Q: you mentioned a couple times that you have made decisions about what to do next based on some kind of "tournament" format.  do you have any tips for how to do this effectively or things you've learned from doing it.  like, what rules do you make the decisions follow, what will get them disqualified for cheating and so forth.  I might be doing this soon
A: what i've developed is a hybrid system between sheer number randomization and actually choosing. actually choosing can be impossible, especially if you are terrified of picking the wrong one. sheer randomization works on the idea that there could not possibly be any right or wrong one and it doesn't matter. the hybrid system goes like this: make preliminary exclusions for various reasons, and then randomize amongst the finalists. Start by listing all the items. go through them all, and it is very important that you fully and truly check out every one, go find the source material, find your notes, find the demos, whatever you have, but don't just go based on the title or memory. at least half the time the song turns out better than you remember it, if you actually go and listen to it. then start excluding ones you absolutely know should not be picked, and it should be only for very specific reasons. usually these reasons would be in direct relation to the most recent song(s) i released. for example, last year i released a song called california, then a song called i love you. when choosing for the next song, a song called "california love" might be a bad choice. other common exclusion reasons are if the tempo or groove is too similar to the previous song. So i go through the entire list and make exclusions. which should be minimal but recently i've become extremely particular and exclude almost everything, which is getting back to the original problem with manual 'conscious' picking (and the problem is "being a chicken"). i would be discouraged by this, but, the good news is, every time there are at least a few songs that absolutely jump out at me and scream yes. so i guess this is ok but one thing that complicates this system is that more complete (written) songs tend to be more obvious choices. where as songs which only have 1 line written tend to not be as strong a contender as perhaps they should be. especially because i would get to write the majority of it brand new if it were picked, likely enabling it to be an even stronger pick. randomization boosts those small bits' chances of being picked, but doing pre-elimination often wipes out many of those. this also brings up an interesting point about doing this ONLY with finished (written) songs, vs including all fragments. in the past 2 years i've done it where i include all fragments, because the fragments are usually newer, and stronger, (newer because they would be less likely to have been finished yet, and stronger because they are newer, and even stronger because i get to finish them in the present time). but the drawback for including bits is like i said they often have trouble competing with more complete ones. so for this reason it is important to be extra specific in your exclusion reasons, vividly explaining to yourself the reason. (too similar to last song, etc.). and "too unwritten yet" is not a valid excuse, and that's almost a great reason to keep it. this is why randomization helps, because it will boost the chances for those bits which were too small to demand being picked, but yet not excludable for any specific reason. which essentially allows you to write a mostly entirely new song, and make it good on demand, because it's already been selected as the next one to record.