How long does it take?

Jessieannas

I've written nearly two full songs today. I don't think they're any good because it took about half an hour to forty minutes for each. I started off on the chorus for the second and just need the first verse. I think I may be writing to quickly.
How long does it usually take you guys to write a song about love?

funk-you

Anything from 5 mins to 50 years. The length of time spent doen't matter in a good song.

-Funk

JLemmon

There is a famous story about when Bob Dylan met Leonard Cohen
and they briefly discussed songwriting.
Cohen asked Dylan how long it took to write a certain song and Dylan replied 3 minutes, when Dylan asked Cohen about hallelujah he replied 2 years.
You take as long as you need to get your point across, you could say it took you 10 years to write a song, because it's a song that you could only have written at a certain point in your life.
Lastly, some songs that people love now were knocked out pretty quickly and in most cases the writer didn't really like it but they had something that caught the public imagination.
Btw, Dyaln took 5 months to write "Like a Rolling Stone"

Burial

Song writing is upto the person writing. It could take you a minute or a year to come up with stuff to finish a song. You've written a first draft of a song. You don't think it's any good, but maybe there's some stuff you might use from your first draft. Ask yourself, whats good and whats bad about it? Direction, tone, lyrics? Also, I'd love to see the lyrics/song if possible.. Constructive critism is always good!

Keep in mind, I've never written a song about love, nor have I finished writing a song. I only took up songwriting about a week ago.. So, it's just my two cents on the matter...

LauraAnnCunn

Some of the best songs are wrote in ten minutes... it depends on the person you are.... when I write a song quickly, before I sing it to anyone I always wait a few days/weeks and go back to it and find I can do a LOT more with it....
keep it up x

iamhunted

some songs come out almost finished in one go, others appear as bits and bobs that you work on and eventually tie up into one complete tune. its very hard for the song writer to tell if the tune is any good or not (thats what I find)

squire23

It doesn't really matter....

Queen wrote the theme song to Flash Gordon on the way back from viewing the film in the back of the car

Tim Wheeler (Ash) apparently wrote Kung Fu in 5 minutes while sitting at the airport & then recorded it in one take the next day

Elton John won't use any song if it takes him over 1hr to compose the music to it (like him or hate him he used to have some great music)


In contrast, they are guys who literally spend weeks on a song. It just depends really on how good you are