suggestions for organizing files/songs

[beleg]

I am looking for suggestions; I just filled up my first 1 gig card. I filled it with a few 4 track songs that are "in progress" and a bunch of scratch pad tracks (Tracks where I would sit with my ukulele. guitar, or piano and just mess around capturing whatever was in my head so I could use it later to write a song). Now that the disk is full I need to figure a way to be more organized, and I am curious how others go about organizing their files.

One thought I had was to get 3 cards, one for scratch pad jams, one for songs in progress, and one for finished songs (backing up all files on my computer). Another thought would be just creating back ups on my computer with the date and then erasing everything on the disk except songs in progress. The problem with that is that I am going to wind up with multiple copies of songs at different stages of development (which would be cool, if not for the fact that it makes it harder to find things.)  Anyone have any better ideas?

[Greeny]

I've gone down a different route - I'm keeping my card clear except for the current track I'm working on. I'm using my pc to archive all the mp3's I've created and any song formats etc that I want to keep.

It's made it much easier (for me) to find things on the BR.

It's a bit like keeping a tidy desk!

Anyway, it doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you're making music...

[LDBluz]

My question (maybe for LesPaulGold1) is: can you simply copy a song folder (i.e. one song and all its files) from a PC into the MBR Roland BRO folder, or delete such a song folder, without screwing things up? Or do you have to do all your "file management" (e.g. delete a song) on the MBR, and simply copy the entire Roland folder?

Thanks.
LDBluz

[64Guitars]

can you simply copy a song folder (i.e. one song and all its files) from a PC into the MBR Roland BRO folder, or delete such a song folder, without screwing things up? Or do you have to do all your "file management" (e.g. delete a song) on the MBR, and simply copy the entire Roland folder?

You can manage your songs by copying individual song folders. However, there are a few points to keep in mind:

1) Folder name conflicts. For example, if you want to copy a song folder named "SONG0002.BR0" from an old backup to the memory card in your Micro BR, but that card already contains a folder named "SONG0002.BR0", then the existing song will be replaced by the old song. To avoid losing the existing song, you have to rename the old backup folder before you copy it to the memory card. The name must be in the format "SONGxxxx.BR0", where "xxxx" is a 4-digit number from "0000" to "9999". Check the memory card first to see which numbers are already in use, then rename the old backup folder with a unique 4-digit number if necessary. Also, note that the last character of the folder extension ".BR0" is the digit zero, not the letter 'O'.

2) Current and next song number. The Micro BR keeps track of the 4-digit number of the current song folder and the 4-digit number to use when creating the next new song. Theoretically, it could get confused if you add folders that it hasn't previously seen or remove folders that it created. But in practice, this doesn't seem to be an issue. It seems to be smart enough not to create a new song with the same folder name as one you've added manually. And if you delete a folder that it considers the current folder, it seems to just make the next existing folder the current one.

3) Folder structure. You must maintain the same folder structure on the memory card as the Micro BR creates. So, the ROLAND folder must be in the root directory, the BR0 folder must be within the ROLAND folder, and each of the SONGxxxx.BR0 folders must be in the BR0 folder. And, of course, you can't rename or move any of the files.

4) File and folder names must be in UPPERCASE. This really shouldn't matter but I've found that the BR Rhythm Editor program won't recognize a ROLAND folder unless its all uppercase. Of course, the BR Rhythm Editor isn't compatible with the Micro BR anyway, but there may be other software in the future which also expects the files and folders to be in uppercase. So, it's best to always name files and folders in uppercase to avoid future problems. Song names, on the other hand, do not have to be uppercase as that information is stored inside a file rather than in a file or folder name. So, for example, you could change the name of a song from "SONG0004" to "EASTWEST", "eastwest", "EastWest", "eAsTwEsT", etc. However, the folder in which the song is stored will still be named "SONG0004.BR0" and cannot be renamed (except for the four digits as described above). Song names can be changed on the Micro BR using the procedure on page 59 of the manual (3rd edition), or with my BR Explorer program.

All Roland manuals and websites say that the only way to backup a song is to backup the entire memory card. I think this is only because many musicians have poor computer skills and Roland tech support doesn't want to deal with calls from users who've inadvertently messed up their memory cards by deleting, replacing, renaming, or moving critical files or folders. But any BR users with good computer knowledge should have no trouble backing up and restoring individual song folders if they keep in mind the points above.

[LDBluz]

Hi 64Guitars - Fantastic Answer, and much of what I guessed (but didn't know).

Final clarification on your point 3) Folder Strucure: you note "you..can't rename or move any of the files." Do you mean on the MBR SD Card? That is, you can't delete a song folder OR rename a song folder (for example, from SONG0002.BR0 to SONG0022.BR0) on the MBR card, but you CAN copy in a new folder, as long as it doesn't duplicate what's already there on the MBR card?

Thanks for the insights.

LDBluz

[64Guitars]

Files and folders are two different things. I said you can't rename or move files. However, it's alright to rename song folders if you observe the conditions I mentioned earlier. So, your example of renaming the SONG0002.BR0 folder to SONG0022.BR0 would be perfectly okay. But the files within that folder have specific names that the BR looks for (SONGINF2.BR0, ARRANGE3.BR1, TAKE_DAT.BR0, etc). If you rename any of those files or move them to another folder, the BR won't be able to find them. Even the numeric part of the file names must remain unchanged. So, you can't rename ARRANGE3.BR1 to ARRANGE4.BR1, for example.

Actually, the folder names are very specific too. The only thing you can safely change is the numeric part (4 digits) of the song folder name. You can't change the name or location of the other folders (ROLAND, BR0 and MP3) at all. And you can't change the first four characters ("SONG") or the extension (".BR0") of the song folders. Also, if I'm not mistaken (I'm not 100% certain and don't have time to check right now), the numeric part must be exactly four digits long. So, I don't think "SONG1.BR0", "SONG001.BR0", or "SONG12345.BR0" will work.

Deleting song folders from the memory card is okay if you're sure you don't want them anymore. However, there must always be at least one valid song folder on the memory card and it must contain valid song files created by the BR. So don't delete all of the song folders unless you're going to copy at least one backed-up song folder from your PC to the memory card.

[Greeny]

I'm glad 64Guitars is around to explain things properly! My response would have been jumbled and confusing at best 

[LDBluz]

I sure have to second that thought and thank 64guitars as well. I sure hope sometime I get to know this box well enough to be able to offer something new here!

LDBluz

[hewhoiscalledj]

and dont forget to use the OPTIMIZE feature when clearing stuff since it helps to clean out unsused data.

frankly, i just wipe the card clean before each session and archive everything to my laptop.

[Tony W]

I know I dug a little deep in the forum for an answer to my question, but hey -- nothing like doing your homework right? Here goes:

I'm using the BR as a trainer much more than cutting songs. That being said, I've got some "play along" songs ripped and loaded on the BR in the \Music folder.(Wish it were sitting in front of me)  The problems that I'd like to overcome is partly the limited LCD not giving much of a file name. I'd like the music to play in a certain order, but don't want to place numeric values at the beginning of the file names. Creating a folder structure would be cool... but the BR only recognizes files not folders in MP3 mode right?

What is the solution?