How Long Should You Work On A Song?

Music Production Talk

How Long Should You Work On A Song?

Posted OnJune 28, 2018 0

A song to me has no set time that it should be worked on. I say this because there are people that are able to produce great sounding songs in just a few hours, while others can spend weeks to get something grander sounding. Therefore, I would recommend that you pay more attention to the feeling you get when working on a song as opposed to the length of time you spend on it.

Why should you focus on the feeling? Well, let’s put it like this: say there is someone who is working on a project for the past two weeks, but they really are just going through the motions and just don’t care about the song they are producing. Yeah, they can get something decent sounding because they invested a lot of time into it, but it won’t be anything that really moves you emotionally. However, in the opposite case, someone who is really exploding to the brim with excitement, passion, and love for their project can spend one or two nights staying up and working like a madman (or madwoman) on their song so that they can create that wild vision in their head that’ll rock the socks off you when you listen to it.

Therefore, I’d say the feeling you get when creating is more important than the amount of time spent on the song. If you honestly feel you are giving a high effort in a short amount of time? Release that stuff! If you feel you’ve put your heart and soul into something over a longer course of time? Release that stuff!

Of course, there is some quality control that can happen when you spend more time on the song, but I also feel that it’s more important to get more executions under your belt so you can become more comfortable with content creation in general. Then, once you repeat it enough times, you can create your own process and system for getting more of your ideas out faster. And, provided you are constantly training to get better, getting feedback from others and constantly trying to improve your creations; I feel you can have quality and quantity because the two aren’t mutually exclusive to one another.

If you want to achieve quality and quantity, you just have to train hella hard and understand the concept of what makes a good song and avoid producing music when your passion, interest or love isn’t in it. And, in my case, I feel I have a lot of love to give because music is almost my whole life. I’ve got thousands of songs in my i-tunes/phone, I spend hours listening to music when I’m working/running/sleeping and I’ve created 150+ songs/remixes and spent thousands of attempts at getting better because it makes me feel whole.

Therefore, don’t let people say you have to pick one or the other. That’s a self-limiting belief and you should work as much as you FEEL YOU should on a song. As taking more time doesn’t equate to having a better song. Trying to get the perfect song is just torture after awhile and it doesn’t serve the world when you spend months and years trying to release something. When, in that time, someone else with more passion could have produced a larger catalogue of music that touched and moved more people; even if it wasn’t perfect to a T. As the perception of what constitutes a good song varies from person to person and you are depriving the world of that gift when you let others influence dedicate when you should release your songs.

TL;DR

– Spend as much time as you feel the song warrants. Not every song needs to take 32423432432423234 months to complete and get perfect.

– Even if you spend a short or small amount of time on a song, pay attention to the feeling. If you put a half-hearted effort, it doesn’t matter if you spend one day or one year on a song, it’ll probably not be wise to release it if you feel you aren’t putting that emotion into it.

– Quality and quantity aren’t mutually exclusive. The perception of your listener is more important than trying to impress some super technical people.

– Don’t keep your songs locked away because you are trying to pursue a perfect song. Imperfections are what helps to make music shine.

Tags: