You can’t just change one thing.
Everything is interrelated. I was reminded tonight as I adjusted the gain structure on the playback of some tracks, which led to other small incidents in the audio booth throughout the night. Not big, just present and interconnected. The one small change I made affected seventeen other things, and those all had to be reconsidered again, in real time.
That’s true in sound design, but it’s also true in composing and arranging. You can’t change this chord in bar 5 without it affecting the voice leading in bars 4 and 6, which might lead the melody to a new place by bar 8. The following phrase will have to be reconsidered, too.
It’s true in ensemble music-making, too. One single member leaves or arrives and it doesn’t just affect their voice. It changes the sound of their section, it changes the balance around them, it changes tuning and dynamics and timbre and 1,000 other musical decisions.
We must make these creative changes to arrive at the places we want to go artistically; but we must be sure to take all the interconnected changes that will necessarily follow. Plan for them.
Or be surprised, react, and discover yourself somewhere new and exciting.