**NEW**: have a look at the updated version of this article on Snake's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/production-management-cats-cradle-robbers-way-nick-dallett
In our day jobs, DJ Essey and Snake are both Technical Program
Managers for major Seattle-area software companies, and we bring that toolset
to bear when producing music. Having a
common language for project management has helped us to communicate effectively
and to put structure around what we do.
This in turn helps us to separate the project management aspect of the
band from the creative aspects of making music.
Along the way, we’ve developed language to talk about the unique ways we
work: terms like “jaanaap” (a made-up word describing a specific way of mixing
time signatures), to "boil" a location (making music using only found objects from that location) or “freakout” (a particular type of melodic development), as
well as our own taxonomy for describing the current state of a given track
(seed--> draft--> mix ready--> master ready--> final).
As an example, let's walk through the process that led
to the release of our new album, Jack in the Bucket.
This project started as a 5 song EP, and was all finished
and waiting for sales of our first album to reach a carefully chosen point
before publishing, when we had a sudden realization.
- We realized that we have a lot of more recent material that we are very proud of, and that are in various stages of not-quite-complete, just waiting for us to be inspired to work on them.
- We realized that the only milestone that we recognize as “done” is having these tracks published and available to the world.
- We realized that the growing pile of unfinished projects was a psychological burden that was preventing us from fully enjoying our work.
- We realized that waiting for each album to pay for the next was not working and that we needed to invest more in a steady stream of releases in order to gain listeners.
In light of this epiphany, we instituted a new strategy: starting now, we are working full bore
towards having our backlog of material published and in distribution so that
YOU can purchase and download everything we do in its final form. Jack in the Bucket is the first release in
this new strategy.
Step 1: Organize
We met at “Cat’s Cradle Westerer”, DJ Essey’s lovely home in
Seattle, armed with markers and post-its and laptops, to execute the first stage
of the new strategy: grouping all of our
unfinished tracks into albums-to-be.
To do the grouping, we performed an affinity exercise. This methodology is typically used to organize
the results of brainstorming into high-level concepts. In my time at Microsoft Office, we used this
exercise at the beginning of each release cycle to bring customer feedback and
new ideas together to define release themes.
In this case, the data items – the list of about 60 unfinished tracks – were already present, so we started by listing these on
post-its.
(The color in this case was not significant).
Next, we started to put the post-its on the kitchen
cupboards. As we went, we tried to place
things in ways that seemed to go together.
This happened iteratively over a period of about 20 minutes, many of the
stickies moving several times as we grouped, regrouped, rethought, had
epiphanies, and grouped again.
Initially, we each worked autonomously, without
discussion. Towards the latter stages,
we started to discuss the patterns that were emerging, and formed concepts
around the groupings. This resulted in
some additional tweaks.
At some point, we realized that several of the collections naturally
coalesced into 13 track groups. Since
our first release, Abewsing
the Mews, was a 13-track album, we decided at this point that each of the
albums should have exactly 13 items. We
tweaked a bit more to enforce this new rule.
Here are the collections that emerged from the affinity
exercise:
Jack in the Bucket
This collection started with the original 5 tracks from the
Jack in the Bucket EP (Jack in the Bucket, Electrullabye, Swan Station 5,
Ujjayi, and Weftovers), and added tracks that we felt hung together with the
other tracks. One pair of tracks – La Voie
Lactee, and Boiling the Ocean – were always destined to be together, as the
repeated melodic motif in the former track was – by complete coincidence –
recapitulated in the opening melody of the latter.
The New
This collection contains some of our newest tracks, plus
older tracks that have the same cohesion and poppy freshness that has been
coming through in our most recent efforts.
Religious
A number of our tracks relate to collective or individual
religious experience – everything from hallucinogenic visions (Acid-washed
dreams, Laudanum escapade) to settings of sacred texts (Nandapoorian Daystallian). These became our third collection.
Un--
The 20 remaining tracks defy categorization. Time will tell what happens with these.
Step 2: Prioritize
The next step was to decide which collection to work on
first. Jack in the Bucket was clearly
the closest to done. We had already
finalized 5 out of the 13 tracks. Of the
rest, most were fairly well along in development. We took each track and labeled it according
to its progress along the continuum from “seed” – some ideas and samples, but
no final structure – to “final”. Most
tracks were either “draft” or “mix ready”, meaning they all needed mixing and
leveling, and some needed evaluation and restructuring. Lita was still a seed – some cool ideas, but
in need of development and structure.
For Lita, we wound up writing a whole new B section in a minor key and
recording new parts for that bit to tie the track together and give it more
direction.
Step 3: Divide and Conquer
In order to make progress quickly, we split up the remaining
tracks and tackled them in parallel, working on two laptops. We’d each move a track forward – arranging,
writing new parts, adding effects – and then swap headphones to exchange “motes”
– music notes – so that we kept the collaborative nature of the music.
Step 4 – publish
On February 8th 2014, the day that it snowed and
Seattle came to a standstill, DJ Essey was at Snake’s house in Kirkland (Cats Cradle East) to put the
finishing touches on the album. Because
of the snow, he was unable to return to Seattle, and this provided enough time
for the pair of us to finish the project.
February 9th, we published Jack in the Bucket to our online
distributor, CD Baby, and it is slowly making its way to the various digital
music resellers that will carry Jack in the Bucket to the world – check it out
on ITunes, Spotify, and Google Play, or wait for it to appear on Amazon,
Napster, Xbox music, and more.
Step 5 – repeat
The next project on our list is the collection we labeled “the
new.” Retitled “A Quirky Hour for
Something New” after one of the tracks in the collection (DJ Essey started this track late one night, long after the coach had changed back into a pumpkin, and the title was taken straight from Snake's bleary-eyed comment), we’ll be working on
this for the next few months and hope to have it out before the end of the
summer.
