Do most producers make there best music in days time rather than minutes?

every blade of grass grows at different times


Dilla made beats like breathing


Pete Rock takes different steps taking a little longer


theres alot of variations that goes into the whole vision
 
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I feel like an outcast on this one. I generally work on a beat anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. I'm just never satisfied with what I have and it really has an impact on my productions. I'd feel good about getting just one beat out each month, but you guys doing this in a few hours... I've been at this for several years and over the past two or three have grown just a bit more serious about it. Not to say that I haven't improved because I know I have in all aspects of production but I guess I get too critical about my own tracks.

I have probably over one hundred unfinished projects saved on an old flashdrive of mine I've done over the years. At least 85% of them are patterns or something that ranges for a few bars, much of the stuff I considered good on the drive I can never revisit though because many sounds used in it were from my old favorite VST hypersonic 2. I can't seem to get that to run on a 64-bit version of windows.
I understand what you're saying, but in order to become better, you're gonna have a couple of "off sounding" beats , I went thru the same phase when I first started, you just have to get the same feel you felt when you first started the beat in order to finish it.
 
it's all about the vibe, and the feel! How you're feeling at that time and what you feel like vibing out to! Sometimes you make a track ,put it away, and get back to it months later!
 
Id like to hear a good beat made in minutes lol. Maybe the groundwork but no track thats worth listening to got finished in minutes.
 
I totally understand this! Sometimes too much time can overcomplicate things, but skimping on the hard work definitely doesn't lead to gems either! It's a delicate and frustrating balance! :4theloveofgod:
 
I initially skipped this because it looked like it was a question about day time versus night production (thread titles that are too long get truncated and the question gets lost with it) - to which my response would have been work when it suits you and doesn't interfere with your main source of income.

Please do read the following, it may seem like an essay but it contains a lot of useful ideas about how to improve the time spent on production.

However the question is a much more interesting one and reflects the struggle that composers have confronted throughout the ages. Two men who met briefly in the 1790's, epitomise the opposing camps of thought:

Mozart could, at the drop of a pin, write complete works in the style of any living or dead composer: he was a noted improviser at the piano and could churn out literally thousands of 3-5 minute works each month if he wanted too. He is also noted for not leaving much in the way of sketches behind, leaving us to assume that he wrote his ideas out fully formed rather than painstakingly scratched note by note. There are numerous tales of Mozart being locked in rooms until he finished a commissioned work, dropping each finished score page out of a window to be rushed to the copyists preparing the parts for a performance that night. Outlandish as these tales may seem, they point out the inherently cerebral nature of Mozart's writing style - he would wait until the idea was fully formed until committing to manuscript paper, often pushing deadlines to the limit.

Beethoven, noted sketcher and painfully slow writer of musical works. His sketch books are legendary and go a long way to showing us how to develop and extend melodic and harmonic material. he was also noted as an improviser, but contemporary reports suggest that he was far more mundane/rule-bound in his approach to the task and produced at best mediocre results.

The two basic concepts of musical production that come from these two men is that there are:
  1. Those who think to write and
  2. Those who write to think.

Let's examine these two strains of production:

Thinking to write
Thinking to write has, at its heart, the idea that we can conceive a production from start to finish before committing a note to our working medium (paper and pen, daw and keyboard/other controller).

On the surface this seems like a failed statement - that it is impossible to conceive of all the nuances of a production before starting to create it.

I would suggest that it is not only possible, but is the logical conclusion to reach when you add experience to the mix: if you have previously created many, many works in the current medium which you work in, then you already know the mechanics of the process.

As a result, you are simply engaged in the creative application of your musical imagination; the mechanical aspects of the production process are no longer a consideration within the wider creative process and so time seems to be used efficiently.

The final product emerges in what seems like minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. However, what is not accounted for in the time taken on the production is the pre-thought given to the process, which can be as little as a few minutes or as long as a few years.

Writing to think
Writing to think has, at it's heart, the idea that we sketch and we sketch and we sketch before we ever even consider committing to a final version.

We literally rework and rework a product until we are finally happy with it.

The medium has little impact on the process save for facilitating the listening to the new version each time.

This way of working also encompasses experimentation within the medium; experimenting with the mix, the fx, the eq, the positioning of individual sounds in the stereo (L-R) and near-far spectra, in short every aspect of the production process is examined and reworked if found lacking.

The final product will emerge in hours or days or weeks or months or even years. However, as long as you document the process (keep daily changes and even major changes within a day as separate project files, as well as a diary or project logbook), you can definitively say how long it took to produce a specific track within a larger project and even how long the whole project took.

This process encompasses the creative process from the first moment to the last day.

Personal notes
I am guilty of both approaches to production and my writing in general.

That is to say, as a younger, inexperienced composer, it would literally take days or weeks to finish a single work - tough when you had to have six pieces per semester (16 weeks) ready for appraisal in a portfolio of work.

Learning how to auralise (create a mind based soundscape) a piece of music or, better still, to notate the music from an auralised creation has made creativity easier to tap into and realise within modern daws. Ear training is the key to this skill - teoria.com is the place to go to learn this skill in a modern way......

As I have matured and become familiar to the point of being able to visualise how to do something in my various daw's without opening the manual or the daw, it has become easier to simply sit and write a piece of music from start to finish without pause.

I went through a period a few yeas ago where I wrote 37 pieces of music in 45 days complete with mixes ready for mastering.

I would literally dream the piece the night before (auralise and notate whilst dreaming) and get up at 6 am, sit down and write and mix and be finished by 10 am.

Other pieces are still experimentation from start to finish - I will find a unique vst like the barking wombat or the [URL="http://www.kvraudio.com/product/particle_fountain_by_ndc_plugs"]particle fountain[/URL] and create a piece of music based on the ideas that spring from playing with it. However, the underlying skillset associated with production (mixing, eq/fx/etc) allows for the quick realisation of ideas into a final working project

Summary thoughts
Coming back to the original question: it takes what it takes to produce good music.

As krushing noted, as you mature and evolve as a musician/composer/producer your time frames will seem to shrink as a direct result of the experience you already have.

If you take on extra training, learn how to notate what you hear in your head or on the street, then your time frames will continue to shrink.

If you learn everything that you possibly can about your daw your time frames to do stuff will shrink again, as you are no loner hunting to do stuff.

If you learn how to program your synths or other creative sound design, time frames will again seem to shrink.

Learn about orchestration and arranging: time frames shrink as you are no longer spending so much time experimenting with new combinations of sounds and structural ideas.

In short, the more you learn the quicker your production times will seem to be, as you are no longer struggling to transfer your ideas from your head to your medium, merely transferring them in an orderly fashion, much the same as Mozart did all those years ago

the more you learn
the quicker your production times will seem to be
 
I record from 5am to 6:30 am daily. I work n after work I gta take my son to his practices by da time I get home it's to time to eat n sleep lol. But it works bc to me it's perfect. Day 1 lay down samples synths ect. Day 2 drums only. Day 3 mix breaks chorus. Day 4 automation fx transition. Day 5 I make my decision if I wna add to the beat or move on to my next. Its a good schedule for me.
 
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