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SONG STORAGE
HARD COPY STORAGE If you have a special hardbound or spiral book you like to scribble into, great. Keep it in an easy to see place where you can grab it and go when you want to take off for a practice or writing session. If not, try putting your goodies into an easy-to-find file, typed up as a lyric sheet with easily-read chord notations over the proper syllable, and on a backup disc stored safely somewhere. Even little notes with tiny riffs can be digitally or manually cut and pasted into something this way. Make your own computer character set with a Paint-type program if you don't have some freeware like Finale Notepad to just make some bars and notes or even a guitar fretboard or keyboard picture diagram and then put several of them together on a page and save it so you can cut and paste the ideas later into new files. Do try to backup onto a CD and make a hard copy you can file often, though--computers have cards that can go out, modems die and there will be times like on vacation when you just won't have a computer around, but you thought to put your ideas file in your duffel bag before heading onto the plane. Try to also keep at least a 10-ream paper box (your boss may let you have those for free from work) to contain your files. If you can't afford actual file folders, try making your own from those big envelopes you get junk mail or magazines in and either cut a flap in the side of them or just tape a tab onto the side and take advantage of the fact that you can seal them up so things don't fall out of the file while being transported. Taping, gluing or stapling those bits of napkin or clipped margins of the local paper onto a larger page helps keep them from accidental loss, too. SENSIBLE CATEGORIES A filing system won't help if it makes no sense to you. Sit down and brainstorm up some categories you could use right now to find things. Finished songs, songs in progress, riffs, loops, blank or completed copyright forms, ads written and/or hard copy when published with dates, press clippings about you and/or your music, local venues, local studios, blank music paper and perhaps a file for your master list and backup CD files to go into are possible titles for your tabs on the files. In each of those you could leave them in by date or alphabetically, whichever is easier for you to remember. Songs, riffs and loops could be divided up into genres, as well as possibly even by the instruments for which they were written. Want ads could be filed by date, paper found in, whether they were ones you wrote or ones that caught your eye, whether you got or gave calls on them and responses. Mimic these for your computer files. Put these in separate notebooks if that is easier for you to work with--for many of us, vertical storage makes more sense than files, and bookshelves than filing cabinets.
The copyright of the article Song Storage in Writing Music is owned by Cindy Lee Haddock. Permission to republish Song Storage in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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