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Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 1:15 am
by arkos
Quick tip for us none pro's like some other cunts on here :mrgreen:

Made a loop ? Like the loop and want to make it into a song ? Afraid you'll ruin your perfect loop ?

Export the loop before doing anything else then.... ta da creating the loop.

Use it as a reference that you can always jump back to and see if you've made it better or worse.

I use a A/B plugin but you know everything goes and whatnot.

Don't know how many a tune I've fucked up thinking I was doing real well until cold hard reality hit me the day after, you fucking ruined it!.... and didn't save as a new project, fucking hell! :shock: :oops:

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 2:21 am
by Kromasome
Yep, I've ruined countless good 'loops' by doing stupid shit to them - that I didn't realise was stupid until the next day.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 3:29 am
by Pelecaras
Great advice, simple yet so often neglected.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:51 am
by Plyphon
Do you not use version control with your projects?

In FL studio it's easy, there is a "save as new version" shortcut that adds an incremental number to the file name (loop_1, loop_2... etc) but in Ableton you have to do it manually.

Still worth it though. If you fuck a mix or ruin your 32 bar loop you can just go back to a previous save. I usually start each session by saving a new version. Ableton files are tiny so it's not an issue from a space consideration.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:13 am
by remykruyer
Just save as new version, song title 1a, song title 1b, song title 1c etc

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:50 am
by intrusav
Way too precious! ..

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:22 am
by buffered
remykruyer wrote:Just save as new version, song title 1a, song title 1b, song title 1c etc
ugh this is bad advice in my opinion. Commit to an idea and see it through. Version upon version upon version of a track is bad practice. Maybe in final mix stage before sending to master but not in arrangement. It leads to indecisiveness and paralysis of choice. Commit. Move forward.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:08 pm
by arkos
Plyphon wrote:Do you not use version control with your projects?
I sometimes do I use Live, but you know when you have hundreds and hundreds of unfinished tracks that is not really an option anymore :mrgreen:

Referencing back to the core loop saves me from having hundreds turning into thousands... :roll:

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 1:14 pm
by Plyphon
It's not hundreds unfinished tracks though, it's the same track version controlled so you can go back to a previous state. It's the same track.


It leads to no more indecisiveness than you already have in a DAW, you're just taking snapshots of a track development.

Each to their own, but version control has saved me a number of times after I've made poor decisions that "undo" won't record.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 3:00 pm
by Lost to the Void
buffered wrote:
remykruyer wrote:Just save as new version, song title 1a, song title 1b, song title 1c etc
ugh this is bad advice in my opinion. Commit to an idea and see it through. Version upon version upon version of a track is bad practice. Maybe in final mix stage before sending to master but not in arrangement. It leads to indecisiveness and paralysis of choice. Commit. Move forward.
This, all the people I know who do this, never fucking finish anything.
Just move forwards, if you aren't confident in a change then don't do it.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 3:05 pm
by rktic
Cheating your fears is nothing but cognitive dissonance reduction. Doubt as well that it'll get you further. Just calm as long as the illusion works. More productive?

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:49 pm
by tsaro
It can be useful if you're making drastic changes to your main loop, though mostly when you feel the need to change up the thing you decided to build a track around it's kind of a sign that the things you've just added don't work all that great in the context. Most times you should probably be working on that or just scrap it, unless it's better than your original idea, at which point you'll be fitting your old loop to the new one so it becomes a bit pointless to compare anymore...

Though it's always a good idea to save multiple versions in my experience, it's nice to have an older version to fall back to when it just got away from you, sometimes I fiddle with some projects when I come home from an evening of drinking and the next day I almost always have a laugh at the result. Or when you have some plugins in there that decide to crash, it can be nice to have a backup.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:47 pm
by rsntr
The thing is, how do you know that the previous version was better than the later one? Maybe you were just in a better mood, not hungry, not sleepy, not stressed out etc. and it has nothing to do with the music. I try to think not in terms of good and bad but ask myself if it works. If it works, it's worth finishing it, if it doesn't work I now within seconds and scrap it.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:57 pm
by 1nfinitezer0
I can count on one hand how many times I wished I'd saved more versions of a project.

But there's many more of these loops I lost before I learned this habit OP mentions.

It's just nice having an older version when you feel you hit a sweet spot. And they're very useful for DJing or keeping in your sample bank.

In general, flattening saves CPU and moves you onto a new stage of processing. A slight but noticeable shift in how many levels down you can control brings other possibilities.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:15 pm
by dubdub
I also don't do versions, sometimes I fuck up a track but it's generally fine since I know there's nothing I can do it at that point.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 4:57 am
by RWise
My best tracks happen the fastest. I always try to jam out and make the basic structure and idea quickly. If i feel like ive captured some magic, then i make sure i work in short bursts of finishing the idea to maintain the 'magic'.

If the idea really is a good track, then i wont get bored of it from the short bursts of finishing it/mixing it down.

As soon as i start having to go back to a track to constantly tweak or change things, i kill the original soul of the track and i know the track isnt worth my time, so i move on.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 6:13 pm
by Oktagon
I guess the question is does a situation ever occur where you make a bunch of changes that sounds good to you at the time, but then you wake up the next day and it sounds like shit. In that case having an older version to fall back to is useful.

Maybe it relates to how your perceive the process of making music? For some it's probably like painting a picture, for others more like an artistic version of programming.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 8:12 pm
by Evert
I catch myself saving multiple versions of a project sometimes.
In 90% of the cases I don't go back to previous versions though, so it's just ends up cluttering my Ableton folder.

I do agree that you should commit to the choices you make. A wrong choice can still be an opportunity to learn something.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2017 7:27 am
by delphine
my mentor always tells me just finish the fucking tune.

Re: Export your loop before...

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:53 am
by [wesellboxes]
In my graphic design days 15 years ago, I'd worked out that

filename_1-1.psd
filename_1-2.psd
filename_1-3.psd

was a good thing. More to safeguard yourself against file corruption problems than anything. If you can't commit to the process, overwriting the one file continually isn't going to sort that out.