how long do you normally spend on a track

[Equality 7-2521]

ive been talking with N.U.G about how long to spend on tracks. he advised me that i should quicken up my production. i agree entirely.....i take way too fucking long to make a beat. my latest beat is about 2 weeks of hard work and its nearly done so im pretty happy with that. but id still like to get quicker. id like to be able to make 1 beat a week.....so long as i can keep the quality dope.

id like to know how long you cunts normally spend on a track from start to finish. if its spread out over days or months try to make an estimate on how many hours might have been put it.

id also like to know WHY you chose to spend that much time. for eg, maybe you have a limit of a certain amount of hours so that your not working your ass off only to sell the beat for 50 bucks or something.

speak upon it

peace

 

[MIKELABZ]

I DONT SPEND MUCH MORE THEN 45- TO AN HOUR ON EACH TRACK... ANYTHING OVER THAT STARTS SOUNDING FORCED. I AHD TO LEARN HOW TO TONE DOWN MY OVERLY MOIST TRACKS A LONG TIME AGO WHEN I REALIZED THAT I WAS SATURATING MY BEAT WITH TOO MUCH TIME AND CREATIVITY... AND YES THERE IS SUCH A THING IN EXISTENCE. THE END PRODUCT OF SUCH TRACKS SOUNDED JUST FINE TO ME, BUT OTHER LISTENERS COULDNT COMPREHEND A THING I WAS PROJECTING THRU MY BEAT. I LEARNED THIS:

1. THE MORE PEOPLE CAN RELATE TO YOUR TRACK THE BETTER AND MORE ACCEPTED IT WILL BECOME. THEREFORE I TRY NOT TO MAKE MY TRACKS WEEK LONG PROJECTS.

2. THE INDUSTRY IS LOOKING FOR CONSISTENCY AND PRODUCTION. IF IT TAKES YOU A WEEK TO PRODUCE A TRACK THE SAME CALIBER AS A GUY WHO PRODUCES A TRACK IN A DAY THEN THEY WILL HIRE THAT GUY. THEREFORE IT IS IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO GET YOUR PRODUCTION TIME UP IN THE 2 HOUR RANGE UNLESS OF COURSE YOUR ON HARDWARE WHICH IS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY.

 

[Equality 7-2521]

^^^^excelent points mike. i was thinking along similar lines

btw, how do you figure hardware takes longer?

 

[Shonsteez]

Well, in general...Back in tha day when i wasnt employed i could make about 5 beats a day, and i would spend an average of 15 minutes to 45 depending on tha beat, but usually no more than that.

Nowadays tho, im busy with all kinds of nonsense like fulltime classes at school and then when im not consumed with that im at work...so when ever i can squezze it in i make a beat...

Personally, ive noticed that i want to take more time on my beats now because of my situation of how much time i have...I can still bang em out tha same way but now i care about different things invloved in making tha track tha way i like it...so with those factors combined...I usually spend from 15 to an hour, to 2 hours depending on tha track...and sometimes it seems longer since i have to more than often: come back to it and finish it later since i got a prior agenda.

Man i wish makin beats was my job!!!...Or for that matter i wasnt emplyed again...those were tha days where i could pop beats out my ass!!

Steeze

 

[TrustNo1]

my beats come to me in shifts. for example, i wont touch my production shit for like 4 days, then all of a sudden ill sit down and bang out like 3 or 4 good ideas, play wit em for like an hour, then leave em. i usually render just the drum loop or the main hook and keep it in my winamp playlists so that im constantly hearing it throughout the day . at the end of the day ill come back and try all the ideas that have come to me from listenin to the bones all day. thats my method.

 

[MIKELABZ]

WELL SINCE I DONT WORK WITH HARDWARE ( REASON DOESNT COUNT) I CANT REALLY SPEAK ON HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE USING THAT MEDIUM, BUT I CAN IMAGINE JUST SEQUENCING A BEAT WOULD TAKE EONS LONGER THAN IT WOULD ON THE CONVENIENCE OF SOFTWARE.

 

[Equality 7-2521]

faaaark. i dont understand how you guys can bang beats out that fast! (not including Trust)

1 hour to finish a beat?!!?!?!?!? wtf?

it takes me an hour just to chose and chop up all my sounds.

what the fuck is wrong with me?

any tips how i can speed up my process. i dot feel like im wasting any time. i try not to waste time.

Deuce you didnt bang out your soulful Beat This beat in an hour did you? if you did i need to know your secret man cos that kinda thing would take me a week at least.

this is fucked i feel like im an idle beatmaker.

how the fuck do i get quicker?

 

[vitaminman]

Messenger,

Most of the stuff you hear on the radio sounds like it was done in 15 minutes.

There is NOTHING wrong with taking an hour to shop some stuff up. If it makes you feel any better, I spend MONTHS on a track, switching out drums, changing synth sounds, editing, mixing, recording, etc., basically just trying new stuff out until I'm sort of happy with it....then I sit on it a few days and mess with it some more.

Example: our track 'Into Your Mind' has been about 2-3 years in the making. Not non-stop, mind you, but on and off trying out new sounds, arrangements, vocal recordings and edits, replacing illegal sampled drums with sequenced/live ones, trying out different kicks, adding/removing strings during the verses, mixing down and editing the choruses, the effects on the vocals, the automated mixing in Cubase, taking the mixdown into CEP for more editing, dropping that back into Cubase to mix it with the versus and choruses, then the final mixdown.

You can here it here:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/3/vitaminmanmusic.htm

You can tell when someone only spends 15 minutes banging out some track in Reason or FL, and you can tell when someone sits down and really thinks about what they're doing and spends a little time programming and editing.

Even if you don't like our track, you cannot honestly say that it took 15 minutes to put together...

Don't try to get quicker, try to get BETTER.

To answer an earlier question, hardware can take a little longer to work with for the simple fact that you have to record your audio once you've sequenced something you're happy with. And then, if you're any good at it, you have to program your sounds, most of the time by using little knobs and an LCD screen.

One of the liberating things about hardware though is that you DON'T have 8 squillion options to mess around with with the click of a button, often you find that you are completely satisfied with the way something sounds simply because you are slightly afraid to mess with those knobs again. Sometimes this forces you to plan ahead and become a better programmer.

It doesn't take eons to program a beat with hardware; people have been doing it since the 80's, through the 90's and there are still tons of us in the new millinium (sp?) who can sequence circles around Ka-Zaa Kids.

At the end of it all, though, it only takes a few seconds/minutes to record your hardware's audio, it shouldn't take that much longer than exporting out an audio file from a softsynth.

Take care,

Nick

 

[Equality 7-2521]

vitimanman: i want to get better. getting better is definitely the goal. but what about what mike said about getting hired as a producer. what about if i have a deadline for making beats at some stage in my career and i cant meet the deadline. then im fucked.

dont get me wrong, quality is the most important thing to me but i feel like im not actually getting anywhere when im only banging out a beat every now and then.

maybe i will have to sacrafice some quality for quantiy. i suppose thats how it works.

ill listen to your track when i get my soundcard fixed. cant wait to hear it. and ill give you some feedback

have you always spent that long on track? even when you begun?

 

[stabster]

I'll finish a beat in like one or two weeks. Sometimes it takes me over a month. I really have to doubt the quality of the music made in fifteen minutes.

 

[MIKELABZ]

WELL I TAKE A STAB AT A TRACK AND LAY IT OUT AND THAT TAKES ABOUT 45 MINUTES TO AN HOUR (MASTERING INCLUDED) IN FL STUDIO.... IN REASON SINCE I EXPORT THE INDIVIDUAL TRACKS TO ACID IT TAKES ME A BIT LONGER...

I USUALLY COME BACK TO A TRACK IN MAYBE A MONTH'S TIME TO ADD SOME FINISHING TOUCHES OR VOCALS.

 

[CooGi_dice]

it takes anywhere from a few mintes (15-30) to about an hour or an hour and a half to make a full song just depends how intra-kite (sp?) i want to get with the song...

i usualy make anywhere from 5 to 10 songs a day, it just depends how much time i have, i usualy devote 3 or 4 hours a day to makeing music...

at the end of the week i go back and mix the songs that i like.

im not sure how many songs i make a week though, i wanna see how many songs i make next week...

ps. i need to get started on that exibition song.

 

[Shonsteez]

Hey, ill say this tho...
It doesnt make you better cuz you can make a beat in 5 minutes or whatever versus 5 days...I think its all about tha fact that some people are more particular to sculpting their sound, so they wont just settle for tha first kit choice or auxilry instroment that was put in tha mix...Some people like to change it up and toy with tha track after tha basic structure has already been created to see if theres other elements that can be brought or added to tha track to make it better...I find myself included, doing that more and mroe these days, and its harder to just be satisfied with tha first thing i pop out, but on occasion that method works great...usually that feels too rushed tho, and i think it is reflected in yer music when you spend more time on it.

Steeze

 

[afriquedeluxe]

da longest i spent on a beat was like 2weeks, i think. usually nowdays i can make a beat in 2days on average. i dont make beats everyday tho cuz i got aload of skool work but yeh i guess id say in 2days i cud make a good beat. in 15mins, if i tried id proly make sumtin dats cliche, music wise.

 

[mArkoFdAbEaTz]

it might take me like 4-8 hours to make a beat, trying to find the right samples and chopping, etc. i might knock out an idea in like 15 minutes but not a whole beat, i do alot of that, just save it and come back eventually to see what i can build with it, it might be days to weeks though before i come back to it so i guess those are like 2 month beats. With a sound module i can do em real quick, 30min. to an hour and a half and its done. my suggestion would be dont force yourself, just flow with it and save everything because when you come back to them later you might be in a different frame of mind and come up with some off the wall ish that you didnt think was possible when you started it the first time.

 

[inrctyhoodmusic]

Originally posted by MIKELABZ
WELL SINCE I DONT WORK WITH HARDWARE ( REASON DOESNT COUNT) I CANT REALLY SPEAK ON HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE USING THAT MEDIUM, BUT I CAN IMAGINE JUST SEQUENCING A BEAT WOULD TAKE EONS LONGER THAN IT WOULD ON THE CONVENIENCE OF SOFTWARE.

I use an mpc2kxl and a triton rack and it's not all that hard to put drums out than in software...drums is the easy part and with the note repeat function on the mpc if you want a constant hat at 1/8 or 1/16 all you have to do is hold the pad the hat is in for what ever amount of bars the beat is ....it's like plaing drums but using less energy if you can hear it in your head you can play it

messenger--- 2 weeks....that's a long darn time if I take all day I scrap it .....and if I save it i'll never go back to it...the longest I ever took making a beat was about 3 days...I had this hot ass sample from the peter pan soundtrack(original) and no matter how I choped it the drms would not fit the sample so I trashed it ....but 2 weeks is too long for one beat but you just got your mpc not too long ago so you want everything to be perfect.....but spending that much time on a beat is like smoking .......It stunts your growth!!!!

But I can honestly say I haven't made a beat that took 5-15 minutes..I may have made 4 beats in 24 hours...between december 30 hand january 9th I made 12 beats and 9 of the 12 I'm statisfied with but I haven't made a beat since the 9th of january with the way my shecdule is I can't sit down everyday and make beats and if I had the time I couldn't do it because I would run out of Ideas and like mike said it would be forced....but 1- 2 hours is my limit on 1 beat

 

[hookiefree]

I'm never really really finished a beat until somebody buys it. Then I MIGHT leave it alone. I'm never satisfied. I'm learning to let them be whatever they are. I'll usually just need like 3 days with about 3 hours a day to get something I can deem worthy.

 

[MIKELABZ]

it might take me like 4-8 hours to make a beat, trying to find the right samples and chopping, etc. i might knock out an idea in like 15 minutes but not a whole beat, i do alot of that, just save it and come back eventually to see what i can build with it, it might be days to weeks though before i come back to it so i guess those are like 2 month beats. With a sound module i can do em real quick, 30min. to an hour and a half and its done. my suggestion would be dont force yourself, just flow with it and save everything because when you come back to them later you might be in a different frame of mind and come up with some off the wall ish that you didnt think was possible when you started it the first time.

4-8 HOURS, 2 WEEKS, 2 MONTHS.... 30MIN, 1 HOUR, 1 HOUR 1/2....



SHEESH, HARDWARE IS TIME CONSUMING AND CONFUSING.

 

[TITO]

to me a track is never finished until i get some vocals on it and the theme of the song. but if im on a beat for a hour im done and if i get any more ideas then ill try them out as they come. some ideas stay with the beat some get replaced, this works for me cuz i could keep tracks that i made a year ago current.

 

[mono]

depends on the beat with me.average is about 1 hour-but it can take up to 1 year. i think its about havin the right drumsounds, from start on, otherwise u spend to much time for eq'ing and fucking with plugins.

dont spend to much time on homemastering either, search for fat sounds, make the beat, do a bit and leave it. if theres gonna be some mc intrested, hes gonna let it be mastered anyway.you cant compare studiomastering and a real soundengineer with yourself and your homeequipment.
except your name is madlib and you got nothing else to do with your life than chopping up sounds and trying out effects