How long does it take to create a new track? Beginning from idea to mastering

Hi! Dear colleagues!
Creating of music track is very interesting and difficult. Sometimes I spend 1 day to make arrangement and 2-3 hours to make mixing. Sometimes 3 or 6 days to find what i want.
I’m wondering. How long are you doing? :notes: :musical_keyboard: :headphones:

For me it depends on the style. Usually somewhere between 2 and 4 hours. My goal is always to not worry about imperfections and just get the track done. Sometimes if I get really hyped on a track I might work on it for longer… but with royalty free music my main objective is to achieve a good return on the time investment that it took to create the track. So the faster it can be completed while still maintaining sufficient quality, the better.

For my own personal music, of course it takes a LOT longer, usually several weeks or even months. So it all depends on the style of music and the purpose for which it was made.

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For the technical work it’s usually from 1 to 1.5 days for me, when I start my DAW I will most likely finish a track in one day but I will listen to it the next day just to check up if it still sounds ok, and make different versions. However I’m always working in my mind and I compose most of my tracks while walking with my dog in the forest, so if you count that, maybe 2-4 days per track

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@AceAudio
The same goes for me. I take a one-day break where I have two, and then I listen again… I pass the track on different speaker supports, then I correct my mastering. I also think about my compositions all the time: I sometimes wake up at night to go write ideas that I thought about when I fell asleep! Maybe because I don’t have a dog! Lol. :rofl:

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Usually I need 2 days. The first day for making track, and the next day for mixing, plus making new tracks again.

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This question was asked before, but it’s still quite interesting. And for me the answer is also changing.
It depends on the genre. I would answer between 1 day and 2 years!
It depends on the musical idea you have. Sometimes you have an idea and when you work on it, it doesn’t seem to work yet. So you wait and give it another try some later. Or it happens that you forget about it all the way. You stumble on it some later and give it another try. Still doesn’t work…
Some time later you managed to get some other track finished and then you find you can work on an old idea with that. The old track is suddenly finished with no time at all…
Lately I made a Deep House piece. It was totally new for me, but the composing was kind of mathematics to me. It didn’t take me a long time to finish the composition. The sound quality did. I wanted top notch sound. So it took some time to get the levels right. After that the master was peanuts.
Now lately I recorded some classical piano pieces. Those where difficult to master. Both in technique and quality in sound. But I have skills :slight_smile: so I did a few hours getting the recording flawless (imo). Then mastering the sound. Yust 3 hours of work. But… years of training before I could do that…
In general: I think making the composition takes me a few days (on and off) . The mixing I do together with that. Also fx etc… The mastering takes me an hour or so after that. And then preparing of the files, tags, description, naming etc. takes me 2 hours.
All together a lot of work when I realise writing this :slight_smile:
the best,
Serge

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For me it takes 2-3 days on the average. But not full days. I need 1-2 days for composing the song. Then I do a one-day break, hear it again and decide to go ahead or not. You all know that: You sit in the evening, composing to late night, and go to bed with the feeling to have created the new chartbreaker. Next day you start your DAW, hear the song again and then you’re facepalming 5 minutes in a row.
But if the next day-hearing was okay, I need a further day to complete and finish the track.
Sorry for my bad english, guys.

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Hard Worker! :headphones: :bowing_woman: :muscle:

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I do the same things! Great job :call_me_hand: :musical_keyboard: :headphones:

Yes! We are our experiences :ear: :muscle: How long when you became music producer?

It’s a great relief for me to read here to see that we all spend several days composing, editing, discarding, mixing, mastering, and preparing to ship.
Sometimes I thought it was just happening to me and that I was wasting my time.
In my experience there are tracks that I have recorded only with a guitar that can be finished in three hours and other tracks with a lot of production that sometimes require resting the ear and recovering several days later to have fresh evaluations.
It is difficult to value the time that is put into a track and think if it will have enough sales to compensate that time in money.
Let us trust that it is so.

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about 5 years ago? And you?

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About 1,5 year, when I made it my profession

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