Boots-n-Cats 006: Tools are made to be broken

 
In last week's post I mentioned that I ended up determining my track layout for 005 by mapping the tracks to a particular emotional context (in that case a typical day).  The process of mapping was so useful, in fact, that I set out this week to do the same thing from the outset.  Once I had my overall theme, I broke that into 5 suites and quickly found about 3-4 songs for each suite.  "Magnificent!", I thought.  I must be really on to something here ... except that I wasn't.  What seemed like a good idea at first ended up constraining me later on, keeping certain songs in the mix that I wasn't wild about, pushing songs together that didn't fit, etc.

After three days of trying to force my mapping to work I came to a realization:  the mapping was just a tool of my own creation.  I had devised the concept to help me, but it was now hurting me, and that I was free to alter it or abandon it completely, which I ultimately did.  I feel like this sort of occurrence is a common trap people fall into, the idea of keeping loyalty to the initial vision of a project at the expense of its successful completion.  I'm happy with myself that I could identify the fallacy and move past it in this instance.

The podcast this week is my favorite to listen to so far that I've made.  Sifting to find the tracks, mixing everything together, and listening for small adjustments has been the happiest I've been this week by far.  The final product is not perfect, to be certain, but it is something I love.  I can feel myself improving even just through the process this week.  I'm both thrilled with the final product and terrified about starting over from scratch next week and trying to top it, but I guess that's always the challenge set before us: to do better.

Until next week, cheers!