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Listening to music in the car was also something Hendrix would do even though he built this amazing studio (Electric Ladyland) to do all the magic studio stuff they were into. I understood it to be a way to get the experience that the audience was going to have. In order to be a hit, it was going to have to sound good in the car, that was the private identity space for the American (male?) teen...

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What a great post!! This applies to any creative process. I followed the same sequence when designing furniture/lighting (my own preproduct management days). In building software we often overlook the inherent creativity because most companies have chosen to optimize building, aka output vs the outcome. Perhaps that’s trite, but it’s like somehow following “the process” has become more important than the end result.

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Sitting here in front of my workstation with my studio still occupying most of the room to my right.

Nowadays we have incredible plugins that simulate world class mix and master rooms, as well as boomboxes, cars and SUVs. Certainly makes achieving a great mix you're confident in much faster!

I guess this also has parallels in prod-dev with the availability of services like usertesting.com, userinterviews.com etc.

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Ah yes - the lessons we can learn from the experience of being in a wannabe band, I can so relate to this, as I am sure thousands of others can too. I think the analogy extends to aspects of organisations as well like what leadership is versus self organisation, or where does hierarchy play a part, or how clear is the vision and shared understanding of the road ahead...

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