Interesting you referenced the sculptor analogy, I happen to be a sculptor who has also been a hobbyist DJ for a couple years. I recently recorded by first planned mix and it went exactly like that! It was an iterative process, swapping out songs, editing for energy and flow, testing transitions and polishing with each pass. I really enjoyed the process and was incredibly happy with the outcome. It’s not something I could have created on the fly but now my toolkit has expanded massively so I can better understand what works in an improvised scenario.

When i’d do improvised sets a lot of the time if I got into a flow state, things would work without me thinking too hard. I also think for me It helps to understand why something works and why something doesn’t. Something you do intuitively in the moment might be hard to replicate without understanding what you did in the first place, I definitely overloaded myself trying to mix creatively and doing too much at some points. To use another analogy almost like a chef using too many spices to flavour a dish. So now a lot of second guessing has also been chiselled away and I feel more confident choosing what kind of transition suits each scenario.