Technology for musicians: backing up – portable computing and recording
I’m going to share some ideas with you about how you can improve where your musical life meets your technological life. It horrified me to read recently about a semi-famous Canadian electronic band that lost an album because their “harddrive got fried.” In this day and age, that’s almost unheard of, but it does happen. Here are some ideas to help you with managing your music and your tech gear. There are some great products out there and I’ll identify a few here.
First off, back up your system and files. To be honest, I don’t do system wide backups. I should, but what I do is regularly backup my music data to external drives. I have 4 drives in fact. My first was a 200 GB Maxtor. Nearly full. I’ve got a dozen movies on there and most of the important folders from at least 2 different computers. Recently I bought a second drive, an ultra-slim usb-powered 160 GB model that cost me only $80 (excellent for portability but it is also slower at 5,400 rpm). I also have a 4 GB Sandisk USB stick, and a 60 GB iPod. As long as you have the iPod cable, and enable the IPod for ‘disk use,’ you can use it as an external drive (though transferring your iTunes content is a whole other kettle of fish).
What we’re talking about here is technology for file management. If you experience a crash, then you have duplicates of your files on a second drive, and you can probably recover most of your music. Of course, you can also organize the files. I like to create a “Mikooshka” folder, and then go deeper from there, with folders for “Samples/sounds”, “Recordings”, “Video”, “Songs” etc.
Other technologies on a similar tip include MojoPac. This is a virtual desktop that you keep on a portable drive – allowing you to transform any computer into a version of your computer, with all your settings intact. It looks amazing. If you recorded with your bandmates at different locations, you wouldn’t need to always lug your laptop with you. If you had an iPod and 20 GB of it setup to run MojoPac, you could have a library of sounds and programs all ready to go.
I have a Tascam US-122 recording interface which is fairly portable. It has two channels for input and is solidly constructed. The beauty of a USB or Firwire unit is you can use it on the road with your laptop or plug it into your desktop. An alternative I have used quite often for live recordings and quick demos is my Pocket PC. I have a Dell Axim and it’s quite handy. It records in CD quality WAV or various MP3 formats and the microphone does a decent job. The key is though that I don’t use the built-in software. I use a program called Sound Explorer from Vito Technologies. This little beauty has input / output levels and editing functions. Recording function in your handheld device is a major consideration if you are a musician.
Recently I heard about audio/midi cables that contain an audio interface (with phantom power for microphones!) from a company called CME. The cables (called U2) are for line-level input (guitars, keyboards), mics, and midi. Basically with these U2 cables we’re talking direct input to computer – meaning you don’t need to carry your Tascam, Edirol, M-Audio or Prosonus device around with you.
The future: less is more.
