How to Organize Digital Music on Your Computer

I was so excited to talk about how to organize digital music at the 20th Anniversary Piano Teaching Party in November. But there’s so much to say about this topic and we had to fly through it, so I know a post about this will be even more helpful. [See the how to organize printed music article here.]

Here’s the issue.

When you purchase your first few studio-licensed pieces of digital music, you probably don’t think much about organizing digital music. You might leave it in your downloads, move it to your documents folder, or even put it in a folder labeled “digital music.” But the more music you get, the more you realize you have to be organized or you will forget what’s there!

How Not to Organize

At this point, what usually happens is that you start organizing digital music by composer name. Perhaps you have a folder called Wendy Stevens or Diane Hidy. But, as you purchase more music, you realize that you can’t remember which of those pieces by Wendy had that cool motive that Johnny really liked. Or that black key motive that’s really mature sounding for teens. Was it The Bold Escape? Or By the Blue-green Bay? Or some other composer entirely?

Drat. Now you can’t find it. And unfortunately, you can’t search by “cool motive” or “staccato music” in your file system! (But, if you have the free Student Solutions Catalog, you can view all ComposeCreate pieces by difficulty, common student struggles, and more!).

Now that I have hundreds of pieces of digital music on my computer, I’ve finally figured out a system that I think will work for most teachers and I’m happy to share it with you because I know it will save you lots of time. And, it will help you use your music more effectively and get even more value for you money!

Organize Digital Music Based on How You Teach and How You Search

This is going to help immensely because it’s based on what you need and how you teach. It can be easily tailored to your needs.

But first, you have to start with the basics – you’ll need to learn to create folders on your computer. If you do not know how to create a folder, take a minute to learn. You’ll be glad you did. Every operating system can be slightly different, so do a quick search on Google to find how to create folders on your computer. Search for something like “How to create a folder in Windows X” substituting the name of your operating system.

1. Create a Top Level Folder to organize digital music

You’ll want to start organizing digital music by creating a folder called digital music. This will be the top level folder into which you put all the other folders.

2. Create folders based on levels

It is very important how you label these since computers usually sort folders alphabetically. It’s easier and faster to process visually if you have all the elementary sub-levels grouped and all the intermediate sub-levels grouped. So you don’t want to just label a folder “mid-elementary” “early elementary” and “late elementary” because that will become a mess when it’s sorted alphabetically and your computer puts the “mid elementary” next to the “mid intermediate.” Very confusing!

Instead label them this way:

3. Create folders based on how you teach

Now this is where you can personalize things to your liking! For example, these are the folders you might create in the Early Elementary folder:

Then, you would create folders in all your other levels according to how you teach or how you search for music. Here is another example from the Mid Elementary folder:

Now See the Big Picture of Organizing Digital Music

Here’s a big picture overview of what organized digital music can look like:

What if I Want a Piece to be in Two Different Folders?

That’s where the beauty of organizing digital music is just amazing! Many pieces fit in multiple categories. For example, Savannah Stalk is a great Big and Bold Pieces, but it’s also a Rote and Reading Piece and it’s a Great for Teens (which is another category you might want in each of your folder levels).

Simply make a duplicate of the file and then put the file in both or all those folders! As long as YOU are the only one using this music for students you directly teach, then you can make a duplicate of the digital file! (Remember each teacher must own their own studio license and no sharing is permitted with any other teacher.)

You can usually just right click a file and there should be a choice to copy it or duplicate it:

Now, you can put it in two different places:

I Like to Print My Digital Music! How Do I Organize That?

I don’t blame you. Sometimes digital music is “out of site, out of mind,” so it’s helpful to have a print of each of your digital pieces in a notebook next to your piano. Here’s how to adapt this to organizing printed music. Plus, here are some some newly designed covers for your printed music notebooks (and for your students too) that are totally free!

Other Suggestions?

Organizing things is always subject to personal preference. But sharing your own ideas about how to organize digital music or how this system works for you is helpful to everyone. Please free to share below! And definitely be sure to check out the free Student Solutions Catalog if you haven’t already. Thousands of teachers use this resource because it is so helpful for finding music. It was designed to make choosing pieces easy, quick, and to help you use what you already have by reminding you of what pieces can be used to solve particular student problems. It’s a total game-changer! You can get the Student Solutions Catalog for free here.

Read More:

• How to Organize Printed Sheet Music
• How to Preserve, Store, and Bind Printed Music – the pro-click system I’ve used that works well
• Free Music Covers for Your Students and Your Notebooks! – Scroll down and you’ll see where to download them.