Anybody ever deleted a whole album?

jckinnick · Post by **jckinnick** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:19 pm

I read on Spinners Blog today that some band accidently deleted there upcoming album.

"Score one for analog enthusiasts: Pop-punk band the Sophomore Effort accidentally deleted the audio files for its upcoming record"

cleantone · Post by **cleantone** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:37 pm

After the little chuckle I had to myself when I read you topic I remembered a bad experience. I was doing a remote about 5-6 years ago. I was recording on a DAW rig based on a Powerbook. I was using an external drive. This was the day that I learned a little bit about file association. I think what happened was that I set up the session on the desktop. I dragged the session files to the external. I think I opened the session on the external and recorded the show. Whole thing went well. I had a pretty elaborate setup with splits/pres/mics/etc... I hit save, dismounted the external drive. For no particular reason I deleted the "blank" session folder from the desktop and emptied the trash without thinking twice. The next day I went to open the session and it was empty. All of the data was recorded to the first location on the desktop which I deleted for no real reason. I was so bent. A couple of "to top that off" elements was that I had a DAT recorder to run a 2 track back up. Never got around to setting it up. The other was that for some reason the artist thought it was hilarious that I was in the green room monitoring and mixing. For the better part of the set he would lean over to my ambient mics and say tons of funny stuff to me (and only me) while he was jamming away. I was looking forward to going over all of the banter. Lost forever. That artist was nominated for a grammy this year too. It would have been fun to have had that recording with his banter to me. Oh well. That was a hard lesson learned.

At least I hadn't spent all of the time, effort, and money that the band you talking about must have. I bet they learned a lesson too.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:37 pm

d'oh. crosspost.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:40 pm

No, though I have had a hard drive fail. Fortunately there was a backup.

I have, on the other hand, accidentally erased tracks that shouldn't be erased on 24-track reels with no backup...like, um, drum intros...

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:56 pm

cleantone wrote:For no particular reason I deleted the "blank" session folder from the desktop and emptied the trash without thinking twice.

Did you try an "undelete" utility?

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:03 pm

I've only deleted records long after they've been mastered, pressed and all the data had been backed up and passed on to the artist or label. Most times it's very, very liberating.

cgarges · Post by **cgarges** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:22 pm

I'm surprised at how many stories like this I've heard. In this day and age, there's absolutely no excuse for it. Storage is cheap and it's only a matter of time to get it done.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

lionaudio · Post by **lionaudio** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:32 pm

No but right after I started recording with an HD24 I did accidentally erase an entire song though. There is no UN-delete on that machine, so I just went "ok we need to re-do this song".. This was after everything had been torn down already, so I spent 2 days trying to re-create the exact set-up for each instrument for one song.. That was when I learned how to "lock" a song on the machine where it cannot be erased.. Now I use a computer and I love un-delete, and backup all of my shit twice

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:51 pm

I lost an HD once the day after I sent one of my own projects to mastering. I had hard backups of all the session data, but not the mix data.
Here's my work-flow, as far as digital safety copies:
1. If I'm in house and demoing my own material, I copy the entire session (audio and project files) to an external HD. Once I am done making that copy, I unmount the drive and pull the usb and power cables.
2. If I'm in house and tracking (my material or clients'), I make a dvd back-up of the session as soon as I'm done.
3. If I'm remote, I make a copy of the entire session on my lappy's system drive before powering down. Then, once I'm back home, I'll make dvds of the session and delete the copy on the lappy.
4. During mixing, I'll either back up the project file to the external hd or to a thumb drive. Again, when I'm done, I'll unmount and disconnect the drive.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:56 pm

is it me or do you have to REALLY not be paying attention in order to delete your whole record?

i mean of course hard drives can fail, but that's a whole different story than "oh....geez....you mean the folder labelled 'CHINESE DEMOCRACY FULL SESSION FILES' was important? eeeesssshhhh.....sorry...my bad."

drumsound · Post by **drumsound** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:56 pm

I had kids who didn't want to pay for mixing, or pay for back up. They got their money back and I deleted their record.

AstroDan · Post by **AstroDan** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 4:50 am

I've deleted songs, not entire projects...but the biggest pain in the ass was when I set a different sample rate on my A/D converter and could not dump the tracks anywhere. No mix down program would accept the sample rate; it would playback fine, but when transferred would play back very slow. I had to dump everything realtime into an 1/8" headphone jack on a laptop.

signorMars · Post by **signorMars** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 5:19 am

i deleted all t he drum tracks for one of my band's songs on our first EP. didn't realize that i hadn't changed the working directory when i opened the new session and so when i was tossing out unused/unusable takes for another song, the drums for this song went too. it actually turned out to be the best thing for the song, as we rewrote it when we retracked drums, but man was i glad it was my band and not a paying client.

the finger genius · Post by **the finger genius** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:37 am

About ten years ago, my band was recording an album to 2" tape. The bass player ended up putting test tones over the intro to the first song on the album. The moral of the story is, shit happens with analog tape as well.

(BTW, we ended up using that song with the tones as the opening of the album, it actually sounds pretty cool.)

RoyMatthews · Post by **RoyMatthews** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:54 am

I deleted a 'recording' drive before. I was trying to do something in Retrospect (the back up software) and meant to delete something else. I just clicked on erase and that was it. It's really amazing how quickly you can lose a lot of data.
So this drive is (was) where you did the recording and then you're supposed to get it off of there. There were maybe 2 or 3 engineers with data on the drive. Including my own.

And, while I felt horrible and hated to tell the other guys there stuff is gone, I realized 'Hey, all my sessions that were on there are backed up. Theirs should be too dammit.'
Some were pissed but I think they knew they were partly to blame if something was lost forever.
And so a studio wide lesson was learned. I still have trouble erasing anything to this day and dismount anything I can.

Message Board

Anybody ever deleted a whole album?

Anybody ever deleted a whole album?

Who is online