How Long Does It Take You To Finish A Song?

[_leras]

If you're an electronic musician, something that works well is to work very fast for the first draft of the song. Finish it in one or two evenings, maybe even in a single session. Make that "V1" of the song, but consider it DONE. Complete.

This is a gem of advice.

I'd add also export the V1 as a track so you can listen to it away from the making process.

[tr00stan]

"Songs aren't ever finished, they're abandoned"

[_leras]

You guys finish songs?

It's a crime if you don't finish tracks.

The intro to your Novation peak would have been an amazing track.

[Uncle E]

If you're an electronic musician, something that works well is to work very fast for the first draft of the song. Finish it in one or two evenings, maybe even in a single session. Make that "V1" of the song, but consider it DONE. Complete.

This keeps you finishing -- and allows you to make a bunch of songs quickly, which you can then pare down to the best for V2 remixes.

For the remixes, use all the time intensive production processes you want - go all out with it. But doing it this way means you're not spending too much time on the lesser songs.

You also get the joy of working fast and spontaneous, but you can still go really deep on the important songs. That's what I (try to) do these days.

Yes, I love this. Not everything is a winner but it's hard to know it when you're in the heat of it. Finish it quickly, move on to 3 or 4 (or 10) other tracks, and then go back and evaluate when you're of clearer mind. A lot of lesser ideas can still be saved but it's also easier to just throw them away at that point.

[BONES]

I see little value in this, at least for the way I work. I can tell pretty quickly if an idea has legs. If nothing is happening after an hour or so, it's time to move on and try something else. I don't write a lot of songs these days but pretty much everything I save on my hard-drive ends up being a finished song. Sometimes even things I don't remember saving in the first place.

Our last album was the first time we've had more new songs than we needed, so we had the strange situation of having finished songs, with vocals all done and everything, that no-one will ever hear. At the time we thought we might be able to use them as b-sides or save them for the next album but we haven't done either, so they are just lost now. I might end up re-purposing some of the lyrics but that's about the best any of them can hope for. (Do songs "hope"? I think they probably do.)

[MogwaiBoy]

Between 2 weeks and 9 years on average.

so true.

[MogwaiBoy]

I see little value in this, at least for the way I work. I can tell pretty quickly if an idea has legs. If nothing is happening after an hour or so, it's time to move on and try something else. I don't write a lot of songs these days but pretty much everything I save on my hard-drive ends up being a finished song. Sometimes even things I don't remember saving in the first place.

Our last album was the first time we've had more new songs than we needed, so we had the strange situation of having finished songs, with vocals all done and everything, that no-one will ever hear. At the time we thought we might be able to use them as b-sides or save them for the next album but we haven't done either, so they are just lost now. I might end up re-purposing some of the lyrics but that's about the best any of them can hope for. (Do songs "hope"? I think they probably do.)

Dude you should definitely package those outtakes up and release them!

When the album reaches it's first major anniversary of release, put a 'Deluxe Edition' up with those extra tracks - even if it's just exclusive to Bandcamp for the real hardcore fans.

[BONES]

The album is already well on its way towards its 3rd anniversary and we'll have a new one out before it gets there. I'm not precious about stuff like that. It was easy for me to drop them - they were all my songs and they weren't as good as the other stuff we had. Next time we need a b-side, they'll still be there.

I've got 20 or 30 songs from my solo days that never made it to a recording, even though I had played many of them dozens of times at gigs. There are a few I can't even remember well enough to try and recreate them any more but that never bothers me. It bothers me more that we hardly play any of our old songs live any more but as your repertoire grows, you have to make room for new songs and leave the old stuff behind. But even those are easy decisions as our new stuff is invariably better anyway.

To go another step further off-topic (and make it even more about me), our capacity (NOVAkILL's) to improve amazes me. Most bands seem to hit their stride early on and fade after a couple of albums but we keep managing to find improvement every time. Whilst I am happy enough with our first couple of albums, I think our 3rd, I Hate God, is when we really nailed it. If that's as far as we'd ever got, I'd have been really proud and perfectly happy to leave it there. But since then we've released two more albums that each got better, to the stage that I honestly think the last one is better than I would have believed us capable of. It's the first of our albums that I actually enjoy listening to, just for pleasure.

Now we're working on our next one and it feels like it's yet another step up from where the last one was. This time, though, I think the technology has played a big part. All our previous albums were made in Orion, when I didn't see any value in spending money on fancy plugins. But once we decided to leave Orion behind, it kind of opened the floodgates for VST instruments and I think the album we're working on now is reaping those benefits. That and my new stripped back production technique, which has definitely added something more, too.

It makes me believe that the best way to get better at this is just to keep doing it. If Craig and I can keep finding so much improvement in our craft after 40 and 30 years at it, I have to wonder if there are any shortcuts, or if you just have to keep doing it to keep improving.

[osiris]

I've done remixes in 2 days. One just seemed to come out in a stream and it was done. Now I'm working on one and I was thinking why is it taking 5 weeks to get to the middle of a 5 minute song.

[danssnico]

it depends, sometimes with a lot of inspiration I might finish with a day, otherwise something like a month or so

[manbuuren]

Same for me, sometimes it takes hours or even days to finish a track, and sometimes it takes 1 year or more haha, it depends on the mood.

[cryophonik]

My bigger issue these days is how long it takes me to start a song

[demonkoryu]

I work about a month or so on a song before I get fed up with it and decide to call it quits either way (happy with it or not). That is about 50-150 hours depending on whether I have holidays or not.

[BONES]

My bigger issue these days is how long it takes me to start a song

I'm not quite sure how it happened but we've somehow got ourselves onto the album release treadmill, which tends to force your hand a bit when it comes to making new songs. It's something I thought I'd hate but imposing it on ourselves has turned out to be a great way to get moving. I'm sure we'd hate it if our label tried to impose it on us but because we do it ourselves, it actually works.

[Propianoplayer]

My bigger issue these days is how long it takes me to start a song

I'm not quite sure how it happened but we've somehow got ourselves onto the album release treadmill, which tends to force your hand a bit when it comes to making new songs. It's something I thought I'd hate but imposing it on ourselves has turned out to be a great way to get moving. I'm sure we'd hate it if our label tried to impose it on us but because we do it ourselves, it actually works.

To be honest, I notice that very talented musicians usually release albums like every once a year or even once in two years, quality over quantity. As opposed to others where you expect yo have a new album every few months.