This post is going to focus on the always fun task of managing backups of your creative material and software assets.
Long before I was ever professionally into music I was a computer nerd. I started programming computers when I was in 3rd grade. As a result, the fact that music production is largely synonymous with working on computers doesn’t bother me a whole lot. But with this integration with computers comes many extra things to watch out for and learn. As far as analog tape and hardware equipment is concerned, it is either physically present and working or it isn’t. These things could get damaged or lost, but they won’t just disappear for no good reason or instantly stop functioning to the point where they can’t be repaired somehow. But these are the sorts of situations that creative people have to deal with when working in the digital realm. I have had at least two friends contact me, absolutely despondent, when the the lone hard drive containing five years of their creative output kicked the bucket. Without any other location for these irreplaceable resources, all of our hard work can be gone in an instant. This is why we make backups.
Not only can our creative work be lost, but we can actually loose our tools as well. It takes a long time to get a computer set up the way we like to work. Think about all the time we spend configuring our DAW, installing the software, authenticating the plugins, creating a workspace in which we feel comfortable. Having to recreate this environment in the event of a disaster is wasted time. This is yet another case for backups.
