How long do you work on music?

D

DanDnB

Bass and Drums
Joined
Jul 24, 2009
Location
Miami, Florida, USA
After 2 or 3 hours I started loosing quality and ideas. I have to take a long break, just to refresh my mind. Look back later at what I did, and remind myself the purpose of the song.

If I sit on one song for too long I just butcher it, the hardest part is letting go for a little while.

You know what I mean?
 
DanDnB said:
After 2 or 3 hours I started loosing quality and ideas. I have to take a long break, just to refresh my mind. Look back later at what I did, and remind myself the purpose of the song.

If I sit on one song for too long I just butcher it, the hardest part is letting go for a little while.

You know what I mean?
Click to expand...


yeh man you need to take break or ur mind will go loopy, especially if your mixing (i mean mixing audio stems not vinyl), after a while your brain will start compensating for incorrect frequencies so you will think something sounds good but next day it will sound terrible. I normally do like 2 hours of a beat and then do something else and listen to some music :)
 
i never spend more than a couple of hours at a time working on anyone tune. not only do i get bored of the endless tweaking of sounds, i find that i get more ideas of where to take it when i step away
 
normally spend a couple of hours on a tune, listen to what ive done, sigh then give up with it and try again in a week or so! producing is so much more technical than i thought it would be. at that stage now where im not sure if im enjoying it anymore. need to keep at it me thinks!
 
TongueFlap said:
after a while your brain will start compensating for incorrect frequencies
Click to expand...

big time!!!

i spend all day going in and out of my headphones. watch a bit of telly in between, listen to tunes, make some food, fetchin beers, trollin the web.

drives my mrs mental. one minute i'll be watching telly, she'll start speakin about some shit only to realise that she's been wafflin for 5 minutes to noone coz i've got my earlids closed.

i'd say i could spend anything between 4 hours and 10 hours on a track. but they're never finished to any sort of professional quality. its just me playin about.
 
i used to spend a few hours on each tune, that could be why all my older tunes went to digi ! lately i spend alot more time on tracks, couldnt give you an exact time scale , some tracks i finish in weeks some in months and tuneslike gash dem have had about 6 different relicks over the last 3 years. In general i spend about 2-3 hours a day on the production , any more than that will send you mad and your quality of ear will also not be great, it will sound great at the time then you will load up the track the next day and think f**k sake..... been there too many times and it aint good. My advice would be not to rush, take as long as it takes, 2 weeks , 2 months... theres a huge wave of rubbish in the scene at the minute because people seem to choose quanitity over quality

anyway hope this helps
 
Last edited:
depends on what im doing..

if im developing a new idea, building some new drums or something like that, i tend to do a lot of breaks, reading on here, smoking, drinking coffee and so on ;) but if im doing the "work" like putting the whole song together, writing down notes and so on, its easily possible that im doing an 6 hour session..

you have to know for yourself when your ears are tired or you dont got any motivation left.
 
To be honest its a few hours at a time,
I usually has a set target such as working heavily on a break or manipulating vocals,
Ill have a break after a few hours and come back with fresh ears =]
When im not sure what im after, ill generally save what i have for a later date,
Iv made synths from 3 months before iv found a track worthy to harbour it =]
All i can say is, if youve got the go, go for it,
But if it aint working, have a break and come back
 
normally about 2hours at a time but ive been on it all day today.
also when im in a routine of working on tunes nearly everyday i rarely listen to drum and bass or dubstep.
mainly listen to metal, hip hop and dabble in abit of jazz/blues to get influence from other genres/
 
depends if im enjoying what im makin.
i could be makin something for an hour or two an just realise i dont like it at all so then ill stop an wait till later or the next day.
but if im gettin into it ill usually go till the tune is more or less all there then work on bits later
 
i absolutely hate starting a track and not "finishing" it! Or starting a track and going back to it too!
my general rule is to try finish what i started so i can spend weeks/months on something-which probably isnt that long compared to some people.
it annoys me that some people can write a banger in a matter of hours! i never have the time to sit and session for long hours at a time!
i reckon individual sessions for me are bout 1-2hours max with small breaks to relieve my poor tinnitus ridden earholes ha!
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

It takes me months to finish a track, with about 100+ hours of work in it. I progress really slow because I am never happy with the end result, it has to be perfect. And by that time, a 2 or 3 hour session usually ends up me turning a single knob to sit exactly perfect. But in the end it's worth it. I hate this but that's part of making a good tune AND learning.

After a while, you know where to turn that knob and you don't need to spend a week on finding the correct setting, you know the instrument at that point.

I can only sit on a tune for no more than 3 hours. And I get pissed when I don't get the right settings adjusted during that session.

One of the things that I did notice, when I'm more relaxed, my sessions go smoother... Being stressed out because of work, women, money makes my 3 hour session almost worthless because I am tense and fidgety.

I also don't like to take energy drinks. I am gonna start a thread on substances.
 
Last edited:
I have to stop after a few hours - i find my ears dont work as well after that.
You got to look after your ears man. they get tired as well - serious.
Yeah like you say it can take ages to get a tune together and i'm never completely happy with it.
But - its fun and making kick ass beats never seems to get boring 4 me.
:D
 
safety said:
i never spend more than a couple of hours at a time working on anyone tune. not only do i get bored of the endless tweaking of sounds, i find that i get more ideas of where to take it when i step away
Click to expand...
this is def. truth. just going to have a smoke, sometimes watch some tv. then come back and you see the song, and or whats wrong with it in a whole new light.... 2 hrs max sessions for me then at least a 15 min break.
 
dj sc said:
depends if im enjoying what im makin.
i could be makin something for an hour or two an just realise i dont like it at all so then ill stop an wait till later or the next day.
but if im gettin into it ill usually go till the tune is more or less all there then work on bits later
Click to expand...

Yeah same as me, if the tune im making is boring me, i will give up with it!
 
I've got to the point now where I finish a tune in 2 or 3 sessions of about 4 hours then one final session of about an hour where I structure the intro and the bit after the second drop and do the mixdown.

I've come to learn that if a tune is taking much more than that there is probably something pretty fundamentally wrong with it and I scrap it and move on.

I used to try to rescue stuff and tunes would go through about 4 or 5 different drums/b-lines/hooks. I would get there in the end but never be entirely happy with the way the tune ended up.

...having said that my tunes now tend to be pretty simplistic - just some drums and a b-line. The much more techy stuff you have to spend a lot longer working on the sounds but it is probably better to do that in separate sessions and build up a library. Unless there are two people working together on a tune it can be very hard to keep the vibe of it if you go in too much on engineering imo.
 
TongueFlap said:
yeh man you need to take break or ur mind will go loopy, especially if your mixing (i mean mixing audio stems not vinyl), after a while your brain will start compensating for incorrect frequencies so you will think something sounds good but next day it will sound terrible. I normally do like 2 hours of a beat and then do something else and listen to some music :)
Click to expand...

this
 
Back
Top Bottom