It was my first session in an actual recording studio as an artist. There's an End Rant about it in Tape Op#13, and the lessons learned that weekend of "what not to do" remain with me even now. But there was one little action I took, over 40 years ago, that I was recently reminded of, and it's a big one.
We'd booked two days to record the best songs of our current set on 33 minutes of tape. Day one was all tracking basics and most overdubs, and on day two we did a few last overdubs and then mixed. As we were packing up our gear, I boxed up the 1/2-inch multitrack reel, 1/4-inch mixdowns, and track sheets and put them under my arm. The studio owner looked at me funny, and said, "Most people just leave the multitrack tapes here with me." I sort of understood what he meant. What could I do with these tapes? I'd need a 1/2-inch, 16-track tape deck with the proper noise reduction in order to ever hear these again. But we'd paid for these tapes, they belonged to us, and I think I knew in the back of my mind that we'd never return to this funky studio in a shack in the middle of nowhere.
As an archivist, studio owner, mix engineer, and someone who frequently deals with audio restoration projects, I come across so many cases where original recordings are missing. The Elliott Smith archive work I do has turned up albums where almost half the multitrack master tapes are long gone. Other times it'd be sessions where the master was a "house reel," where he only took a DAT tape with mixes home from the studio and the house reel would get reused. But this situation is almost worse in the digital age. I don’t know how many people come to me with only a few MP3s as proof of an album's worth of work. Sure, we can digitally un-mix and rebuild tracks these days, but there is no real recovering of information that is simply not there. Why does this artist not have copies of their actual files? This isn't just a discussion of how to properly digitally back up your own music; it's also about realizing the importance of doing so.
Music is a passion, and everyone involved in it talks about that passion continuously. But there seems to be a disconnect here. If your music means so much to you, why are you not protecting it? I have never had a single artist ever ask me to send them consolidated multitracks of their digital sessions. They should. What do you think the chances are of a Pro Tools session from 40 years ago opening up properly on a computer in the future? None? Most likely. Yet this passion and belief in their own music doesn't extend into making sure that their recordings are cared for and archived properly. Is it our job as engineers and producers to do this on our free time, or beg the clients to book extra time for a process like this? How would one even go about archiving a session full of 200 track songs? Who has the time or money to cover this work?
Like I mentioned, that first multitrack was from over 40 years ago. I had the tapes digitized by a professional: All the track sheets, reel, and tape boxes were scanned, and all the data is backed up in several places, plus online. I eventually gave the original reels away – this wasn't exactly The Beatles, you know? I keep planning to remix this material from 1985, but beyond my own self-satisfaction I don’t know what that'd be worth to anyone. But damn, I'm still so glad I never left these reels at the original studio! It's our music, and we should all protect our own legacies.