do you ever release everything you record?

I listen to music I'm just working on quite intensely until it's finished. Actually, so intensely that once it's finished, I won't listen to it again for some time, but maybe return to it a few months or years ago occasionally.

Since there hasn't been any period of time in which I wasn't working on several musical projects in parallel, I need a lot of time to just listen to that stuff and try to evaluate when it has reached a (hopefully) presentable state. I regard that as part of the compositional process.

In my spare time I don't listen to my own music a lot - otherwise, I never could hear anyone else's music again!

(...improvisations are an exception from that rule of course, as they just happen, and there is no compositional process other than just doing them; but usually I'll listen to them for a few times after the recording)

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I make my own music for my own pleasure and delight -- it would be slightly odd not to enjoy listening to it afterwards, wouldn't it?

Stephen

As long it is finished, any track can be released because it is a matter of taste. But badly played and recorded tracks should be private.

Thought I might dive into the deep end a bit....

While reading this thread I have also been rereading a couple of books - Keys to Avalon and Pendragon.
A little obscure perhaps but without too much detail they are about the history of the myths around 'King Arthur' and the use of originally Welsh source traditions by various political and religious groups to legitimise their own rule and positions over centuries.

It might seem a little irrelevant but this has included the Norman Kings spreading the 'Arthur' stories to cover the whole of the UK rather than just Wales and was part of the reasoning used by an English King to claim precedence over Rome to form the Church of England (so he could ignore the Pope). So perhaps not so obscure after all.
You might also want to consider the location of Princess Diana's burial place in a symbolic manner...
I've long known that incoming religions have tended to use the basis of the previous ones to entrench their own position - such as many UK churches being built upon older 'pagan' sites.

Anyway it made me think of an album I helped create - 'Lament of a Forgotten God' so I listened to it last night.
The album was exploring what happens to gods when their existence is no longer remembered by people. This includes the current traditional Gods as the experience of the Pantheon of capitalism with it's market forces and buy to be happy churches....

There were definitely some things I heard that I would change if doing it now.
I remember that the three spoken word sections, although sounding similar, were created differently because I had only been planning to do one and had not thought to write up how I had done it.
I liked the overall feel and run of the album, the first 2 sections creating slabs of unease whilst the third feels both an inspiration and a challenge.
Where do we dream the sort of dreams that created the paintings of lescaux and built Stonehenge?

I suppose this widens the question a little - as well as why might you listen to your own music, what were you trying to do when you created it?

I always like to know the back story to music I am listening to - which is why the streaming/music player/alexa/mp3 type presentation of music leaves me feeling quite cold / distant / old fashioned

Thoughts and responses welcomed.