Changing my answer to this... sounds spot on for how I do stuff.

I typically take my time with my compositions. Ranging from a couple days, to a few weeks depending on how complex im wanting to go with effects, creating the instruments, and mixing it all down. It generally takes me 30 minutes/ an hour to get the direction of a song, ie. the main melody, a lead or two, and a few riffs a long the way, and i just fill the rest in over a course of time.
I feel that a song shouldnt be rushed. Youll come up with something you truly enjoy if you actually put a considerable amount of time and effort into a song, rather than making a lot of sub par tracks really quickly. Thats only my opinion though.

oh, that was just in the 48-hour period after i had downloaded the demo for the first time.  i did purchase it but never received a rom link, but i never followed up on it.. guess i should do that now.

One night to get the idea out there, then however long I want to refine it.  sometimes I skip the refinement step though.

It varies, with LSDJ it's usually 2 or 3 nights of actual work, but I usually know when to end the song when I start running out of phrases...

I don't think I've ever played or recorded a song (chip or not) and then never improved it (or at least changed it) later. Pieces are never done.
Songs usually take a long time to come together for me. They'll often sit around as skeletal ideas - an iphone recording of me mumbling, a few bars of notation with a couple lyrics, an LSDJ scrap - for up to a year before I come back to them. I work well collaboratively in that respect, I almost always have something stored up that fits right in with a new idea that can get my creative partner's proverbial juices flowing.

If the question is more one of programming time, I can usually bang out a cover in a few hours, then come back to it a couple days later and touch it up and feel real good about it.

Dude, that's when you pay the $2 to get the full version.

It takes me months to write a song. The a last one I wrote took most of a year to complete. And I still feel like it's not finished. In the end, my stuff doesn't sound any better than your average track, I just work slowly.

generally the less retro-sounding, the more exponentially long it takes to complete.

my impulse tracker tunes growing up took years sitting in the oven before i was satisfied with them.  i've got tons of unfinished .IT's still that might never see the light of day.

most of the DS-10 songs from my first album took between half a year to a whole year to settle down to a state fit for release.  my more recent batch is coming out a lot quicker though.

each of the 2 LSDJ songs i've done so far were completed within a 24-hour period, but that was only because i was using the demo version that wouldn't save.  hammer out tune, record, hit power off, blam data gone =/

my "usual stuff" takes too long...ADD, combined with indecision, plus my constant quest to 1 up my previous efforts and make everything perfect...means it takes me forever to finish a song lol. although every once in a while i get frustrated and i like to just make simple looping fun songs that take no more than 30 min to an hour

the better the compressor (plugin) the more right it is
/sarcasm

lately i've been using this gorgeous limiter though. great response and pretty warm sounding.

When done right, that is.

composition is 10% inspiration, 90% hardware compressors

composition is 10% inspiration, 90% pre-setization

one day composing, nine days converting to mp3

sounds about right

lips zat touch mixing desks don't touch mine