Deck chairs on the Titanic
When I'm mentoring people in making records, the single biggest idea I work to convey is that changing something is not necessarily the same thing as improving it.
This is perhaps the most important lesson you can learn: how not to overwork things. How to let things be done.
Every single record I've made I hear things on that I would do differently now. But that's entirely not the point.
The point is that it captured a moment in time. It captured who I was *then*. The records I'm working on now capture who I am *now*.
That's why it's so important to finish things quickly and keep moving forward. The point is to keep making art and to keep honing your craft. That's the energy that we need to be putting into the world.
And we need to be putting as much of it into the world as possible. Going in circles obsessing over the same few songs over and over does not help the cause.
I know this in a personal way. I did exactly this in a previous version of my life. I worked obsessively on an album of original material — for four years. I spent thousands of hours tweaking and un-tweaking and re-tweaking.
And then, when I stopped working on it, I realized that it no longer had any relevance to who I had become, and I never put it out. It was a huge lesson for me – and one that I hope to help you avoid.
No ragrets — jamie
