Recording with a DAW is very convenient, but as a session wears on, things can get cluttered and confusing. Between the newly created files due to editing the waveforms to tracks that you no longer need, your session can be a mess if you don’t think ahead and keep things tidy as you work. This is the first in a series of tips to make your workflow as pain-free as possible.
Tip #1 should be a no-brainer, but sometimes in the rush of getting set up, it gets skipped: Label each track BEFORE you record. “Audio Track 6″ isn’t very descriptive, and you could literally waste an afternoon (or even the better part of a day) sorting out and labeling a song’s-worth, or worse yet, an album’s-worth of unlabeled tracks. And if you have trouble sorting it out and you recorded it, imagine the poor engineer that might have to work with those unlabeled tracks at a later date. On the flipside, “rhythm guitar 1,” “rhythm guitar 2,” and “lead” are easily deciphered by anyone who works with those session files down the road.