How long do you spend on making a track?

SteveDon

On average how long do you spend producing a track?

For me it varies, but anywhere between 1 - 5 hours at the most, ive always had people telling me that i should spend a few days making tracks, perhaps even weeks.

I find though that my 21st century attention span cant handle that, once ive got a track started i have the urge to finish it there and then. Sometimes if i try to come back to a track it feels like the moment of inspiration is gone and its time to move onto the next idea.

What works for you guys (and girls, although i extremely doubt there is any reading)?

jtsuited

anywhere between 1 day and 5 days.

SteveDon

jtsuited wrote: »

anywhere between 1 day and 5 days.

do you focus soley on that track for those days or do you work on other things at the same time?

jtsuited

focus solely on the 1 track. tried multitasking before but I just ended up with a lot of decidedly average tracks and a ridiculous amount of unfinished ones.

I'm a little bit extreme though. I regularly do 16 hour sessions. I once did a 38 hour session. The result was telegraphs part 1,2 and 3.
I work very fast too compared to most people.

When you only have 1 thing to focus on, it pushes you. My problem is I rush a little coming towards the end.

seannash

yep is say about 1 to 5 days too if i can get the time.sometimes longer though.
focusing solely on one track too for the most part.
i get very impateient though towards the end though and it clouds my judgement.
instead of stepping back and taking a break i plough on ahead.
once i decide im finished a song its very hard for me to go back to it too.

Anima

My biggest problem is getting fixated on one specific loop, so much so that I end up losing the original idea and it all desends into utter bollacks.

Quite annoying and I end up with lots of very little unfinished tracks and lots of different ideas instead. Ah well...

Neurojazz

I can spend anything from a few days to a few years - probably a bad thing, but the originals really sucked. I tend to recycle everything i've ever written with new gear.

ICN

Yeah.. Its been a long raging war so far.. Still ongoing.

They are never really finished. Some more so than others.


But I have found that I am a lot more focused on what I want since I've turned off the loop.


I'll get the 8/16 bars going, then turn of the loop & start making the structure. If its not on the Sequencer page, it doesnt get played.

I find it a good way of getting the beginning, middle & end.

Helix

i used to take a lot less time, then i pretty much stopped making tracks for 18 months and came back to it recently. rather than starting on a 16 bar loop ive started to build a track from the beginning right through to the end

for me this means that by the time im really getting stuck into the meat of it, my brain is 100% in track making mode. when i used to just jump straight in i could never really get past an 8 or 16 bar loop, and it drove me bonkers

eh, yeh, so long story short it used to be about 5 hours, now its about five 5 hour sessions