How do you keep track of your work?

[Marinero]

I use those too. Keep a manuscript notebook (spiral bound) open on my music stand.

Hi, Mark,
We definitely live in the same neighborhood! I find this practice very useful when I stumble on a chord progression/riff I like since if I leave it to memory, I'll forget it after awhile. I think they call that the "Golden Years!" I occasionally go back and play from these notebooks and, sometimes, "rediscover" some real personal gems.
Play live! . . . Marinero

[MarkRhodes]

Hi, Mark,
We definitely live in the same neighborhood! I find this practice very useful when I stumble on a chord progression/riff I like since if I leave it to memory, I'll forget it after awhile. I think they call that the "Golden Years!" I occasionally go back and play from these notebooks and, sometimes, "rediscover" some real personal gems.
Play live! . . . Marinero

Same here! I often come up with tidbits---an intro, a riff, a turnaround, a progression, a nice voicing for a I-IV change, or something I can play fast that sounds spiffy ;o) Some of those things go into songs but others do not.

My old notebooks are like a junkyard---lot of working parts in there that can be used to fix up another car.

But it's time to put some things into new notebooks, to make things easier to find. I mean, it's kind of fun to thumb through an old one and go, "Hhhm, what's this?" and find something cool that I'd forgotten about. But it's not so fun when I halfway remember something I want to use Right Now and it takes me an hour to find it and by that time I'm out of the mood.

[Marinero]

Same here! I often come up with tidbits---an intro, a riff, a turnaround, a progression, a nice voicing for a I-IV change, or something I can play fast that sounds spiffy ;o) Some of those things go into songs but others do not.

My old notebooks are like a junkyard---lot of working parts in there that can be used to fix up another car.

But it's time to put some things into new notebooks, to make things easier to find. I mean, it's kind of fun to thumb through an old one and go, "Hhhm, what's this?" and find something cool that I'd forgotten about. But it's not so fun when I halfway remember something I want to use Right Now and it takes me an hour to find it and by that time I'm out of the mood.

Hi, M,
They also show if you've grown musically or remained stagnant. Play live! . . . Marinero

[sgcim]

I just throw my stuff into big boxes. This can be good if you're living in a nice place, like I do now, but if you're living in a basement apt., like I did back in the 70s, it can be a disaster.
I lost the best piece I ever wrote when my apt. flooded.
Through the pandemic, I've spent literally entire days going through a considerable number of boxes, to find the stuff I wanted to write for big band, and separate it from the other stuff.

After that, I finished about ten arrangements or compositions on MuseScore for 18 piece big bands, adding to my current book of about ten. After I finish this last piece, which I'm in the middle of, I'm going to back them up on flash drive, which I've done with my other ten, including them being on my old computer.

[MarkRhodes]

I lost the best piece I ever wrote when my apt. flooded.

My sympathies. I lost a lot of stuff when I left New Orleans in 2005, days ahead of Katrina's arrival. My stuff survived the storm and flooding but not the greedy hands of people who bet I wouldn't be back. (And I didn't go back.) Lost a guitar, my 4-track, dozens of tapes of my own songs (raw recordings and mixes), most of my books and all of my guitar books. It's the tapes I miss the most---they were the only irreplaceable things.

Nowdays I have an external hard drive as well as a dozen flash drives of music material. Much duplication. Redundancy is a good thing.

Once I get a digital audio interface (-it's been on back order since May), I'll transfer the demos I have to mp3 files and make multiple copies. Then I'll start making recordings of newer songs as well as some oldies recently revised.

Order is a good thing.

[Alter]

I mostly use a computer for sheets, arrangements, compositions, videos, recordings, lessons, pretty much everything these days. So it's easy to organise stuff.

The important thing is to organize backup too though. People tend to forget that, unlike paper notebooks, all it takes with a laptop is a drive going bad, or a thief, and everything could be gone in a second otherwise..

[sgcim]

My sympathies. I lost a lot of stuff when I left New Orleans in 2005, days ahead of Katrina's arrival. My stuff survived the storm and flooding but not the greedy hands of people who bet I wouldn't be back. (And I didn't go back.) Lost a guitar, my 4-track, dozens of tapes of my own songs (raw recordings and mixes), most of my books and all of my guitar books. It's the tapes I miss the most---they were the only irreplaceable things.

Nowdays I have an external hard drive as well as a dozen flash drives of music material. Much duplication. Redundancy is a good thing.

Once I get a digital audio interface (-it's been on back order since May), I'll transfer the demos I have to mp3 files and make multiple copies. Then I'll start making recordings of newer songs as well as some oldies recently revised.

Order is a good thing.

My sympathies as well. Those people that stole your tapes couldn't even begin to understand the importance of those tapes to people like us.

[henryrobinett]

I still have 90% of all my spiral manuscript paper somewhere laying about - since the very beginning when I was in Junior High School. But have since transcribed everything into Sibelius. And most things I have made some demos in a DAW - mostly Digital Performer. Then I have multiple hard drives they've been backed up to. It doesn't mean I haven't misplaced somethings. Recently I was trying to find an old CD I recorded and never released. The record company went belly up and the studio never got paid, which meant I never got the masters. But I HAD a cassette somewhere. Misplaced. I've been trying to recreate some of those songs. They're written and I have the charts - except for those that had lyrics. I misplaced most of those, since I didn't care much about lyrics. But even those are somewhere. I have midi files if they were demoed in a sequence. Cassettes were backed up to digital - dat tape and hard drives. But this one I haven't found yet. We have two storage places I'm loathe to enter. I'm sure that's where it is.