Strategies for (re-)organizing projects?

[Digital Larry]

My typical approach when starting a new project is to put it in a folder indicating the year. Then I give it a stupid name like "cool rock jam" because I'm just messing around, it's not like I wrote the song first. So, I have a bunch of folders, and unless I rename the project to something I'll remember, I don't recall which one is which.

To start off this year, I'm going through the ones I did last year and sorting them out into "good" and "maybe" folders. Given that I often don't finish "good" ones, "maybe" is probably just a joke, but the idea is to sort these out so I don't waste so much time going forward.

My hope for this year is that I can focus my efforts on the "good" ones to make them "finished". Otherwise I'll just continue to record new things that don't go anywhere (mostly).

I spent some time in the Ableton file browser, which I had not used for projects up to now. It's interesting that you cannot move things in this browser - so to move things I would generally just use the Windows file explorer to move entire folders, or if I had multiple unrelated projects in one folder (hey, it happens) then I would load, save as, collect all and save, delete original from the Ableton browser, then use "Manage files" to find the unused files and delete them.

This is a fairly elaborate process but the alternative is to completely lose track of what I'm doing.

Anyone have a better approach?

[Tarekith]

I would just add that for me personally, if a project isn’t totally exciting me when I listen to it after a few days away from it, it gets deleted. I just consider it practice and move on to projects I’m actually looking forward to working on. It’s not an approach for everyone, but having a folder full of ‘maybes’ for me just leads to feeling overwhelmed and indecisive. Or like I’m not being successful with my output. I’d rather look at a folder with 5 song ideas I think will be fun to work on, than a folder with 50 ideas where all I can think is ‘meh’.

I also like to name my songs in process with a name that quickly lets me see what the vibe of the song is, instead of ‘unfinished guitar jam #23’. Some days I go into the studio with different emotions or energy levels, so it’s nice to be able to quickly open up “chill seaside walk” or “too many drugs in the Paris club” and know exactly what to expect.

[Digital Larry]

I definitely deleted a few already, never to be heard from again. I get what you're saying in general. It's pretty rare that I come back to something after not working on it for a long time and keep going. Most of my completed projects got there fairly quickly, at least recently. Years ago before I had kids I would spend 2-3 months working on tunes and focus on fewer at a time. These days I am more disorganized! I'd like to think that after working with DAWs for nearly 30 years I'd be better at it. In the best of all possible worlds I would have someone run the DAW for me, but I know that's not gonna happen.

My "good" and "maybe" folders are just what I thought of yesterday and it's a step up from no organization at all.

What I'd really love would be some way to audition a project without having to open it, even though that seems pretty impractical, but if I could comb through these in 15 seconds rather than 2 minutes each it would certainly help. I realized that you can audition individual wav files, and sometimes this gives you enough of a clue.

[[jur]]

What I'd really love would be some way to audition a project without having to open it

Simply render your riff or the part you like about the project and put it at the root of the live project folder, this was you can quickly preview it from the Finder/Explorer.

[[jur]]

I would just add that for me personally, if a project isn’t totally exciting me when I listen to it after a few days away from it, it gets deleted.

As often, a very wise and pragmatic approach Erik! I like that.
What I've doing for quite some time, with this kind of "jam sets that could be called junk" is that I save what I like as clips and delete the rest. Most of the time there's just a riff in here that I like and want to keep. I try to keep the less material possible, which is already way too much.
I try to do it when my jam session is over, otherwise I'll do it after a few days when listening back... but sometimes a year or 2 passes by

[slow.robot]

I keep it very simple—either completely finish it or scrap it before I move onto the next thing. the only way I could think to solve my perpetual problem of filling folders with sometimes great ideas that would never see the light of day.

most of my working titles are non-sequiturs, which have zero to do with the actual song. the biggest problem there is they tend to stick with the project permanently, and almost never get renamed when I’m done. I can usually remember the working title later on if I want to go back for some reason, but sometimes I have to poke through a catalogue of random titles to figure out what’s what.

[Angstrom]

When it comes to project management I don't find it as simple as "if it's boring delete it" because often I have situations where someone wants to use an old project, or release it - or I need to produce stems of it, or I need to make a remix. In those cases I need something more than a folder full of .als

I use Notion. It's free and multi platform.
I have a database of my more recent songs in, and they are tagged and filterable. Because the database can have lots of different views I can create a DB view for "dance/DJ songs" where only songs with the "dance" tag are shown, and only those above 130BPM (if I need to build a set for a certain gig) It has the most recent render location, it has notes on different remixes I have done, and notes on completion and relative shitness.

[braduro]

I'll follow the other replies, but a quick contribution:
I do a resample of every session worth documenting. What if those devices crash next time or there's an update that introduces incompatibility? Get it in clip form now. Label that reSampling track, thus the clips will have a more meaningful name. End up with a bunch of recorded Samples called "mix", for example.

Now just go through the sample folder for each project. No need to open each session. If I know something is good, I "circle" it, perhaps just labeling the file a color or tagging it in the folder.

As for finishing tracks, that's a release schedule thing.
The one's labeled "maybe" aren't mistakes or distractions. Their "failure" is evolutionarily contributing to your odds of coming up with the ideas that you liked. Really, a "failure" is an experiment that resulted in something. This is the Vault mentality that took Prince where he wanted to go with the tracks he chose. If it works for them, it works for me.