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Lesson Summary
Losing a finished recording is much more painful than making a backup. This lesson shows a simple way to keep copies of your master files and full project folder online, and how the same cloud storage can be used to share large files with an engineer or collaborator.
Transcript
Module 8: Backing Up Your Files.
As well as saving your work as you go, you should keep off-site backups of both your master stem files and the contents of your project folder. External hard drives, USB sticks, and SD or microSD cards can all be used for this purpose, but they can be expensive. I’m recommending that you create a free Dropbox account and upload copies of your project files once your recordings are complete. Here’s how to do that.
Head over to Dropbox at www.dropbox.com. Create a new account by entering your name and email address, choosing a password, agreeing to the Dropbox terms, and signing up for free. Go back to your email inbox, open the verification email from Dropbox, and select “Verify your email.” That brings us back to Dropbox, where we can see that the email address is now verified. Select “Done,” and we’re inside the Dropbox account.
The main controls let you upload files, create subfolders within Dropbox, share a folder, and delete files. I’ll start with a folder called “Recording Backup Files.” Open that folder and select Upload, then choose the files from the meditation sample project folder. Inside it, we’ll find the folder we zipped at the end of Module 7. That’s what we’re going to upload. Select it, choose Open, and wait for it to finish uploading.
I’ll go back up one level to the main Dropbox folder and create a second folder. I’ll call this one “Project Files,” followed by the title of the recording. This is where I’m going to store all the project files from our recording. Open the folder, select Upload, and add more files. Go to the meditation sample project folder, highlight everything in it, and upload it. This will take some time, so we’ll let it continue in the background.
Now I’ll show you how to share the files. Inside the recording backup folder, we’ve uploaded a ZIP archive of the meditation sample stem tracks—the master tracks. Hover over that archive and select Share. You can enter the email address of the person you’d like to share the file with, or create a link. Select “Copy link,” then include that link in your own email.
As an example, I’ll share this with my own email address. Dropbox confirms that the meditation sample has been securely shared. In my inbox, the message contains a “View file” link that opens the file in Dropbox. I’ve now shared the archive with the other person; in a real project, that person could be your mixing engineer.
A second way to upload your backup files is Google Drive. From Gmail, select the Apps icon and then Drive. Google Drive provides shared storage for your files and includes 15 gigabytes of free space for photos, documents, and more.
Inside Google Drive, right-click in the main pane and select “Upload files.” Go to the meditation sample project folder and select the ZIP archive containing the master stem tracks. Choose Open, and the file begins uploading.
Once the file is in Google Drive, you can share it with your mixing engineer or anyone else. Right-click the file and select Share, or get a shareable link that you can send by email. To share by email, enter the recipient’s address and select Send. The recipient will then see the shared file in their inbox.
That’s how to share master stem files when you want to outsource the mixing. Once you’ve compressed the files into a ZIP archive, upload that archive to either Dropbox or Google Drive. Then share a link or grant access to the folder in the relevant service.
At this stage, you will have one of three things: a completed set of master files ready for mixing and mastering; a recording you mixed yourself and sent out for mastering; or a track you mixed and mastered entirely in-house.
That brings us to the final module, where we’ll create the artwork and then get the tracks onto iTunes. I’ll see you in Module 9.