File & Project Management Best Practices

I'm interested to gain some collective wisdom on how you all choose to keep your Logic projects organized. Any tips or systems you have for naming projects, managing audio files, bouncing/exporting vs. printing within sessions, labeling tracks, dealing with versioning, etc.

 

Here are some specific questions, for instance:

1. Do you save your projects as Packages or Folders, and why?
   
2. Do you have a standardized way of versioning your projects as they change? Do you find the Project Alternatives feature best for this, or just doing a Save As to create a new project file in the main project folder?
   
3. Do you have a standardized way of naming tracks? Audio tracks in particular, so that recordings end up named a certain way?
   
4. Do you think much about region names as they relate to their source file names?
   
5. Any other things I'm not thinking about that you'd mention?

 

One project management workflow I'm familiar with is from Pro Tools: one session folder per piece of music, multiple session files within that folder for versioning, labeled v1.00, v1.01, v1.02, etc, v2.00, v2.01, etc. This is a bit confusing to translate to Logic, as Logic's "Save As" seems to be designed to save another master project folder or project package, rather than another project file that references the same master folder.

 

In writing music for serializations like TV shows, I've seen people give their instrument stem tracks extremely long names that include episode numbers, a "Music Stems" label, version numbers, etc., so that printed audio files are automatically labeled with all of that information. It makes it super hard to read track names that way, though.

1. Folders. This allows me to save multiple projects using the same audio files folder, see a list of all the projects directly in a Finder window, easily access the audio files, access the Logic project file (for example if I am mixing for a customer, they send me a project folder, I mix and send them back only the project file, not the whole folder). There are many more reasons to use folders vs package....

 

2. I don't use alternatives, I use Save As. Again I like to see the list of projects in a Finder window and to be able to select an individual project file and share it.

 

3. Name of the instrument, sometimes name of the song section, sometimes name of the song, depending on the use, the larger scope of the project and whether or not I'm going to share the files with someone. So it could be "Guitar", or it could be "Disto Gtr Bridge", or it could be "SugarTreat Rhythm Gtr Left". I try to steer away from abbreviations when possible, such as "Mftd Vx L2 S4_2 FTM 2020-1" because when you find a bunch of file thusly named in the Finder it becomes impossible to know where they come from. AES published naming conventions for files used in the audio industry.

 

4. Yes they're usually the same.

Thanks for the insight David, that's all super helpful! Starting to abandon project alternatives in favor of the folder and multiple project files method.

You're welcome. And by the way if you want to read the official professional file naming conventions, check this out: https://www.grammy.com/sites/com/files/delivery_recommendations_for_recorded_music_projects_final_09_27_18_0.pdf

My own $0.02 as someone who uses Logic to mix album projects, mostly.

 

[*] Do you have a standardized way of versioning your projects as they change? Do you find the Project Alternatives feature best for this, or just doing a Save As to create a new project file in the main project folder?

 

I personally use Project Alternatives with Logic because I appreciate the project management features (i.e. cleaning up unused audio files, without accidentally deleting a file needed in a previous revision of the project.) But other DAWs I use don't have this feature so it's not a deal-breaker for me.

 

My own peculiarities:

 

• I don't use version numbers, I instead use a date code with an optional description. Example: Song Title MIX 20210414 Vocal Up. As I'm frequently juggling a dozen or more projects at once, the increased specificity of using a date code helps me cross-reference client emails, timestamps of files in the Finder, my work log for billing, etc.
  
• I never, ever name a file "FINAL". (How do you make God laugh?) For an album mix project, I have the client give me their final list of approved mixes, and I collect the final bounces into a single folder for delivery.
  
• I always print my mixes @ 32-bit, native sample rate WAV, with no final peak limiting. (My target level is -18 dBFS RMS, or ~-16 LUFS.) If the client approves the mix, the bounce is already done and I don't have to any additional work.
  
• For reference copies for client approval, I use WaveLab's batch processor to: 1) Apply gain + peak limiting to get the song up to a reasonable listening level 2) covert the file to 320 kbps MP3, 3) rename the file to "REF,Song Title MIX 20210414 Vocal Up.mp3", 4) save the resulting file to a shared Dropbox folder. (REAPER has a similar batch processor.)
  
• This 1) streamlines my workflow immensely (bounce in Logic, drag-and-drop into WaveLab, email the client), and 2) the renamed MP3 file ensures the client doesn't a) get a master without paying and b) accidentally send a ref mix to the mastering engineer.

Many thanks, David, for the “official” Grammy document. I always thought something like this had to exist somewhere. After 3 years of licensing and score composition research (web crawling, classes, forums, etc.) you are the first source to provide what is probably the most important information.

I also appreciated that Grammy document, and in particular enjoyed this excerpt in the alternate definitions of Track:

"Track (v.): Logistically, to locate (e.g., “can you track down a drummer who can play in tempo?”).

Hi guys,

 

When you're using "package" where does all of your audio, samples, freeze files etc save to?

 

And when you're using folder - is there a way to start a new folder without completely shutting down Logic? (I usually just start "new" but it seems that the project will then save into the old project's folder) 

A package is basically an archive, much like a ZIP file. It’s sort of a folder unto itself styled to appear as a single solitary file. If you secondary click a project and choose Show Package Contents, you find what’s inside to be pretty similar to the folder structure.

 

And just as with any other file being saved on a Mac, there’s an entire pop up menu below the file name field in the Save dialog that shows you the location where it’s planning to save the folder; you can use that or click the disclosure triangle button to the right of it to choose where to save the new folder.

A package is basically an archive, much like a ZIP file. It’s sort of a folder unto itself styled to appear as a single solitary file. If you secondary click a project and choose Show Package Contents, you find what’s inside to be pretty similar to the folder structure.

 

And just as with any other file being saved on a Mac, there’s an entire pop up menu below the file name field in the Save dialog that shows you the location where it’s planning to save the folder; you can use that or click the disclosure triangle button to the right of it to choose where to save the new folder.

 

Ah okay, this is interesting. So just to confirm - whether you were to move a package or folder to another drive, or send a package or folder to a collaborator, they're both essentially the same info/data, just displayed in a different way? The package would have all the same audio and samples etc, they're just not in plain view  

my internal session names (just for me) for different versions are different letters: mix1a , mix1b, mix1c

 

to the client I send mix1 (corresponding to the last letter I saved)

 

every change asked be the client is a new number: mix2a, mix2b, mix2c

sent: mix2

 

On a related note... If even when using a "package" which saves all audio etc in the project - why does Logic change the tempo of any original files you've sampled (and changed the tempo of)? [think I've seen it referred to as "destructive" here before]

This actually isn’t really related at all, and it’s customary around here to create new posts to ask questions about different topics, so that other people searching the forum later can find answers if they have the same question/problem.