Once I “feel” that an album is done, I sometimes tend to rush through the mastering phase because I’m ready to just have it over with and move on with my life. I was in the middle of struggling through a new recording tonight that was coming out like crap, and suddenly I felt it. The album was done.

I had met my criteria, after all. I had 14 tracks ready. 15, once I split the first one in two as I had been planning. In total, everything clocked in at 47 minutes. Well beyond the minimal requirements to pass muster as an RPM album.

And so, with that, I decided to move into the next phase of the process: mastering. I was done with all of that in less than an hour. Yes, I work fast. It may not be the final master, but I want to have tracks with the proper compression and normalization applied when I’m listening to decide if it’s really done or not.

Then I had to figure out what to call all of these tracks. Up until now I had just been numbering them based on the order in which I started them. Fortunately I had made note of some possible song titles, and I ended up being able to give each a tentative title and work out the track order.

So, I’ve got cover art, mastered tracks, titles and a sequence. Kind of looks like I’m done. And I also did one more thing I’ve never bothered with before: I made a spreadsheet of all of the tracks and which iPhone apps I used on each, just so I could keep everything straight. Here it is:

Yes, there’s a vaguely apocalyptic theme to the titles and, to a lesser extent, the music itself. I don’t believe the world is going to end this year, nor do I believe the Mayans believed that, but it makes for good thematic material.