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misk wrote:the amount of time you spend on a tune has nothing to do with how good or bad it will be. TeeBee used to talk about how he spent 3 months on a tune... I just hear that and consider it bad time management.

LOL

repost oops

It's all about your workflow right? I know Coki and Burial bang tunes out quick.. I find that my best tunes are the ones I finish in one shot, when I got lots of weed and I have the whole idea in my head.. It's hard for me to go back to a track that i havent completed because I get new ideas and change the song too much... TBO, I'd rather have somebody else mix and master my tunes down

I usually make most of the track in less than 2 hours ... I got about 30 tracks in my DAW then.

If I like the track I'll come back to it about 300 times and spend 10 minutes on it each time, or I'll just let it sit on my hard drive without ever listening to it again (most probably).

I don't have a consistent way of making tracks, before when I knew little about proper mixdowns and shit Id bust out a track every week (hardstyle and harddance) but looking back now, they had the melodic content and shit but very poor mixdowns
now today, I find myself spending too much time on mixdowns and its annoying so now I only dish out 1 or 2 every month, 2 if i got alot of free time

I can't finish tunes

My first few tunes took a few hours once I got the basic idea, they all just sounded like uninteresting loops rather than tracks. It takes me like 3 hours to pick and cut breaks into 1 hits, and set up a drum loop. Recently been working with a singer to who has totally different taste/style than I, 8hrs with nothing but a 8 bar loop isn't too uncommon

I think the quicker you work the better. Cut the bullshit, and get it done. With that said, for me, it takes a long long time. Usually I start a track, work on it then find something that I really like, and abandon most or everything else and focus on that one part that is dope. So a lot of time spent, and a lot of work *essentially* wasted. But I know the longer I work on a track the worse it sounds. Still working on improving my workflow so I can really just bang it out and maintain that inspiration throughout the writing process. Mixing would still be on top of all that.

Whatever works for you, basically, bottom line.

joegrizzly wrote:It's all about your workflow right? I know Coki and Burial bang tunes out quick.. I find that my best tunes are the ones I finish in one shot, when I got lots of weed and I have the whole idea in my head.. It's hard for me to go back to a track that i havent completed because I get new ideas and change the song too much... TBO, I'd rather have somebody else mix and master my tunes down

I'm sure there are producers that have others mixdown their tracks, or at least help. I can't imagine giving up that creative control though. When you are fine tuning EQ's, level's etc. I think the vibe of a tune and the "sound" of an artist exist as much in the mix down as the sound design. Just as a quick example...look at the difference between a reese bass in a Spor track versus a Burial track. Same concept, same beginning to the sound...completely different results.

That said, I've gotten better at coming back to stuff. If I can get a basic beat, melody and a bit of atmosphere down I usually can come back to that original, "inspired" idea and finish. I prefer to take an afternoon and craft a tune, but I don't have to. On the tunes that turn out the best, the tunes I'm proud of, I probably spend 20+ hours. Most of that is not sound design, sample selection or mixing. Though I do spend a lot of time recording vinyl, but I usually do that with a spliff and do nothing but record. If there are samples that stick out, I'll tuck those in a folder I've got set up. I really need to get some templates setup. I waste sooooo many mouse clicks.