How much time and how many tracks?

[nineofkings]

How much time is "enough" for a production? How many tracks are "necessary" for it to sound finished? Personally, I only take about a week or two on a single song, and usually they each have about 20-30 tracks.

A friend of mine who also happens to produce music obsesses and spends over a hundred hours on each song, each song with 80-150 tracks. This seems to be congruent with what big name modern pop producers such as Dr Luke do, which is the genre that my friend makes. Consequently, his songs sound more polished.

Does this correlate, though? Can more be done with less, or are my songs just simply less? How much and how many is really necessary?

[KBSoundSmith]

Well, let me ask the obvious question: what kind of music are you making? I imagine the answer is going to be quite different from genre to genre.

[cron]

I don't really make music that often anymore so I tend to work in short, furious bursts whenever inspiration strikes. 5-7 (ish) tracks, try to get things finished in one sitting. I always plan to go back and polish things up, but... can't... for some reason. Ditto if I don't get something finished in one go. Really difficult to go back in and complete it.

edit: The above refers to time spent in the sequencer. I often spend a LOT of time playing with sound and generating new wave files in non-realtime programs so I have a fairly hefty library of noise to deploy whenever the time is right, but I almost always feel like I want to get in and out of the sequencer as quickly as possible. I don't really enjoy that bit.

[deastman]

As much and as many as it takes. When a song is done, its done. Even if its just a one-take instrumental piano improvisation.

[dark_virus]

I spend a year or two to make a crappy tune, if I'm lucky.

I'd like to spend less time.

[aciddose]

album: nineofkings unplugged,
instruments: one
tracks: one
takes: one

that's just how good you are.