All the crazy names I give my projects

[Lostin Space]

For years and years, I have had this unlogical habit of naming my projects the funniest things (in Cubase etc).

Since I never plan on naming the projects anything particular - even though I have named the folders sane enough in relation with the film`s name - I have to invent something RIGHT THERE and THEN for the projects, and since I save everytime I make a change in the project (in order to go back to earlier versions), the names often develop to madness, like:

*Sigarett-road 1
*Sigarett-road 2
*Sigarett-road-NEW WITH VOCALS
*Sigarett-road-NEW WITH VOCALS-NORMALIZE TRACK
*Sigarett-road-NEW WITH VOCALS-NORMALIZE-TRACK-VIOLA
*Sigarett-road-NEW WITH VOCALS-NORMALIZE-TRACK-VIOLA+OZONE REVERB +3

Just wanted to share some useless information after a long, long day wearing headphones :D

[A.Leung]

Naming projects and more specificaly 'tracks' or 'cues' is the subject of MUCH debate in PRO circles. I have NEVER seen a decent solution to this yet.

[Enrique]

lol, that sounds about right.

[Lostin Space]

Naming projects and more specificaly 'tracks' or 'cues' is the subject of MUCH debate in PRO circles. I have NEVER seen a decent solution to this yet.

Hehe:D

[A.Leung]

We work with a guy and we always know when he's been in the studio cause his file names are funny. THings like "iPOOD" or "IPoodOnU", "DeadKatCue", and when Stacy keach was getting electrocuted in a movie we did the track was titled "ElectroKeach".. lol...etc.....

[paulwr]

and then there was yester-centuries with 'opus this' and 'opus that'. Electro-Keach.... I like that one.

-Paul

[composeralex]

I hate naming my pieces. I'm awful at it.

Movie cues are a bit easier. I try to find a bit of dialogue that is in some way related to the cue and just name it that. :)

[peter5992]

Thanks for starting this thread - now I know I'm not a nutter (or at least not the only one).

Only thing that matters I guess is keeping track of all the different names and files.

[Jasper Blunk]

Sometimes the best names are as simple as lkje or flkg, or even lkasd. Especially when I'm in a hurry! :)

[Tyler Johnson]

Yeah it's a pain.

I usually add a +1 at the end when I have made some significant changes just in case I want to go back.

Say I have a project called "Battle Music"

Then I'll have separate project files:

'Battle Music+01.cpr'
'Battle Music+02.cpr'
'Battle Music+03.cpr'

Then I'll have 'Battle Music+03 Bounce.cpr' which I dump into ProTools

Then 'Battle Music+03 ST Mix.ptf' which I load into Logic

Then 'Battle Music+03 Final.wav'

Pain in the ass? Yes.

Necessary? Of course. It's the most condensed I've been able to come up with.

[A.Leung]

I gave up naming tracks. I just use SMPTE timecode now, ; e.g. 01:03:24:23

[Thomas Regin]

01:03:24:23

WOW, is that yours!? I love that track! Almost as good as your classic 00:55:48!! :D

Personally I always use the same naming convention:

For example:
Battle_Music1

Minor changes would then be:
Battle_Music1_1,
Battle_Music1_2
etc.

Major changes would be:
Battle_Music2

I've set up my DAW to do auto-versioning as well in case I mess up, but so far it seems to be working pretty damn well.

My biggest problems occur when I do amazingly stupid things like writing a new cue using an already open project and accidentally overwrite the original one. This is particularly painful when the client calls back to tell me that they absolutely loved the project I just overwrote. It's happened more than once!

I guess no naming convention can fix stupidity! :D

/Thomas.

[Tyler Johnson]

Can't beat Pro Tools' region naming system though, they definitely take the cake for that. Too bad it names the actual audio file
"a9ds8fhp3hadsf.wav"

[nikolas]

Well for backup purposes I go... "subwaymusic1..2345667" and so on... For game purposes I have to rename the tracks, in the end like "music1", "music2", etc... (I try to avoid doing that, but sometimes I just can't). In general I try to keep tabs of what's happening, but I fail (as everyone else).

As for naming my pieces, I don't have a problem there. I compose for a reason and that reason provides enough information to find a name for my tracks! ;)

[Thomas Regin]

I compose for a reason and that reason provides enough information to find a name for my tracks!

Hmm.. So you name all your tracks with dollar-symbols!? :D

[nikolas]

LMAO!

Nope... Depending on the commissioning party I might use the pound sign, or even the euro sign! :D

[A.Leung]

Here are some names here:

ImTired_its_1am

ImTired_its_3am

Im_tired_tracks_now_overdue!

[blizzard]

I just finished a track called---->

"last night at 3:00 am this sounded AMAZING but today when I re-listened it was total CRAP!.......rev2.2"

hmmmmmm.......

[A.Leung]

lol.

[Enrique]

My biggest problems occur when I do amazingly stupid things like writing a new cue using an already open project and accidentally overwrite the original one.

Yup me too, sometimes I forget and just hit ctrl-s instead of save as...

Though sometimes it's hard to remember what the difference between 4STRINGS! , 4STRINGS!! , 4STRINGS!!! is...!!! lol

[peter5992]

My biggest problems occur when I do amazingly stupid things like writing a new cue using an already open project and accidentally overwrite the original one. This is particularly painful when the client calls back to tell me that they absolutely loved the project I just overwrote. It's happened more than once!



That has happened to me too, fortunately always before closing the project and I was able to undo all the changes, resave, redo and resave with new name - no damage done. That works in Sibelius, assume it is pretty much the same in other programs.

One good habit is to immediately give the project a new name or version number, the minute you start working on it. That way ctrl S along the way won't mess you up.

[Pietro]

Yup me too, sometimes I forget and just hit ctrl-s instead of save as...

Hah, I have grown such a reflex of hitting ctrl-alt-s (incremental save in Cubase), that I often do it writing on forums ;).

And some of my projects may have like 400 cpr files. As funny as it may sound, it saved my life multiple times.

- Piotr

[Thomas Regin]

Yup me too, sometimes I forget and just hit ctrl-s instead of save as...

That is exactly what I do as well! Of course now that I've set up my DAW to do auto-versioning it never happens.

That has happened to me too, fortunately always before closing the project and I was able to undo all the changes,

Yes, except that Sonar per default only has 128 undo steps which is useless when you've written an entire 2 minute orchestral cue without saving once and then hit Ctrl+S by mistake! :D

Hah, I have grown such a reflex of hitting ctrl-alt-s (incremental save in Cubase), that I often do it writing on forums

That is an awesome feature! I wish Sonar had that!

Thomas.

[Lostin Space]

Thanks for starting this thread - now I know I'm not a nutter (or at least not the only one).

You are Welcome, Nutter:D

Now; the reason this crazyness accours is because I save at the very moment I have done a change that I am very happy with, and extremely afraid of loosing. At this moment, I don`t have time to figure out a proper cue-name because I am in the middle of a high creative process.

As time goes by (into the night), I start leaving messages to myself in the projectname, like:

*smile and happy6
*smile and happy7
*smile and happy8
*smile and happy9 (remember: this is a copy of number 7, jumped over 8)
*smile and happy10 (GREAT! DO NOT TOUCH!!!)
*smile and happy11 (GREAT! DO NOT TOUCH!!!) - just added a little reverb...

Buut, It works like a charm:cool: