Electronic musicians: make presets. Make kits. Make templates. Record shit with a microphone. Especially if you are just staring out- it will pay dividends!

I recently found a bunch of recordings I made when I was 19 (I’m now in my thirties) and much of it is still useful, even if just as a basis to be massively reprocessed, resulting in a sort of creative through-line.

I also have many, many old DAW sessions that I will never be able to correctly open because they use plugins, samples, and hardware synths/fx I no longer get own. I wish I had rendered stems and practiced better file management.

I now always save all files inside my daw folder session. If using hardware, I record those parts to audio before closing a session. Also, I render a draft of the master mix to audio before closing a session, that way I can preview what I wrote without opening in the DAW.