Backing up after album is done

[Nick Sevilla]

Hi guys,

Just sharing what I've been doing for the last few years, as far as backing up.
Hopefully this is interesting to some.

Once the mixes are finalized, and the album has been mastered, etc (in other words there is no going back now).

1.- Print TV mix, Instrumental, and A Capellas, as appropriate to each song.
What is a "TV Mix"? A mix which has every element EXCEPT lead vocal(s).
What is an "Instrumental Mix"? A mix which has all elements EXCEPT any vocals whatsoever. Simply put, NO backing vocals, nor lead vocals.
What is an "A Capella" mix? A mix of only the vocal elements, with effects, and nothing else. More common in Hip Hop and pop for later remixes.
2.- Print Stems of each instrument group, typically around 8 Stereo tracks on average. This is with all effects, and through the mix buss.
Example of some stems : Drums, Bass, Rhythm guitars, lead vocal. All should be Stereo or whatever final format you delivered the mixes as (mono, or surround being the other two common mixdown formats).
3.- I then consolidate (render) all multitrack channels on their own track, removing any edits by doing so. Then I remove all no longer used audio files from this session.
4.- I save a new copy of this final multitrack version, with only the consolidated multitrack channels, the final mix plus the stems, onto another hard drive, and also burn DVDs or more recently, BluRay discs, as a hard copy backup. I make two sets of hard copies. One for me, one for the artist.
5.- I send one hard copy to the artist, and keep one in my bank vault.

What do you guys do?

[banana brains]

I put my cassette tape in a shoe box.

Just kidding. Not really. I'm at home recording myself. So I never finish anything.

Thanks for sharing though. I appreciate it!

[Nick Sevilla]

I put my cassette tape in a shoe box.

Just kidding. Not really. I'm at home recording myself. So I never finish anything.

Thanks for sharing though. I appreciate it!

Any time.
Cheers!

[ott0bot]

since I don't do much commercial work, I keep it pretty simple.

1. back up entire session with all audio and mixes on DVDs, usually 2-5 per project, keep a copy for myself in my locked tool cabinet.

2. back up zipped session on my secondary external drive.

I rarely consolidate because I print most of my tracks with effects during mixing so I usually don't need to consolidate. occasionally I'll do stems if requested by the client.

the latest job I did will get the final mix in Logic, so I have to consolidate all tracks from a marker so they can load it into a new session.

Nick-any short cuts when consolidating each track of an entire session in a more effecient manner that one by one for 30 different tracks?

[vvv]

Since I just do me ( ) and whatever lame bands let me, I also don't typically save stems, unless I'm "locking" tracks in CEP to save computer memory.

That said, I clean up project tracks and folders by using the awesome MediaSweeper prog (because what ends up saved is usually 10-50% the size of the total raw tracks), and then save the session folder of each song to two on-site HD's and one off-site.

CD sessions get the same saves.

[nickvivid]

I keep the entire session and all renders on an external harddrive. I think I'm on my 3rd 2TB drive at this point and time. At some point, there's no fool-proof preservation scenario I have access to, but I do keep everything. Occasionally a band will call, a year after the session, and announce they need instrumental mixes of a track. That's when I'm happy I kept everything.

[RoyMatthews]

I tend to do alternate passes at the mix session. We listen to the final mix. Then print instrumental, TV and a cappella mixes right after. I will wait to do stems and consolidation and all that until after the project is done but I could always use with a 15 minute or so break (at least) printing those different versions before moving on to another mix anyway.

[Red Rockets Glare]

You should take a photo of the buss comp's settings and bypass it before you print stems.
They should all hit the threshold together, not separately.