Get art as close as possible to its final form to hone the last 10%.
I’m looking at a printed draft of our tour program for next month. After several hours over a couple of weeks cleaning it up in InDesign, I realized that I needed it on paper.
There are just some design elements that I’m incapable of judging on a screen. Spacing and font size, for sure – but even typos! Sometimes I can skip right over a typo a dozen times on the screen, only to spot it immediately on the page. (No, I don’t print out my daily posts here.)
The same is true for music. As a composer, sometimes I still don’t know what will work musically until I put it in front of an ensemble, and as a conductor, sometimes I still don’t know what will work until we put the ensemble in front of an audience.
Not printing out the program would be a mistake. And not allowing for discovery after the original composition or performance is a mistake, too.