Input, output, and aLL the hurly burly that goes in between...

I'm happy to declare that I've practiced the following standard list structure to a point that it has become second nature in me. I use it for music and non-music related stuff:

Line 1) NAME OF THE PROCESS
Line 2) INPUT: [What we have at the beginning]
Lines 3 to x) [ All kind of strange crap to make things happen]
Last line) OUTPUT: [What we have at the end]

I intend to discuss what goes between the Input and the Output in other posts. But taking in consideration only this  high level definition, we get a world of possibilities already: as I'm running any of these processes, I often find that the beginning definitions were imprecise; every time I run the list, I learn to define the starting and result a little better, or it turns out that it made more sense to cut the 'chunk of activity' at different points... This makes the content of those lines (process name, input, and output) as movable as everything that goes within.

At some point, one of these babies becomes too big and then usually it is time to divide its parts into smaller, atomic units (I've found that keeping the lists short is a great recipe against resistance to modifying). The growing size of these lists is the sound of quality and precision increasing, and stupid drudgery that nobody cares about getting out of the way. It means more hours actually played, which is more sound made, which means more music for the world, and more enjoyment and personal expression for the happy camper who makes it :)