No choirs
I've just finished doing some mixing, for the first time in ~10 days. I
hope this system stays stable, in fact I hope this is the last time I
have to do reinstallings in this machine (to which I wish a long and
prosperous life, btw).
Anyways, so far so good.
Each day I feel less certain about the point of this blog. At first it seemed like a good idea because it was something nobody was doing; trying to apply Lean thinking to the realm of musical creation. But the thing is, even in realms where Lean is a more common term, those Lean sites and articles are more often than not preaching to the choir. Their role (and very good at that) is keeping the morale high, creating a supportive community of practice, and also point you to the right tool or the right sensei when you are learning. But in all of them you will find often mentioned that: 1) You learn Lean by doing, not by reading about it, and 2) You cannot "do Lean" to someone. Its about practicing until one day it changes you.
In this realm of music, with Lean being such a weird occurence, there isn't even an actual choir to preach to. Most of the musicians who potentially read this will just think that I'm just micromanaging, or embarked in some kind of "heroic artist" fantasy; it saddens me that they won't get anything else out of this, but also it saddens me because effort is a valuable resource and I'm at a point where I have to be strategic about where to put it.
The value that this blog still keeps for me is the other issue that got me started in the first place; putting my thoughts out there sometimes helps me clearing them; the translation process has a value too.
But at the same time, as I've seen happening with many Lean transformations, as my processes become more stable, I'm becoming more self-centered, more "happily obsessed" about my current problems, my challenges, the next experiment, the next target state... Willing to share my discoveries at any moment, sure, like most of good Lean practitioners are. There is something intrinsically good, intrinsically human to this method of working, and it's hard to disagree that the more we could spread it around the better. But it has to be a pull, not a push from the guy with the "brilliant idea"; in other words, putting my stuff out there in a random manner is probably not a worthwhile pursuit in the way I've been doing it so far, so I'm going to do some hansei and out of the reflection I'm pretty sure some changes in the standards will arise. I just want to be useful, I cannot afford the luxury of not being useful anymore. Soulsearching is in the horizon.
Anyways, so far so good.
Each day I feel less certain about the point of this blog. At first it seemed like a good idea because it was something nobody was doing; trying to apply Lean thinking to the realm of musical creation. But the thing is, even in realms where Lean is a more common term, those Lean sites and articles are more often than not preaching to the choir. Their role (and very good at that) is keeping the morale high, creating a supportive community of practice, and also point you to the right tool or the right sensei when you are learning. But in all of them you will find often mentioned that: 1) You learn Lean by doing, not by reading about it, and 2) You cannot "do Lean" to someone. Its about practicing until one day it changes you.
In this realm of music, with Lean being such a weird occurence, there isn't even an actual choir to preach to. Most of the musicians who potentially read this will just think that I'm just micromanaging, or embarked in some kind of "heroic artist" fantasy; it saddens me that they won't get anything else out of this, but also it saddens me because effort is a valuable resource and I'm at a point where I have to be strategic about where to put it.
The value that this blog still keeps for me is the other issue that got me started in the first place; putting my thoughts out there sometimes helps me clearing them; the translation process has a value too.
But at the same time, as I've seen happening with many Lean transformations, as my processes become more stable, I'm becoming more self-centered, more "happily obsessed" about my current problems, my challenges, the next experiment, the next target state... Willing to share my discoveries at any moment, sure, like most of good Lean practitioners are. There is something intrinsically good, intrinsically human to this method of working, and it's hard to disagree that the more we could spread it around the better. But it has to be a pull, not a push from the guy with the "brilliant idea"; in other words, putting my stuff out there in a random manner is probably not a worthwhile pursuit in the way I've been doing it so far, so I'm going to do some hansei and out of the reflection I'm pretty sure some changes in the standards will arise. I just want to be useful, I cannot afford the luxury of not being useful anymore. Soulsearching is in the horizon.
