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

dmajor100

New member
Ive notice that a lot my music that I've spent half a day on or a day and a half have been my best work yet. Its rare that any thing i make in minutes is any good and i have done okay stuff but its nothing really hot. So I'm just curious if my theory of taking more time on your music and being more creative is a winner.
 
I doubt there's an all-encompassing theory that applies to everyone. Sometimes the good stuff does come out in minutes (that doesn't mean the track's finished in that time as well, though), sometimes it takes time to, ahem, mature & evolve over time.
 
I find the longer I work on a track, the worse it gets. That might sound ridiculous, but I end up over complicating the beat to the point that it just sounds cluttered and awful.

I need to learn to abide to 'less is more'.
 
yeah, this is a craft so part of the skill is being able to stop and take a step back or to just let it roll... I find that sometimes a few minutes creativity can be enough material to work on for some time after... with time and practice comes discipline... its about recognising when you are making progress and when you are just passing time... I think generally speaking the longer you spend on something the better it must be... but in my early days and still now sometimes if i'm not carefull I can overwork something and lose what i was originally trying to express...

I find it helps if i decide exactly what i'm going to be doing before i begin work... so for example am I trying to create something new? am I working on a chord progression? Am I improving a drum track?

I like to try out as many possiblities as I can and burn to disc, listen on my stereo, in my car etc... then i decide upon a direction to take and go from there...

: )

minutes? days? I've got stuff ive been working for years...
 
I find the longer I work on a track, the worse it gets. That might sound ridiculous, but I end up over complicating the beat to the point that it just sounds cluttered and awful.

I need to learn to abide to 'less is more'.

I agree with this, I start changing too much, getting bored with it and end up with something way different than what I intended lol. I usually make my best stuff 10-15 mins before I go to bed and then cant wait to wake up to finish it.
 
I agree with this, I start changing too much, getting bored with it and end up with something way different than what I intended lol. I usually make my best stuff 10-15 mins before I go to bed and then cant wait to wake up to finish it.

Amen to the can't wait to get up to finish it!
 
I've been on a roll recently getting up at 6 AM and recording 1:30 minute tracks to use for a hypothetical movie soundtrack. I have to leave for work by 8 and get ready so I usually end up recording for about an hour. I just hook up my bass and guitar and start searching for magic. I find that the morning is the best for me to come up with new ideas because there is very little of the day weighing on my mind seeing as how it just started. Of course mixing and such things take a much longer time but in terms of getting great tracks this routine has been working really well for me.
 
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I have had both. But i find that if it doesnt happen for me in and hour or two, it probably wont happen. Of course I may go in later and make some changes down the road and whatnot, but thats me.
 
When I have an idea, I get it down on FL asap and then save it as an unfinished project. I have a lot of those, just so that I always have something to work on/go back to. Recently I went back to one of the first beats I made (years ago) and added stuff to it (from what I've learned over the years) and it turned out to be one of my best pieces of work. Therefore, it really depends on the time, the place, the person etc. From this, I've learned to never delete my project files no matter how wack some of them may be. You never know how they may benefit you in the future...
 
Like this method, same way with rap lyrics, even if it's a bar, write it down in small pad; as for beat creation main topic up top, if half a day or full day is where you feel comfortable, see what you can do in a shorter time span. Lets say an hour.Only to test yourself
 
I can take hours, days, months, years...

If you get bored making a piece of music after a few hours how can you expect someone else to listen to it for more than a few hours??
 
The music is done once it well represents your intentions and conceptual direction in an intriguing way for the duration of the song. This is not something that necessarily has an associated time frame attached to it. Early on in your music production the game is about making your production sound full. Once you have more experience, you begin to realize the fullness is not the end game and that is when you become more objective about your judgements of completeness.
 
"I find that the morning is the best for me to come up with new ideas because there is very little of the day weighing on my mind seeing as how it just started" BAM Couldn't have said it better myself. I always thought of myself as a night person when it comes to making music but nothing beats waking up early with a fresh mind and going to work on the weekends - at least in my case.
 
If you get bored making a piece of music after a few hours how can you expect someone else to listen to it for more than a few hours??

This. Keep going until it's ready.. I can't see how anybody could finish something completely in less than a day. But then, some people are incredible.
 
me too.. It's what I love about music production. It really motivates my day looking forward to doing some more on a track
 
damn, i have yet to finish a track. got lots of ideas and potential tracks, but so far nothing complete. I have only just begun though
 
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.
 
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you shouldn't work to little but also not overwork too much on a beat.
too many instruments will make it sound like a chaos anyway.
 
i find the longer i work on a track, the worse it gets. That might sound ridiculous, but i end up over complicating the beat to the point that it just sounds cluttered and awful.

I need to learn to abide to 'less is more'.

work depending on which genre you are aiming for. You know that hip hop beats dont necessarily need a bunch of sounds whereas a pop beat youre working on might use alot of tracks. And its also about how you feel when youre making the track. If you feel like youre overcomplicating the beat then stop working on that track and either start a fresh one or just take a break and go put your mind towards something else for awhile then come back to it. Hope my opinion helps you
 
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