Time invested in a project

[OutrageProductions]

Does anyone else ever keep track of how much time (including coffee breaks) that they spend creating, fleshing out, and mixing a project from the note browser.

I used to spend up to 24 to 30 hours to compose a movie cue of 4-6 minutes, and in the last 5 years have that whittled down to under 10 hours. Sometimes I get lucky with a theme and can recycle it into an accompanying cue in less than 5.

These days it takes me about 3+ weeks to do an entire movie score, with rewriting & modifications to fit edits.

Just curious. 

Does it make you happy... or dismayed? 

Edited November 28, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[craigb]

Mine are measured in decades... ?

[Grem]

My process of coming up with an idea serendipitous has me recording as I am making up the parts. 

Once I know where I want to go with it, I will re-record it all and mix, master. 

This did take years at one time. 

This whole process has been cut down a lot lately.  I am not spending as much time as I used to. 

But I do find when I do work on other things besides my songs, I can work much faster. My decision making is much quicker.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Grem

[Bapu]

Since our band Citizen Regen is a virtual band consisting of members in California, Washington, Norway and Portugal time spent is difficult at best  to calculate. But with all that we have at times only produced one song per year and at best three per year. We just completed our 20th a week ago.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Bapu

[OutrageProductions]

@Bapu; when we worked on what would eventually become "Velvet Rope" by Janet,  it was a little over 2 years from inception to final mixes, and I thought that was an eternity. I worked on a John Prine record in the early 80's that only took about 3 weeks.

I once did an first album for a band in Texas in about 50 hours over 6 days. But I'd been working with them on the arrangements for a year before that. 

But when you think that Motown would write, record, and ship an entire record in 3 days... jeez.

Of course, they didn't have 'unlimited' tracks. And the arrangement was all done in about 3 takes.

Edited November 28, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[paulo]

Sorry to butt in.... I just found some names on the floor.

Did somebody drop them ?

[John Vere]

Demo full song with all parts 2 days. fine tuning and proofing 20 years. 

[Leadfoot]

Nobody pays me for any of my garbage so I don't keep track how many hours I have invested.

[OutrageProductions]

Maybe I should refine the query to a discussion of the actual edit time as listed in the <File Stats> section of the Notes Browser. 

I realize that many (myself included) may have extraordinarily long accretive time (days, months, years) during the creation of material, but I'm more interested in if anyone ever considers the file open/edit elapsed time and the resulting real or emotional consequences. 

After all, it should be a metric of growth, experience, and knowledge of your tools and skill set.

Too deep? Too soon? Too metaphysical? ?

Edited November 29, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[Shane_B.]

I get a bit OC about my recordings. I know what good recording sounds like and I know how well good musicians can play. And unfortunately I don't have the ability to make a good recording or play well enough to record in a timely fashion. If I had to guess, in single recordings I've done from start to finish by myself I'd say I probably average about 120 hours to get it to the point where I've faked it enough to let other people hear it.

I am a much better guitar player when I play live with other people. Not saying I'm good by any stretch, but when it's a live situation and you're playing with and inspired/feeding off of other musicians energy, it's a whole other dynamic that seemed to make me play better and be more consistent.

One thing I enjoy doing is taking old recordings from my 4 and 8 track machines and transferring them to my DAW. I have some that I originally recorded in the 80s and just recently edited and added new instrumentation to. So start to finish, almost 40 years? That's not an accurate response to your question but I mention it because it's mind blowing to me that we have the technology now to be able to separate multiple instrumentation and vocals from a single track and edit or delete them as individual tracks. I added a key change to one song and when you listen to it you cannot tell at all. This isn't a shameless plug but here is an example of some of the editing Im refering to. The key change was not there in the original recording. The vocal was from 1989. I originally posted this in the song forum here in 2021.

https://on.soundcloud.com/g23BG

Edited November 29, 2023 by Shane_B.

[craigb]

53 minutes ago, Shane_B. said:

I get a bit OC about my recordings.

*Wonders if he meant to say "OCD" instead...* ?

[paulo]

11 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

it should be a metric of growth, experience, and knowledge of your tools and skill set.

You don't visit this part of the forum much, do you ? ?

[OutrageProductions]

2 hours ago, paulo said:

You don't visit this part of the forum much, do you ? ?

While I fully realize that much of the Coffee House isn't exactly a bastion of witty repartee, I couldn't convince myself that this type of conversation would better fit in Production Techniques...?.

Too obscure. 

[Bapu]

You should have mentioned BECAN!

[Shane_B.]

4 hours ago, craigb said:

*Wonders if he meant to say "OCD" instead...* ?

Due to my OCD, I thought it through before posting and felt it wouldn't be proper to English to say I get a bit obsessive compulsive disorder and felt that it would be better to say I get a bit obsessive compulsive. 

Now I have anxiety wondering if I should have abbreviated it dofferently.

My spell checker said I spelled differently wrong and suggest I correct it with dofferently. Now I'm really in a bind.

I need help. ?

[paulo]

1 hour ago, Shane_B. said:

Due to my OCD, I thought it through before posting and felt it wouldn't be proper to English to say I get a bit obsessive compulsive disorder and felt that it would be better to say I get a bit obsessive compulsive. 

Now I have anxiety wondering if I should have abbreviated it dofferently.

My spell checker said I spelled differently wrong and suggest I correct it with dofferently. Now I'm really in a bind.

I need help. ?

I have CDO.

It's like OCD, but with the letters in the correct order.

[57Gregy]

3 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

a bastion

You take that back!!!!
No need to resort to name-calling.

[kennywtelejazz]

3 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

 a bastion

Dad is that you ? It's me Kenny !

 

Edited November 29, 2023 by kennywtelejazz

[John Vere]

8 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

wrong and suggest I correct it with dofferently.

That’s how Homer would say it. 

[Rain]

If there are guitar parts, unless there is a solid deadline, I NEVER finish it, although I may abandon it at some point. I can spend 2 or 3 hours recording the same verse. Come back the next session, scrap everything and start over. And again the next night. Whether it’s because the sound doesn’t seem to work or whatever else - there’s always something.

And believe it or not, it used to be worse, because I used to feel compelled to record each guitar in a single take. I have at least managed to convince myself that I should “divide and conquer”. That being said, I cannot bring myself to do a comp out of multiple takes. Each part for each section must be one take.

I punched into a track ONCE, the first time I went into a recording studio and was simply obeying whatever the engineer told me to do. And I still feel dirty about using that trick over 25 years later. (That and the fact that he “forced” me to record a solo using a high gain amp because my own setup just wasn’t working).

I still cannot bring myself to re-amp. If I record using a plugin, listen to the playback and  decide to adjust the sound even just a little and add a little gain or something, I re-record everything.

Until, at some point, I give up.

And then I come back a few years later, listen to the song and wonder - what the heck was wrong with me? These guitars are alright. The mix sucks for sure, but the guitars aren’t the problem.

Then I decide to have a go at the project and soon enough find myself going down that same rabbit hole.

The funny thing is that I’ve recorded some rather sloppy players, but since it’s not me, the perspective is entirely different - I become very imaginative in terms of how I can salvage things and put together an adequate performance out of a few questionable takes or handle problematic sounding ones. I just cannot bring myself to do the same for my stuff.

I guess that’s one of the many reasons why I don’t write guitar music that often.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Rain