[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":430},["ShallowReactive",2],{"nav-categories":3,"category-music":10},{"pinned":4,"overflow":9},[5,6,7,8],"Technology","Rambles","Security","Music",[],[11],{"id":12,"title":13,"body":14,"category":8,"date":413,"description":414,"extension":415,"featured":416,"image":417,"imageCredit":418,"imageCreditUrl":419,"meta":420,"navigation":421,"path":422,"public":421,"seo":423,"stem":424,"tags":425,"__hash__":429},"posts\u002Fblog\u002F2026\u002Fgood-enough-is-the-cut.md","Shipping Is a Habit, Good Enough Is the Cut",{"type":15,"value":16,"toc":404},"minimark",[17,29,37,40,43,48,55,58,89,92,95,98,102,105,108,111,115,118,121,124,128,131,134,137,141,145,148,151,154,157,161,164,167,170,173,176,180,183,191,194,200,203,206,209,220,223,226,331,334,338,341,356,364,367,371,374,377,380,383,391,394,397,400],[18,19,20,21,28],"p",{},"I make music under the name ",[22,23,27],"a",{"href":24,"rel":25},"https:\u002F\u002Fweeclipse.ie",[26],"nofollow","We Eclipse",", and if you go\nlooking there are two singles of mine out in the world: Lagom and, more\nrecently, Constellations. Both sit on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer,\nYouTube Music, etc etc.",[18,30,31,32,36],{},"(",[33,34,35],"em",{},"Lagom",", for the uninitiated, is a Swedish word for just the right amount,\nneither too much nor too little. The Swedes have a word for everything, it\nseems.)",[18,38,39],{},"Both releases are steps toward a larger LP, which is the thing I have wanted to\nmake for longer than I would care to admit. This piece is mostly musing on how\nthe steps got taken at all, because for a good many years they were not.",[41,42],"related-post",{"path":24,"title":27},[44,45,47],"h2",{"id":46},"the-cut-i-never-made","The Cut I Never Made",[18,49,50,51,54],{},"For most of the years I have been making music, the decision I struggled with\nmost was ",[33,52,53],{},"when"," to stop. Every track reaches a point where it is good enough to\nput out, and mine had a habit of sailing serenely past that point and carrying\non regardless.",[18,56,57],{},"My process, such as it is, goes roughly something like this:",[59,60,61,65,68,71,74,77,80,83,86],"ol",{},[62,63,64],"li",{},"Writing",[62,66,67],{},"Arranging",[62,69,70],{},"Listening",[62,72,73],{},"Tone and sound design",[62,75,76],{},"Recording",[62,78,79],{},"Arranging again",[62,81,82],{},"Mixing",[62,84,85],{},"Mastering",[62,87,88],{},"Final production (includes a car test)",[18,90,91],{},"You may notice arranging turns up twice, and that second lap tells you most of\nwhat you need to know. Every one of those stages is a place where you can call\nit good enough and move on, or go round again, and the list above only records\nthe one extra lap I am willing to admit to in public.",[18,93,94],{},"Some days it is less a lap and more the roundabout at the top of the\nChamps-Élysées: twelve exits, no lanes, and me going round and round the Arc de\nTriomphe looking for the one that leads to a finished song (would recommend as\nan experience nevertheless).",[18,96,97],{},"There is a certain attraction in calling this perfectionism, a word that gets\nhanded out with abandon, and I think the truth is knottier than that.\nPsychologists have a better word for it. Barry Schwartz and colleagues split\npeople into maximisers, who hunt for the best option, and satisficers, who stop\nat good enough, and found the maximisers did more searching and comparing and\nwere less satisfied with what they ended up with. The trouble is the search,\nmore than the standard.",[41,99],{"path":100,"title":101},"https:\u002F\u002Fdoi.org\u002F10.1037\u002F0022-3514.83.5.1178","Maximizing Versus Satisficing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice (Schwartz et al., 2002)",[18,103,104],{},"As I write this the album is in production, all fifty or so minutes of it.\nFinding the time for it is hard enough, and being as brutal with it as it needs\nis harder still.",[18,106,107],{},"I have come to think of \"good enough\" as a cut, in the old sense of cutting a\nrecord. It is the moment a piece of work comes loose from all the revision\nclinging to it, and for years I lined it up on tracks without ever once making\nit.",[18,109,110],{},"Software, funnily enough, I never had this trouble with.",[44,112,114],{"id":113},"a-habit-from-the-day-job","A Habit From The Day Job",[18,116,117],{},"Shipping software is a habit I picked up long before I thought to call it one.\nYou build the smallest thing that does the job, put it in front of people and\nlearn from what happens next. MVP is a fairly tired acronym at this stage (bless\nit), but the idea under it holds up well. A release is how you find out whether\nthe thing was any good.",[18,119,120],{},"Software also hands you a definition of done, which helps more than we tend to\ngive it credit for. The tests go green, a reviewer approves, the ticket slides\nacross the board. You can argue with any of those signals, and engineers\ngenerally do, but they exist, and when they all agree you ship and get on with\nyour day.",[18,122,123],{},"I rather assumed the habit would follow me over to the music.",[44,125,127],{"id":126},"no-test-suite-for-a-chorus","No Test Suite For A Chorus",[18,129,130],{},"Music, it turns out, has no test suite, and nobody is coming to approve the pull\nrequest. A song is personal in a way a pull request rarely manages, and the\nperson judging it is the same person who wrote it and has heard it more times\nthan any listener ever will. The target moves with every listen. What sounded\nhuge on a Tuesday sounds thin by Thursday, and the only thing that changed in\nbetween was me.",[18,132,133],{},"There is another difference that took me a while to notice. Professional\nsoftware I build in teams, and music I make mostly alone. A team spreads the\ndeciding around. Someone else sets the deadline, someone else reviews the\nchange, and a call that goes wrong is shared out among everyone who agreed to\nit. On my own, every one of those jobs falls to the same person, who is also the\none who has to like the result. Nobody nudges me to ship, and nobody tells me a\ntake is fine once I have stopped being able to hear it. I can see why bands\noften move faster than one person on their own. Each taste keeps the others\nhonest, and when it works, they fuse into something a little magical that none\nof them would have found alone. It is also a large part of why artists bring in\na producer at all. People are very important to the creative process.",[18,135,136],{},"I wrote a while back about Rick Rubin, the producer who cheerfully admits he\ncannot work the desk and gets paid for his taste regardless. The bit of that\ninterview I keep coming back to is the second half of what he said, that he is\ndecisive about what he likes and what he does not. Taste tends to get the\nheadlines. The decisiveness is what lets a record leave the room, and it was\nexactly the part I was short on. I could hear what was wrong with a mix well\nenough. What I could not do was look at the remaining wrongness and decide it\nwas fine.",[41,138],{"path":139,"title":140},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-producer-that-couldnt","The Producer That Couldn't",[44,142,144],{"id":143},"small-releases-as-reps","Small Releases As Reps",[18,146,147],{},"So I tried stealing the habit wholesale. Instead of aiming straight at the\nalbum, I set myself smaller goals, the musical version of an MVP: something\nfinished and out on the platforms, however modest.",[18,149,150],{},"The first of these was also the first record I produced myself, start to finish,\nand the first I put out to the streaming platforms under my own steam.",[18,152,153],{},"On the site, Lagom now sits under past releases and Constellations is the\ncurrent one. A single teaches you the whole path end to end, from an idea you\nare fond of to a link you can send your friends, at a size where a mistake only\ncosts you one song. The second asks the same questions again, with the excuse of\nbeginner's luck gone.",[18,155,156],{},"Each one forced the call I had spent years dodging. At some point I had to make\nthe cut and let the thing go, warts and all.",[44,158,160],{"id":159},"early-commitment-yields-earlier-movement","Early Commitment Yields Earlier Movement",[18,162,163],{},"These days everything happens in Reaper, and a song lives in two projects before\nit gets anywhere near a mix.",[18,165,166],{},"The first is a scratch project, for the basic layout and getting the feel down.\nNothing in it has to be good. It only has to tell me what the song is.",[18,168,169],{},"The second is the tracking project, for the raw recordings, and this is where I\nrequired the most change. For most of my time making music I would end up\nendlessly tinkering with amp sims, tones, EQs and effects, round and round, with\nthe song itself waiting patiently in the corner. Analysis paralysis and tone\nchasing are common enough problems.",[18,171,172],{},"Now, in tracking, I commit to tones as quickly as I can. I only ever record with\nthe actual tone, like it or not later. It forces a loop I never used to have:\nsample, commit, move on. That goes for every instrument, maybe less so for\nsynths and field recordings.",[18,174,175],{},"There is research behind this too, as it happens. Daniel Gilbert and Jane Ebert\nfound that people prefer decisions they can undo, yet the ones who could swap a\nphotograph they had chosen ended up liking it less than the ones who could not.\nKeeping the door open stopped them settling into the choice. An amp sim I can\nre-tweak forever is that door, and recording the actual tone closes it.",[41,177],{"path":178,"title":179},"https:\u002F\u002Fdoi.org\u002F10.1037\u002F0022-3514.82.4.503","Decisions and Revisions: The Affective Forecasting of Changeable Outcomes (Gilbert and Ebert, 2002)",[18,181,182],{},"So I went a step further and handed the door to hardware. The rack below exists\nto make me choose early and often, so fewer choices pile up waiting for me\nlater. A Klark Teknik 76-KT and 2A-KT handle the compression, a Lindell LiNTEC\nhandles the EQ, and between them the tone is shaped in the analogue realm on its\nway in. By the time it reaches Reaper it is printed, set in amber like the glow\nof those meters, with no plugin lurking to talk me out of it.",[18,184,185],{},[186,187],"img",{"alt":188,"src":189,"title":190},"A rack of analogue outboard gear: Klark Teknik 76-KT and 2A-KT compressors above a Lindell Audio LiNTEC equaliser, VU meters glowing orange","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002F2026\u002Faudio-rack.jpg","Fewer knobs, fewer decisions, and every one of them made on the way in",[18,192,193],{},"If I have a secret sauce, it is certainly a plain one, with very little glamour\nsprinkled on top.",[18,195,196],{},[197,198,199],"strong",{},"Fewer decisions, made sooner, and made where no transient mood or preference\ncan turn me backwards.",[18,201,202],{},"Once tracking is good enough (there it is again), the mix comes next, and the\nmix turned out to be the nearest thing music has to a test suite. The chorus\nstill has none, but the mix is a blend of science and taste. It is either\nbalanced or it is not. If the tracking was done well, mixing is a breeze. If the\ntracking was rushed or half-arsed, mixing is a slog, because you end up\nreshaping the tone and the vibe at the stage that was only ever meant to balance\nthem. A mix done well makes mastering a doddle too.",[18,204,205],{},"Both the mix and the master also have to pass the car test. Driving takes focus,\nvisually and sometimes by ear, but it is a loose sort of focus, and it is easy\nto engage with music while you drive. That is close to how most people will\nactually hear the thing, half listening while doing something else, and a long\nway from me hunched over the monitors listening for problems. Sadly, a mix that\nfails it badly enough can send me all the way back to tracking.",[18,207,208],{},"At the end, something like this is expected:",[210,211,217],"pre",{"className":212,"code":214,"language":215,"meta":216},[213],"language-text","lagom\n├── lagom-master\n├── lagom-mix\n├── lagom-scratch\n└── lagom-tracking\n","text","",[218,219,214],"code",{"__ignoreMap":216},[18,221,222],{},"A nightmare mix rarely limps on to mastering, either. More often it ends one of\nthree ways: a full wipe, where the project is dead and no more work goes into\nit; back to the scratch project to rethink the song; or back to tracking to\nrecord the parts again. There are a lot of ways for this to go round in circles.",[18,224,225],{},"Each stage hands the next one whatever it was given:",[210,227,231],{"className":228,"code":229,"language":230,"meta":216,"style":216},"language-mermaid shiki shiki-themes material-theme-lighter material-theme material-theme-palenight","flowchart TD\n    S[\"Scratch project\u003Cbr\u002F>layout and vibes\"] --> T[\"Tracking project\u003Cbr\u002F>commit to real tones\"]\n    T --> G{\"Good enough?\"}\n    G -- \"no, go round again\" --> T\n    G -- \"yes\" --> M[\"Mix\u003Cbr\u002F>balance it\"]\n    G -. \"rushed through anyway\" .-> N[\"Mix is a nightmare\u003Cbr\u002F>reshaping the tone and the vibe\"]\n    M --> C1{\"Car test\"}\n    C1 -- \"not yet\" --> M\n    C1 -. \"sadly, back to tracking\" .-> T\n    C1 -- \"passes\" --> MA[\"Master\u003Cbr\u002F>a breeze after a good mix\"]\n    MA --> C2{\"Car test\"}\n    C2 -- \"not yet\" --> MA\n    C2 -- \"passes\" --> R[\"Release\"]\n    N -. \"back to the drawing board\" .-> S\n    N -. \"record it again\" .-> T\n    N -. \"full wipe\" .-> D[\"Project dead\"]\n","mermaid",[218,232,233,241,247,253,259,265,271,277,283,289,295,301,307,313,319,325],{"__ignoreMap":216},[234,235,238],"span",{"class":236,"line":237},"line",1,[234,239,240],{},"flowchart TD\n",[234,242,244],{"class":236,"line":243},2,[234,245,246],{},"    S[\"Scratch project\u003Cbr\u002F>layout and vibes\"] --> T[\"Tracking project\u003Cbr\u002F>commit to real tones\"]\n",[234,248,250],{"class":236,"line":249},3,[234,251,252],{},"    T --> G{\"Good enough?\"}\n",[234,254,256],{"class":236,"line":255},4,[234,257,258],{},"    G -- \"no, go round again\" --> T\n",[234,260,262],{"class":236,"line":261},5,[234,263,264],{},"    G -- \"yes\" --> M[\"Mix\u003Cbr\u002F>balance it\"]\n",[234,266,268],{"class":236,"line":267},6,[234,269,270],{},"    G -. \"rushed through anyway\" .-> N[\"Mix is a nightmare\u003Cbr\u002F>reshaping the tone and the vibe\"]\n",[234,272,274],{"class":236,"line":273},7,[234,275,276],{},"    M --> C1{\"Car test\"}\n",[234,278,280],{"class":236,"line":279},8,[234,281,282],{},"    C1 -- \"not yet\" --> M\n",[234,284,286],{"class":236,"line":285},9,[234,287,288],{},"    C1 -. \"sadly, back to tracking\" .-> T\n",[234,290,292],{"class":236,"line":291},10,[234,293,294],{},"    C1 -- \"passes\" --> MA[\"Master\u003Cbr\u002F>a breeze after a good mix\"]\n",[234,296,298],{"class":236,"line":297},11,[234,299,300],{},"    MA --> C2{\"Car test\"}\n",[234,302,304],{"class":236,"line":303},12,[234,305,306],{},"    C2 -- \"not yet\" --> MA\n",[234,308,310],{"class":236,"line":309},13,[234,311,312],{},"    C2 -- \"passes\" --> R[\"Release\"]\n",[234,314,316],{"class":236,"line":315},14,[234,317,318],{},"    N -. \"back to the drawing board\" .-> S\n",[234,320,322],{"class":236,"line":321},15,[234,323,324],{},"    N -. \"record it again\" .-> T\n",[234,326,328],{"class":236,"line":327},16,[234,329,330],{},"    N -. \"full wipe\" .-> D[\"Project dead\"]\n",[18,332,333],{},"Anyone who has fixed a bad data model three services downstream will recognise\nthe shape. The cut is cheapest early, while committing costs a few minutes, and\nevery stage after tracking pays for whatever I was too timid to decide there.",[44,335,337],{"id":336},"what-is-done-and-was-it-enough","What Is Done, And Was It Enough",[18,339,340],{},"Here is the part I did not see coming. Once the releases were small enough to\nfinish, the bottleneck simply moved house. The deciding got easier and the\nremembering got harder: which tracks are done, which are nearly done, which take\nof the vocal was the one I liked, and whether a song I signed off months ago was\ngenuinely good enough or whether I was just tired that evening, with a bad case\nof listening fatigue to boot.",[18,342,343,344,347,348,351,352,355],{},"What I do not have is the folder of ",[218,345,346],{},"final",", ",[218,349,350],{},"final2"," and ",[218,353,354],{},"final_ACTUAL"," that\nhaunts some home studios. I am happy to overwrite and commit to one source of\ntruth, which is the tracking rule again in another form. The project file tells\nme where a song is. It does not tell me why I stopped where I did.",[18,357,358,359,363],{},"It is the same problem I wrote about in the\n",[22,360,362],{"href":361},"\u002Fblog\u002F2026\u002Fa-digestive-for-an-agentic-friend","Friday digest",", where I had\nwritten everything down and still could not tell you what happened that week. A\nsong stretched over months has it worse, because what slips away is how a mix\nfelt on the night you made the call. \"Good enough\" is a judgement made in one\nmoment that you then have to live with in another, and if you cannot remember\nwhy you made it, you start prising it back open.",[41,365],{"path":361,"title":366},"A Digestive for an Agentic Friend",[44,368,370],{"id":369},"the-next-cut","The Next Cut",[18,372,373],{},"Which brings me back to the album, fifty minutes of it, short on time and short\non brutality, and by some distance the biggest cut yet.",[18,375,376],{},"It is the same question asked at a larger size: more songs, a longer stretch of\ntime and a great many more chances to lose the thread or reopen a decision I had\nalready made. Fifty minutes is a lot of music to be brutal with. The two singles\nwere reps for exactly this, for the deciding and for the keeping track of what\nwas decided, and I have not made the cut on this one yet.",[18,378,379],{},"Lagom, was a ruthless outcome-first exercise at breaking old routines.",[18,381,382],{},"Whatever else was meant by it at the time, it reads now like a note left for\nwhoever was going to make the album. Just the right amount, and then make the\ncut. Don't overthink it.",[18,384,385,386,390],{},"In the meantime, both releases are up on ",[22,387,389],{"href":24,"rel":388},[26],"weeclipse.ie",",\ngood enough (even if I noticed flaws soon after) and out in the world, which is\nmore than can be said for most of what came before them.",[392,393],"hr",{},[18,395,396],{},"I have a deep sense of respect for the professionals who do all of this on a\nbudget and on a schedule, and still keep going through hell and high water. Some\nweeks I cannot get beyond the tracking stage. If there is nothing coming,\nnothing comes. I can force myself to write code on a bad day, and I have never\nonce been able to force myself to write music.",[18,398,399],{},"I get to wait for it and make the cut when I am ready. They have to make it on a\ndeadline, with their livelihood riding on it, and then do it all again for the\nnext record.",[401,402,403],"style",{},"html .light .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-light);background: var(--shiki-light-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-light-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-light-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-light-text-decoration);}html.light .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-light);background: var(--shiki-light-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-light-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-light-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-light-text-decoration);}html .default .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-default);background: var(--shiki-default-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-default-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-default-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-default-text-decoration);}html .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-default);background: var(--shiki-default-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-default-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-default-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-default-text-decoration);}html .dark .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-dark);background: var(--shiki-dark-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-dark-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-dark-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-dark-text-decoration);}html.dark .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-dark);background: var(--shiki-dark-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-dark-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-dark-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-dark-text-decoration);}",{"title":216,"searchDepth":261,"depth":261,"links":405},[406,407,408,409,410,411,412],{"id":46,"depth":243,"text":47},{"id":113,"depth":243,"text":114},{"id":126,"depth":243,"text":127},{"id":143,"depth":243,"text":144},{"id":159,"depth":243,"text":160},{"id":336,"depth":243,"text":337},{"id":369,"depth":243,"text":370},"2026-11-10","Years of not knowing when a song is finished, a habit borrowed from shipping software, and the small releases that are slowly teaching me where good enough lives on the way to an album.","md",false,"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002F2026\u002Fwe-eclipse-lagom.jpg","Original credit Natalia Gutnik (borrowed for album art)","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.instagram.com\u002Fp\u002FBs6LAKsAGY8\u002F?img_index=1",{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002F2026\u002Fgood-enough-is-the-cut",{"title":13,"description":414},"blog\u002F2026\u002Fgood-enough-is-the-cut",[426,427,428],"music","shipping","reflection","emPBKZbu6XXZ9zK2KUW3NQYa64V_cKQtcbaOSBRC9lw",1794528041256]