I usually take about 15-20 Minutes on a song.

honestly depends on the track, there's some I finish very quickly and some I just get writers block when trying to make the final finishing touches

A Few Hours, But It Depends What You Want To Make Out Of It. Some Songs Take Me A Week Or Month To Complete. But Most Of The Music I Produce Only Takes Me A Few Hours. ( Like 3-5 Hours)

But In The End It Never Feels Like It Has Been That Long! I Always Get Carried Away.

Hmmm... 99 hours is the most I've spent, normally it's about 40 hours. At the moment I'm 21 hours into my AIM piece, got about 2 minutes semi-done, got a LOT more planned. But then, I've also had a lot of time to work on it (thank goodness, considering I'm planning to do two pieces for the contest). I'm betting this piece will take more like 60 hours to complete, minimum.

All the time isn't spent idling either, it's spent actually touching it up and adding smaller details. I think that's one thing that separates good music from bad, by the way - the amount of effort someone puts into a piece. I've heard music which has great base ideas and great compositional form and stuff, but it sounds horrible because the person didn't put in the time to get the little details in - they didn't put in the effort to make it something unique and really really good.

3 hours average

I find the only part that can be reliably timed is the production side. So once I have come up with an idea, some melody or whatever, and write out my composition, and do an arrangement I'm happy with, for, say, a 3 minute orchestral track, it can take from 6 hours to 12-13-14 to properly orchestrate and mix it. I'm pretty fussy about the final result.

Coming up with an idea however can take forever. I will always find it odd how a bundle of notes can one day sound like nothing and the next be the melody you were searching for all along. Usually it's some random spark, 2,3,4 notes and all of a sudden the piece seems to 'write itself'. Does anyone else find that?

At 3/19/14 02:18 PM, MrBellington wrote: I find the only part that can be reliably timed is the production side. So once I have come up with an idea, some melody or whatever, and write out my composition, and do an arrangement I'm happy with, for, say, a 3 minute orchestral track, it can take from 6 hours to 12-13-14 to properly orchestrate and mix it. I'm pretty fussy about the final result.

Coming up with an idea however can take forever. I will always find it odd how a bundle of notes can one day sound like nothing and the next be the melody you were searching for all along. Usually it's some random spark, 2,3,4 notes and all of a sudden the piece seems to 'write itself'. Does anyone else find that?

Guess it's the same for most types of music :).. For me I pretty much just mest around on my piano and when I've found a decent melody, the rest just comes to me while I'm working

I've spent less than 1 hour on some tracks but I've also spent weeks or even months on others. It all depends of the track and my inspiration/disposition to work.

I usually spend around 5-70 hours total time working on compositions, some have span over months or years but they still generally take up about the same total time. The longest I have ever gone just straight composing and nothing else except food and washroom breaks was about 23 hours of being on the piano trying to express the composition that was being played in my mind (and working on my technique if I made a part too difficult and didn't want to "dumb it down") though I was pretty much useless the next day. Also I never (usually) compose pieces I can't play, cause I enjoy being able to sit down and just listen to my composition by my own hand, and not computer generated MIDI sounds (though those aren't really that bad).

Sometimes half an hour, sometimes 4 hours, if it's a project for someone else may take longer.

I usually take about 20 hours or so in total for each track, although I'm not sure how this is calculated in the FL project details, for example, I'm not sure if that time goes up if I have the project open and go afk for awhile (which happens often).

Anywhere between 4 and 20 hours.

For my one loop i spend 30 minutes

It always takes me for about 6 - 8 hours to make a whole track, and that's when I haven't reached the point of doing mixing and mastering yet hahaha!

depends mostly on the mood and the project it self but mostley between 5 and 10 hours but sometimes i try to work on some good stuff and it may take even 2 months so yeah

If it's a drum track, usually only an hour.

If it's Bass, probably 1-3 hours

If it's synth, then definitely 3-10 hours.

Anything else is probably me editing a sample, which takes a maximum of 30 minutes.

Around 1 - 3 hours.

Making music is very easy for me.

depending on the track, style, complexity, personal issues with it, emotional weight ...etc, from 10-15 minutes up to... 2 years.

At 3/13/14 06:06 PM, UncleCubone wrote: However much time that I'm willing to spend on it. I have a really bad tendency to, if I'm getting bored with making it, I'll just slap an ending on it and call it good.

However, time-wise, it's generally anywhere from 1-6 hours or so.

Haha!! i do that!

It takes me anywhere from 5 hours to 24 hours. Not all at once though.

At 3/29/14 03:43 PM, sorohanro wrote: depending on the track, style, complexity, personal issues with it, emotional weight ...etc, from 10-15 minutes up to... 2 years.

this is the correct answer

At 4/19/14 10:28 PM, Shadaw wrote:

At 3/29/14 03:43 PM, sorohanro wrote: depending on the track, style, complexity, personal issues with it, emotional weight ...etc, from 10-15 minutes up to... 2 years.

this is the correct answer

NO !

At 3/28/14 01:18 PM, Madjasper1 wrote: If it's a drum track, usually only an hour.

If it's Bass, probably 1-3 hours

If it's synth, then definitely 3-10 hours.

Anything else is probably me editing a sample, which takes a maximum of 30 minutes.

Fuck, I didn't read the thread properly.

I usually spend anywhere up to an hour to a whole month on a single song.

At 4/23/14 03:04 PM, Elitistinen wrote: I remember when I was writing this 15 minutes symphony/orchestra, it took me nearly 3 years to finish. Never ever write symphony again.

Did you make the mistake of comparing your symphony writing to Beethoven’s like most composers do? How about taking Joseph Hayden’s approach?

1:30 to 2 hours per minute.

At 4/23/14 04:38 PM, JosephAS1 wrote: 1:30 to 2 hours per minute.

The mixing and tweaking stuff takes me about 10 hours per minute

Minimum I've spent on a track is 20 minutes, maximum could be... two, three years?

At 4/23/14 03:04 PM, Elitistinen wrote: I remember when I was writing this 15 minutes symphony/orchestra, it took me nearly 3 years to finish. Never ever write symphony again.

is writing orchestra just generally slower than writing electronic music ?

For my contest track, the composition and arrangement took in the region of 30-40 hours, the orchestration and production elements 20-30 hours. I find the composition hard to put a solid number on though, I'm sure everyone knows about how you get a burst of inspiration where everything seems to just be writing itself, and then those moments where everything sounds crap and isn't working. I would say about 2/3rd of my time spent on the track was two points that I just couldn't work out for the longest time. I had a general structure in mind, but no matter what I tried, the parts just didn't seem to work. I did arrangement after arrangement, tweaking, adjusting, disposing. Problems such as material that didn't sound like part of the track, or struck not quite the right tone and some that was just plain rubbish. And then of course, out of (seemingly) nowhere, it clicks, you realise what you want and the track goes back to writing itself. But in my opinion it's that hard graft that makes something ascend mediocrity. Not being willing to settle for 'this will do'.

A lot of my time is spent on details as well. Something that I learned while studying physics in university, was the value of specificity - about making sure what you're saying has a point. It's probably one of the most valuable things I've ever learnt and it informs my general attitude as well as how I write scripts and how I compose my music. When it comes to script-writing, I ask myself 'does this line have a point?'. If it doesn't, it goes. I suppose the analogue of that in musical terms is considering every element of your piece asking what it contributes. I don't ever put out something loose. Every single note, progression, chord, dynamic has been thought about and considered and is there for a reason. More specifically, they should add something to the piece, rather than simply sit there having no impact, or even worse detracting. It goes back to the hard graft - if something you've written could be better, or isn't adding much then bin it, and write it better, don't settle for mediocre. I don't think aiming high guarantees a good piece of music, I've written my fair share of rubbish! But, I don't think you will ever realise your potential by saying 'that's good enough'.

I'd love to learn more about other people's processes and experiences with bottlenecks in tracks.

I started my last track on June 29th, and spent total time of 45 hours making it (and lazing around with it).