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Music Production => Tracking => Topic started by: Hoff123 on January 24, 2013, 15:49:40

Title: How long do you usually spend making a song(preferably made in a tracker)?
Post by: Hoff123 on January 24, 2013, 15:49:40

OK, so I was just on the MilkyTracker IRC chat, and one guy there said that he makes songs in like a few hours. And then I've read from people like Gopher who say he can take months. Now I maybe take a couple of days to make really simple songs... Am I slow?

Anyway, I'm just wondering how long do people usually take to make songs in trackers? And maybe just music in general too? Does it really even matter? I mean, some are faster than others, and other are slower?

Title: Re: How long do you usually spend making a song(preferably made in a tracker)?
Post by: Saga Musix on January 24, 2013, 17:48:12

It depends on how much detail you want to and, really, also how much time you want to spend. Beginners usually don't spend enough time on their works, probably because they simply don't know the time-consuming tricks that would make their stuff sound better. I can spend anything from 1 to 30 hours on a tune, but obviously these 30 hours can span over a week, over a month or maybe even several months.

Title: Re: How long do you usually spend making a song(preferably made in a tracker)?
Post by: Hoff123 on January 24, 2013, 18:03:12

OK. But I'm a beginner and on the few songs I've made took 2 days each and I spent maybe like 8 hours on each... Eh. Why would it even matter? I mean, come one 2 days... That's nothing. It doesn't matter if I'm SUPER slow or whatever :). I guess I'm just thinking about about programming and making games where it can take A LOT of time to make something good :).

Title: Re: How long do you usually spend making a song(preferably made in a tracker)?
Post by: CommanderKeen on January 29, 2013, 09:52:52

In Schism Tracker it takes me about eight to sixteen hours to make a three-minute song. I usually track up to two hours a day maximum, so a song like that would take me a week or two. In Renoise I'm usually a little quicker. Of course, sometimes I can spend months of polishing a song, spending maybe fifteen minutes on it every week or so, just tweaking small stuff.

Title: Re: How long do you usually spend making a song(preferably made in a tracker)?
Post by: Hoff123 on February 01, 2013, 23:32:16

Now, honestly I don't know if I took 8 hours making those songs. I noticed when making my third song that actually working doesn't take too long(maybe 5 hours, not 8?), but then I get lazy and go play nexuiz...lol.

Title: Re: How long do you usually spend making a song(preferably made in a tracker)?
Post by: null_terminated on November 28, 2013, 07:54:52

_Apologies in advance for playing necromancer - I hope the ongoing nature of the topic excuses me_

Some tracks just flow and I have a workable tune within 30 minutes, but more often this takes about an hour. will then spend another hour adding supporting ranges (bass+treble) and adjusting instrument volumes and panning.

A week or month later, I will relisten to my tracks and immediately feel when something is missing - tweaking adds another hour or two - up to 4 on the weekends.

In total a track could take between 90 minutes and 10 hours, spread over a few days.