Mix Blog: If You Don’t Have It in Two Places…

Rewind to September 4, 2024. It’s the first day of class for my Recording Workshop I students at Mercy University here in Brooklyn. At this point, they’ve been through Basic Training and have probably heard about my reputation for having a temperament similar to that of a USMC Drill Sergeant.

As I understand it, the other instructors in the pre-studio, audio basics courses warn them about what will and will not fly when they reach my classes, but you know how kids are. Most of them are juniors and seniors when they get to me, so I have high expectations. It’s a simple equation: Do the work, get the grade. Don’t do the work, and I’ll see you again next year. Same time, same place.

Part of that first day of class includes a discussion of their experiences, their expectations for the course, and my expectations of them. With a lot of input from the other professors, I’ve fine-tuned the course outline and all the requirements for their term project. In an effort to not let anyone fall through the cracks, it’s made clear that failure to submit a term project automatically results in a failing grade for the course.

We had to add this stipulation a few years ago because the term project counts for only 15 percent of their final grade (they have tons of other work). So it might have been possible for a student to pass the course with a “B” under circumstances where they scored very high on everything else (quizzes, assignments, exams), yet failed to submit a term project.

Another part of the term project discussion includes my warning that they have nowhere near as much time as they think, even though the due date is three months down the road. Our studios are notoriously difficult to book during the weeks from late November through early December because college students—being college students—wait until the last minute to do everything. And there are other students in other classes who need to use the studios, also waiting until the last minute. I even had a student many years ago who, after putting off the work until the day before the due date, attempted to submit a “recording” of Cage’s “Silence 4’33” as their term project. It was a valiant effort, alas rewarded with a valiant “F.”

So… while I’m warning them about the need to move their arses so that their hair is not on fire come first week of December, I also warn them about the need to have backups for their work. There’s a saying regarding data backup that goes something like, “if you don’t have it in two places, you don’t have it at all. This, I stress to them, is even more serious than running down their meal card before the last day of the semester.

They have tons of options for backup: thumb drives, portable drives (SSD or otherwise), the cloud, and my favorite: creating a password-protected folder on one or more of the studio computers. Given the number of computers we have in our various studios, it’s easy enough to have multiple backups. And it’s cheap.

But what do I know?

When it came time for the class to listen to the projects, one of the students opened their Pro Tools session file and we all saw the screen. (You can see it atop this post.)

The student didn’t panic right away. I gave them time to search the studio computer for the correct session file, check their laptop and thumb drives, etc, but to no avail. The finished project was gone.

I felt horrible, especially considering I had witnessed some of the sessions as the project was taking shape. I patiently explained to the students, “This is your worst nightmare—you give a session to a client and audio files are missing. Or worse, the latest version no longer exists.” There was no need to say, “I told you so.”

I ended up giving the student a few days to scour the studio hard drives and their own drives, hoping they’d find it. But they did not, and to their credit—with only a few days remaining before grades were due—turned in something, which is better than nothing.

Some of these students will be taking Recording Studio Workshop II with me in the Spring semester. On the first day of class, I’ll ask, “What did you learn last semester?” And inevitably,  I’ll get a resounding chorus of: “Back up your work!”

It doesn’t matter whether it’s audio, video or another type of data—if you don’t have it in at least two places, it doesn’t exist.