Can so relate to that!!

I'm slower than I'd like. My main problems are:

1 - Arrangement. This kills my workflow early in the process, since I'm good at creating 4 bar loops.

2 - Finishing. There's always that something I can't find in order to actually finish the track. Or I have something in my mind but don't know how to implement it.

This is really frustrating.

If you compare a boring track with an interesting track, it's all about certain details. Specially treated vocals, more creative FX, layering, mixing tricks, and so on. I would say:
1: Details are the most important thing!
2: But they have to fit into the music! (otherwise it's a waste of time)

I tend to work very - too - long on my tunes (from a few weeks to several months). It's because I want to make them unique (love them or leave them... ) I think I'm on the right street, even if I still have to find a way to combine my love for Lo-Fi samples, but still make it Hi-Fi...sometimes I use to much lo-fi to make it sound too crazy...but that's my style, I don't like no boring 4-to-the-floor-psytrance...

I've never "finished" anything.

Yes and yes.

Usually a few months per track, including vocals. If I would be able to spend all day working on music, I'd need a few weeks per finished track.

I'm quite slow, but when I have a decent idea I need to develop it quite fast; once I have the core elements, then I "waste" a lot of time trying variations, adding new parts, consolidating what I did, taking care of details, listening in loop for hours or even days ...


Anyway, I think it's important to have a workflow as fluid as possible, so you can concentrate on the getting the result (in particular during your most creative moments)... this is an aspect in which I spend quite a lot of efforts, so when I have one of the few creative moments I can focus on getting the skeleton of the track in the shortest time as possible.
I'm afraid a spend way more time at this task than making music.

Fast as the speed of light, mostly.

In fact, I'm so fast that I work in the dark sometimes.

Especially when you're making minimal music : ))

when does time spent on details shift from being beneficial into being a waste of time?

gotta stop posting music, but f**k it, listen to this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikjbuMFikL4 lots of time put into details, apparently, and for a good reason haha. As long as you're concentrated on achieving the best you can, it's not a waste of time, I think - only when you start doing random disorganized shit is it stupid : ) gotta THINK when it comes to details (as with everything else heh), many seem to be too lazy to do that

just trying to add to your statement, as some might not get it right and that's where cookie-cutter dubstep or hardcore comes from haha

Yea, very much the same for me.

I've abandoned a couple of tracks of late. I think most of the time you know and can feel when something is shaping up well. If I find myself tweaking this and that and redoing parts, it's usually time to delete. I think it's important to get the big ideas down in a track without too much time going by between sessions. If you start veering off to find the perfect reverb on a clap, etc., you can get lost. Sure, it's good to have a rough sound sound so you have reference and can get into where it's going, but I think it's good to save the fine tuning for last.

90% of a track is done in one day mostly ...the details I hate working on take a couple of further sessions ...so all in all 3-4 days.

+1 for askin this question. Its great to hear from everyone abt how much time they spent. Though I've started producing seriously just earlier this year, for me it basically depends on how inspired I am. A lot of d times i get really frustrated, when it isn't 'moving'. It so happens that i'm super excited when i start off. But l8r get frustrated. something like a 'mental block'. I guess it happens to many producers out there. But I'm still in search of the perfect solution.

I'm slow because I'm easily pissed off by bizarre and random technical nonsense that has nothing to do with audio engineering (& everything to do with software engineering, which isn't my damn job). For one microscopic example: every time I come back to Cakewalk Sonar after a night's rest (hah), I find that it is incapable of playing any audio. At all. Stop start. Start audio engine. Etc. nothing. No sound. I have to quit and re-open. I know, you're saying I should just quit when I'm done the previous night. But that's not how I want to work. I wasn't done. I just had to stop. I want to come back and continue exactly where I left off. I have zero problem doing this on the Mac with Logic or Reason. Why is Windows so effing childish??

This is just one tiny example, in one aspect of one program. Stuff like this is constant on that setup. That's why I'm moving away from it. Even being less familiar with Logic, I'm far more effective there than on the PC because I'm not distracted nearly so much by niggling idiotic tech nonsense that has no real solution (even if I research it for hours on google, which is NOT why I'm sitting at the computer!!).

Some of this is down to the basic fact that Windows is a disaster, but admittedly, a lot of it is my intolerance for bullshit and little irritants. I honestly cannot comprehend the fact that so many of you seem to never have complaints about Windows and software running on it. I don't know what kind of saints you are... I have always just assumed that such people are totally indoctrinated into believing that things are normal and fine the way they are. It's like arguing with a Windows user about being required to tell Windows to refresh the desktop or an explorer view in order to reflect file system changes. Windows guy sees this as normal while I see it as braindead OS design. Worse is when I cannot delete folders or files because there's a handle open, despite no user-functional cause (handles on windows love to not close). On the Mac, you can trash anything you want, sometimes even if it's an active document. It only throws a hissy fit when you try to do something destructive and not undoable (like empty the trash; likely by the time you get to that, whatever use that file had has ended already). The last time I couldn't delete content on my hard drive on a Mac was 10.4 with braindead file permissions. OS X started crappy but eventually grew up. Windows still hasn't.

I grew up with the same DOS crap as the rest of you, but I don't justify all these ridiculous archaisms. I'm not a tech geek any more but I still have preferences and like to use features provided to me. Why is that such a crime on Windows? The Windows users aren't much better than Linux fiends sometimes when you're looking on forums for info. People getting slammed for "not understanding how computers work." That's bullshit. Software is supposed to be designed around how human beings work, not demand instruction on 45 years of legacy that has caused things to be the way they are now through slow and painful evolution. This is why iPads are popular with normal human beings. They even discard the legacy present in Macs.

Then there's the fact that I waste time ranting on kvr forum threads.

Haha love this.


Depends on my mood.

Some days I get a lot done in a short time and other days I get a little amount done in a long time.
Depends on whether or not I'm composing, mixing, general production, etc. They all require different focus and detail.