Music Version Control: How to Stop Losing Takes Forever

You record a bass line at 2 AM. It's rough, but there's something in it — a groove you know you'll use. You save it as bass_idea_3.wav and go to sleep. Three weeks later, you can't find it. It's buried in a folder called exports_march, between kick_sample_test.wav and a stray screenshot.
That take is gone. Not because you deleted it — because your file system ate it.
