File management—keeping it together
We need to be diligent, almost religious, about file management. File management is what allows us to work on projects over time and not have them suddenly stop playing back right. We aren't all going to be able to write the hit dance song of the century in one night, so we need to be sure that files are named properly and are headed in the right direction when we save. The WORKING directory is a nice start, but we need to start thinking about projects that might have several revisions.
It's a good idea, when starting a song, to immediately go to the file menu and choose Save As. Here's what will happen if we don't: we work on the best song we've ever created and suddenly, inexplicably the program crashes and our work will be destroyed never to be recovered. It's happened to the best of us. If you do not save immediately, your song is only an 'I-forgot-to-plug-the-power-supply-into-my-laptop' away from oblivion.
When saving your project, there are three directories that should pop up when we save, as you can see here:
These are three very important folders. When we have instruments or effects that have been custom-tweaked, their settings are saved in the presets directory. These settings will then be available to you in all future projects. This is how to build a palate of sounds that give our songs a specific and unique signature.
The path shown in the previous image shows the default directory on the internal drive. To use a folder on an external drive, simply create the folder on the external drive and drag the folder into the left panel of the File Save dialog box.
When we collect samples, we will toss them in the samples folder. They will also be available in our future projects in an easily accessible side bar.
Managing project versions
The projects directory is where our projects will live. LMMS projects contain a lot of information. They reference presets, samples, MIDI sequences, and all kinds of other important assets. As we create new projects, though, this folder is going to get really messy. The way to handle file management is to create subdirectories within the projects directory and concentrate on version management.
When working on a project, we get inspired. We try new things. We can sometimes destroy old work when we're in that mode, so it's important when working on electronic music to save versions of your project along the way, so that the perfectly good work we did yesterday does not get ruined by the inspired work we do today.
