How long it takes you to make a track?

I’m fairly new here but the technique I’m trying to adopt at the moment is to get an 8 bar loop going, often within a template, and hammer out spontaneous ideas, layering instruments almost recklessly, essentially creating what will become the ‘high point’ of the song in a pretty short amount of time.

I would try to do a handful of these over a few days, and if I like the sound of what I’m hearing after a rest day, I would spend the rest of the week creating structures from these rough loops, then ironing out any creases and adding a bit of variation to each section, in addition to mixing/mastering.

I’ve found it’s quite a fun way of writing, and allows me to throw away dud ideas without much difficulty.

So, 1.5 per week at present :slight_smile:

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totally agree. I’m doing it kinda in the same way. :wink:

I love this saying, I have heard it before. Obviously the acummulated skill makers you better.

I have done that a few times, it’s like working backwards. Depens on the track though.

I agree: having everything ready in your perfect-sounding inner ear is a huge time-saver, although sometimes it’s frustrating when you are unable to replicate what you hear in your daw, I suppose is to get as close as you can.

Depends on whether I write vertically or horizontally.

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I spend more time making a track than Envato spend rejecting them. :joy: :joy:

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I often fall asleep when I write horizontally.

There’s always that story about Picasso making a royalty free music track on his PC and a buyer asks him to license it. Picasso says he’ll only license it for $19 and when the buyer says “that only took you two minutes!” Picasso says "but Envato takes 50% so I’m only left with 9.50 minus the US withholding tax».

All of my portfolio tunes I’ve produced between 1-2 hours per tune. I don’t believe it’s worth spending more on stock music unless you have some special reason. It’s a matter of efficiency - you have to know your tools, your sequencer and VST libraries well so that the basic setup takes 5 minutes and then you just create and finish. I tend to put a deadline for myself and decide that I have to wrap this tune within an hour and it makes me work diligently and not fuss around with details.

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:sweat_smile:

That’s really impressive, seeing your sales. I don’t think I would be able to do that!

Or that time Picasso drew a sketch on a napkin and it was rejected by the waiter, who told him he wasn’t allowed to resubmit it because it wasn’t up to the restaurant’s standards.

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This makes sense to me. If you are able to sell an average of ten licenses of EVERY track you produce, then you will make about $100 per track. If you use 2 hours per track that means $50 an hour, if you use 2 days it means $50 a day and so on…

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That’s awkward…

It’s kinda good point. There were a couple of months, when I finished 1-2 tracks per day. And it’s great and stuff. But I couldn’t improve my skills, couldn’t go forward. Of course, money is the reason we’re here,but I personally want to evolve, develop myself, not to be just random artisan, even if nobody cares of it except me. And also having fun is very important - when I’m not, I just don’t write any music… But spend some time on sound design.:smile:

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Agree with what you are saying. And I think its important to make other, more artistic music just for fun or for learning and evolve as a composer in addition to the stock music.
At the same time, I never make music I don’t like or think is fun doing even when I’m writing for stock markets. I just try to not use so much time on each of these tracks. Besides, the more I’m working with the mixing the worse it sounds… :slight_smile:

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3-4 hours for corporate or rock tracks.

Yeah, this is true. Before I used to add more plugins and play with this long chains of processing. But now often I just delete them and mix sounds better.:smiley:

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That must be after a lot of tracks. I struggle with keeping them interesting without modulating too much.