayish and the rest depends

Oh I just notice.. You meant names. Opz lol
I just have a big folder with random names too but I keep track of each one.

 

I have a similar problem, but now this post helped me get ideas on how to better label and organize my projects. You guys are the b sneez!

 

All DAWs should have a audio preview of projects (like Photoshop for pictures) - would make life easier.

 

I usually go by artist like young jeezy..trap track 01 and so on

 

That would be awesome.

Sometimes when I work on a longer projects I actually make a custom folder for the song in question. It's fun and it makes them easy to find. Especially as I usually call them something like, for instance, "141021 Doom metal 03"; where the first part is the year, month and day. It helps to keep them in date order if I happen to scramble them around.

Anyway, great ideas here. Thanks all!

 

I use COLORS too… I have a Folder for every Project with a basic name that's just counts the nubmer of beat this year and the BPM. For Example "01_2014_92BPM"and then just a color. Red = this shit is da bomb. Green = its aight. Grey = basically just the barebone of something that might not work and will probably be deleted. Some time I add real titles to them, but rarely.

Since I mostly produce Hip-Hop instrumentals, I barely fully arrange the stuff. I only do this, once somebody says he wants to buy a beat.

You can listen to them here btw. soundcloud.com/stanscrates

PEACE

 

These are some great suggestions. I may implement some of your advice. Here is some info on my organization (of which I can say has worked and been improved upon as I went along).

Currently, I sort every project in folders by year with a title (normally some variation of my name). Every project I start that year is in there. I have only released a few projects. The released projects have their songs/beats stored in a folder under the project name. However, even if it is unreleased, I group them this way once I know that it will be part of a set. If they are not part of a set, I number the song by order of initial file creation.

I have always titled songs/beats based on how I was feeling, what the inspiration was (person, place, event, sample, etc.), and what I 'wanted it to do.' This is akin to the randomness mentioned earlier in this post. I started with FL Studio, but I started adding @[bpm] to the end of the song file and folder name after I bought Pro Tools. Using different software will eff up your organization quickly, if you let it.

Now, I only use Pro Tools, but things are mostly the same. I also put the Key in the title (since I started learning the keys a bit, creating a lot more than sampling). I.e. - 09 Love Therapy @80 (F minor)

It's a gift and a curse that everything has to have a name. I may have only switched a title twice after creating the song/instrumental. But, it's all recorded. I believe organizing, however it works for you, is vital to your completion process. We can often create pieces and move on to something else because that spark is just going. You keep hearing ideas. So, work out what looks best to you so you can get back to an idea and finish it.

Peace