Is there any worse feeling than losing your creations?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I just had an admittedly stupid situation where I was working on a patch in Pure Data, then something came up and I had to run and I didn’t save my patch. When I finally got back to it, very excited to possibly finish it off and record it, the application crashed and I lost all my work.

And that’s only the most recent experience… Starting off with the Octatrack, I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally erased or cleared a track I was working on, and since I was new, I didn’t know how to undo it.

And never mind the times I’ve had computers or hard drives full of tracks that just died, or just didn’t work when I went to back them up.

To be honest, I probably have very little of may total output of music because of these sorts of things, and while I do my best to back things up now, I didn’t always, and sometimes life just gets in the way and you neglect it.

It’s incredibly discouraging and it’s been probably two weeks now that I haven’t worked on a Pure Data patch after going at it pretty hard, because I’m kicking myself for such a such a stupid mistake.

Anyway, I can’t be the only one. How much work have you lost, and how did it happen?

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#2

I know the feeling, My hard drive on my computer died I lost years of work basically had to start from scratch again

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#3

octatrack and losing your work, name a more iconic duo

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#5

Having had a few total hard drive failures over the years, I find myself getting over these kinds of loses easier and easier. Need to sort some kind of back for my laptop, previously had been using a redundant HDD back up in my no defunct desktop.

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#6

You’re not alone !

^^

Last year a friend of mine reset his A4 by mistake, loosing months of work. I commiserated, knowing the feeling (plus he was a few weeks before an important gig), and explained him with a teacher tone that he should backup more often (he had never bothered doing so).
So I helped him backup his Machinedrum, and load a few free patches from Elektron…

Back home, I figured I had not made any backup neither on any of my machines, and that it should be a good idea to do so.
First one I took was the A4, I saved the project, or thought I did when in reality I reloaded it to nothing: it had never been saved.
In this project, I had 2 years of Kits and Patterns carefully done… Some of my tracks are gone for good, and would-be ones gone like they never existed.

I was so pissed of at me, such moments are highly frustrating I wanted to break something.
In the same time, my inner self was laughing at me for being so full of myself when telling my friend he should save his work.

So yeah, I got your feeling.
Now I don’t live in the past, most of the patches I loved 2 years ago seem lifeless to me now, I guess I made some improvements.

Don’t look back in anger, I’d say: pleasure in music is the path not the destination ^^

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#7

I feel your pain. Ive tried adapting the idea of if I lose it, I wont lose the things I’ve learnt making it. I’ve also started saving scene files on a google drive, or dropbox, so it stays available in case of harddrive crashes…

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#8

there is way worse. My house burned down with everything inside. Try it !

on a positive note, i came back to my senses, bought an octa and a digitakt and made an album

cheers to that

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#9

always make your backups!

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#10

I would be so devastated! :scream:
Even if it’s just “things”, what a nightmare!

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#11

that’s why i save literally dozens of interim versions of my Axoloti patches.

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#12

2 years and never ever even pressed save project? I guess we have a winner here … :smiley:

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#13

Now I’m another person, I swear.

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#14

The A4 is going to give me fits of sputtering rage, I’m sure. I’ll need to send it in for repairs (pretty much immediately… yay B-stock), but the whole process of saving things is so convoluted and I’ve definitely lost or overwritten work within like a day of owning it.

I wish Elektron would just go into every single one of their devices and add a “SAVE ALL” feature so that I don’t have to save every esoteric layer of pattern, bank, kit, patch, mental state, emotional state, existential thought, and fucking parts. God damn the parts…

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#15

for sure happened here. just last night with the OT, but wasn’t a big deal as I was just starting a project. A few months ago I backed up my MD and loaded up a new project as I had run out of space for new beats. When I went back and loaded my original project, the kits loaded…but not the patterns except for a couple. Lost a years worth of beats, definitely an Oh Shit moment. Very frustrating but, life goes one.
Also reminds me of one reason why I love vintage synths, say ms20, no memory, what you see is what you get.

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#16

No modern device with an USB connector should come WITHOUT a disk mode. I mean, c’mon, it isn’t 1980/1990 anymore …

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#17

That’s how I had been using my A4, basically ^^
Even if you have a Save button, nothing forces you to use it! Live in the danger, embrace present like there is nothing else!
Or cry on your loss…
:smiley:

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#18

That is correct. Be quick with your work, record, move on, just use the DAW as your “backup” Its not always the right fit for everyone, and not a guarantee.
I remember reading an article on Brian Eno using this process with his DX7, never saved anything, used it like an analog synth.

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#19

there are worse feelings of course but in terms of music making this is one of the worst, had it happen to me in the early days with both my DT & AR

what concerns me though is the feeling after - instead of just getting on with things (I didn’t lose THAT much or anything truly amazing) I just felt so defeated, couldn’t get it off my mind, and didn’t turn on anything for like a week… such a stupid reaction

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#20

I´ve lost a lot of work in both DN and OT, specially in the OT. I realized I´m saving better and more often with time, I think this is the first thing anyone has to know before changing things in a pattern (or part), and before turning off the machine.

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#21

A worse feeling yes. Finding your work easily and realizing how awful it is. :slight_smile:

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