Average time spent on creating a song- (Page 3) - General Discussion - Forums

33 Feb 3, 2011 7:16 pm

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Abandoned on Fire

Zen Albatross wrote:

PULSELOOPER wrote:
That is why I gave up on recording each of my last EP's track separately on Ableton Live. Looked like a nightmare.
This is not too hard to correct but requires some preparation before you record: What I've done in the past is create a one measure click track on all 4 channels at the very start, then zoom into the waveform and just line the suckers up. Pending there are no hiccups while recording, lining up just one of the beats with pixel precision will keep the rest of the song in sync.
I'm using Audacity, which is arguably the most horrible (but also free) recording software for mac, and I can assure you there's no reason you should need expensive audio software to do this.

This has worked very well for me, too.

My answer to the topic: ...not nearly enough

34 Feb 3, 2011 7:23 pm

Decktonic

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Westfield, NJ

egr wrote:

My answer to the topic: ...not nearly enough

Ha ha.

To qualify my previous response, I have some songs where I spent anywhere from 1 hour to 10 hours on the first version, but since then I've had multiple revisions. One of the songs for the DS10 album I'm working on took months... because each time I got feedback on it I'd go back and change something. I maybe only spent 10 hours of actual work on it, but it was over a long period of time. I find that sleeping on it helps... I'll usually come back in a couple days with a new idea.

The song I'm working on right now has had lots of revisions! It's much better than version 1. It's also taken up all my free time this week.

Last edited by Decktonic (Feb 3, 2011 7:23 pm)

35 Feb 3, 2011 8:00 pm

O2star

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Planet Zaxxon

Zen Albatross wrote:

This is not too hard to correct but requires some preparation before you record: What I've done in the past is create a one measure click track on all 4 channels at the very start, then zoom into the waveform and just line the suckers up. Pending there are no hiccups while recording, lining up just one of the beats with pixel precision will keep the rest of the song in sync.

That would be the best way to do it if the software/hardware you are recording from doesn't change tempo slightly (unintentionally) during different sections. Works for lsdj, not for adlib/impulse tracker.

36 Feb 3, 2011 8:13 pm

Zen Albatross

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Brooklyn, NY

O2star wrote:

Zen Albatross wrote:
This is not too hard to correct but requires some preparation before you record: What I've done in the past is create a one measure click track on all 4 channels at the very start, then zoom into the waveform and just line the suckers up. Pending there are no hiccups while recording, lining up just one of the beats with pixel precision will keep the rest of the song in sync.
That would be the best way to do it if the software/hardware you are recording from doesn't change tempo slightly (unintentionally) during different sections. Works for lsdj, not for adlib/impulse tracker.

So then play on hard mode and do all your EQ in the software

37 Feb 4, 2011 12:56 am

O2star

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Planet Zaxxon

hard mode? and what do you mean by EQing in software?

38 Feb 4, 2011 9:57 pm

smiletron

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Nashville, Tennessee

from 3 days to 3 months... never finish anything in one sitting.

39 Feb 4, 2011 10:48 pm

Shiru

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Russia, Moscow

One day (few hours total, in few takes usually) to seven years, for a song 2-5 minutes long.

Some people really able to make good songs in short time, but usually short time leads to lower quality (less polished, less thought, etc). Anyone can make something in just few minutes and call it a song. On the other side, years don't mean that one works on a song all this time, every day, and songs that took that long aren't necessary the best ones.

There is important thing that you can't actually finish a song, you only can decide that it is finished and stop working on it. You can make draft version of a song and decide it is finished - this is fast. You can polish it a bit, it will take some time. You can continue to polish it, and at some point improvements turns into just changes, so they don't make the song better, but different. It could take forever.