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How many hours do you guys average on a track from start to finish?

Depends on the flow of the tune for me. Sometimes I can write an entire tune in a day because the flow is easy to work with. This could be due to things like what key i've written the tune in and how it progresses. Other times I can spend days, or weeks just working on specific parts of a tune trying to get the entire tune to flow. Though hour wise, I'd say each track has a good 25+ hours of actual composition. The other 2-5 hours is the mixdown & master.

I remember when I started producing. I could make a track from start to finish in an afternoon. Now this shit takes me months to be happy with the full product. AND EVEN SOMETIMES, after months of work, I still may not like the finished product. I have so many completed tunes that I ended up loathing the more and more I listened to them. I've become somewhat of an audio perfectionist. Or I feel that I shouldn't put out amateurish tracks because I want to be well respected. Goes both ways.

ephyks wrote:I remember when I started producing. I could make a track from start to finish in an afternoon. Now this shit takes me months to be happy with the full product. AND EVEN SOMETIMES, after months of work, I still may not like the finished product. I have so many completed tunes that I ended up loathing the more and more I listened to them. I've become somewhat of an audio perfectionist. Or I feel that I shouldn't put out amateurish tracks because I want to be well respected. Goes both ways.

Same, my first album (16 tracks) took only 50 hours to make over 3 months. Not sure how long my new album is taking to make (well over 150 hours, I haven't added up the FL Studio times yet), but it's been over a year of work.

What it is is that as you learn more, you expect more out of yourself. The first few tunes is like "Yeah, wow, I made a track!". Now that you know you can make tracks, the natural progression is better and better tracks. We've just got higher expectations, and I think that's what makes us good musicians, because we aren't satisfied with just anything anymore.

A tune a month, roughly. Although that average is made up of some that take a few hours (mixing aside), and some that I keep revisiting because too me it just isn't finished. Also, one finished track will probably only be created after about 3 tracks that I've got relatively far in then scrapped because it wasn't good enough.

And I still reckon I can do a lot better...

Save mastering, probably a little less than 15 hrs on a good day

hip hop tune would take me a day,
brostep tune i rarely finish but i try to get every single sound the way i want it so the few iv completed took 40-50 hours (3 or 4 days since i spend a lot of hours a day producing)
but yeh i rarely finish any

I don't write anything. I just sit down and start making something. Making music is an act of pure expression for me. So I have made a whole album of songs that just needs to be mixed down in a single morning. Which is my fastest time. I have been working on the songs on the album I am doing now for about 4 months. It's 16 songs. I always work on at least one song for at least an hour a day, but 3-6 hours is more common. So 120 days,times 3 hours, and divided by 16 tracks equals 22.5, which is probably way off, but sure, why not.

I usually will finish a tune over the course of a week. Anything longer than that and I usually end up getting bored with the song and stop working on it.

depends on the day, the track, etc...actually, to be honest if I really like the track I'll typically spend longer on it. My workflow has improved drastically since I joined the One-Song-A-Week-Challenge thing on DSF. It used to be that I'd just spend forever playing around with different stuff. Now I still do a lot of that, but I move it towards finishing a track.

Last 2 tracks i completed for the track a week took me no more than 20 hrs each.I find i spend less time if i know the sound i am going for and have all drum sounds,lead and bass sounds in my head already although the tracks i start from scratch tend to be my favorite ones to produce.Also i spend a lot more time doing it now so my workflow can be veryvery quick.

yeah pretty much ditto for me. It helps to have a theme to focus on, although I do, like you, like to start completely from scratch. And the more time I spend making tracks, the faster my workflow becomes

Depends on the track. If you want to know how long to spend on a track then just use the mentality that you must never 'finnish' a track before its absolutely perfect, in every single way. Some tracks I've done have taken a day or so, however most tracks for me now take form over a month or so

2-3 hours

if it sounds good, i keep it

if not, i delete it

Nevalo wrote:2-3 hours

if it sounds good, i keep it

if not, i delete it

Really? I never delete anything. Just because I don't like a song I made much doesn't mean other people wont, plus you never know when inspiration might hit and give you an idea for something that wasn't working before.

I have heard of painters that will burn all their old work when they go in a new direction, so I guess it just depends on the person.

for me its a case of not wanting to get bogged down to much

if i dont like the sound thats coming out, ill scrap it & start fresh

I've only made 2 tunes so far.

The first tune took around 16 hours.

But the last tune I made took around 50 hours total. Lots of changes, some would say that it doesn't "flow" as well as it maybe should but coming from a jazz background, jazz is notorious for key modulation, tempo shifts, and strange unusual structures.

A wise producer once told me

I shouldn't become TOO attached to my work. If something is generally just not sounding great, especially in the early stages, I shouldn't continue to frustrate myself and bog myself down with trying to make it work.

If I like a track I'm making, then go to bed and wake up the next morning and hate it, don't try to salvage it. It's just inefficient.

Cornbreadddd wrote:I've only made 2 tunes so far.

The first tune took around 16 hours.

But the last tune I made took around 50 hours total. Lots of changes, some would say that it doesn't "flow" as well as it maybe should but coming from a jazz background, jazz is notorious for key modulation, tempo shifts, and strange unusual structures.

I'm interested! Can I hear it?

I can dig it. I tend to keep banging away at a track till I get annoyed by it. I did that with this album I'm working on. Thought I had the 16 songs to make a proper album ready cept for nips and tucks, then within the last 2-3 weeks I've cut about 4 or 5 out and replaced them with newer stuff just cause the others were ticking me off.

@cornbreaddd Perception of flow within a song is a subjective thing. Do what you like and then just worry about finding people that have similar tastes to you.

Acidhedz wrote:I can dig it. I tend to keep banging away at a track till I get annoyed by it. I did that with this album I'm working on. Thought I had the 16 songs to make a proper album ready cept for nips and tucks, then within the last 2-3 weeks I've cut about 4 or 5 out and replaced them with newer stuff just cause the others were ticking me off.

@cornbreaddd Perception of flow within a song is a subjective thing. Do what you like and then just worry about finding people that have similar tastes to you.

I like that! I think that takes some discipline, to a certain extent, but it should pay off more