[Kook]

I agree with shinobi, I spend too much time and don't know when to stop messing w it

[whitebear]

20+ hours. The shit thing is understanding when to let go or when to keep pushing through to refine it more and not leave any frequency unheard so to speak...

[blackroyalty]

4 - 8 hours a day, depending on how much I like it, and how much progress I've made. Sometimes I spend more time finetuning a single sound like a bass or a lead, and then get bored, so I stop playing w/ it and go back to it after a few hours or most likely the next day.

[DreamCatcher]

15-20 hours
I'm pretty new to making music so in the middle of making a track I will try and look for tutorials on what I want to do, also depends on the genre I am working on.

[Clayt3]

For me at the moment, im spending around 10 hours, but a couple months ago was only about 4. So i seem to be taking more time as i go on. I tend to get the structure down so fast though once i come up with Chords & Melodies. (I make Prog & Electro House)

[.Moe.]

10-20 hours. It always depends on how many single tracks and layers i have. but sometimes i try to get a track mixed and after 5 hours i have to admit that it sounded better before, so there is a lot of useless time involved

[nick-yan]

sometimes i work like 4 hours and got something perfect, but i had it i was working like 10-20 hours and had something worse than the 4 hour song haha

[fluent2332]

I can't believe some of you work on tracks for 4-20 hours. Are you really spending that much time on one track? How do you get anything done? I can't imagine spending one full hour on a single track, let alone more than 4 hours and sometimes as high as 20+. That seems like a hell of a lot of time to spend on one single piece of music. Hell, if I spend more than 20 minutes on something it feels like I'm wasting my time. Some of you guys must have incredible concentration and patience.

[DreamCatcher]

Originally Posted by fluent2332

I can't believe some of you work on tracks for 4-20 hours. Are you really spending that much time on one track? How do you get anything done? I can't imagine spending one full hour on a single track, let alone more than 4 hours and sometimes as high as 20+. That seems like a hell of a lot of time to spend on one single piece of music. Hell, if I spend more than 20 minutes on something it feels like I'm wasting my time. Some of you guys must have incredible concentration and patience.

Ill spend well over an hour EQing everything..... But honestly the track I am working on now i have spent 5 hours just on the buildup and drop, and it still isnt done. You can spend hours just tweaking knobs to get that perfect sound. Hours will even be spent searching the web for the perfect sample.

I did a lot of research and love watching and studying other artists. Here are some cases of which I have learned to motivate myself:

Steve Aoki: He had a video of him giving a preview of a remix that he did just after it was finished, he had a camera guy come into the room and he started to play the preview and so on, he then told the guy to zoom in on the time on the computer, it was 5:49 AM!!! He proceeded to say, "I never sleep!" with a huge smile on his face.

Deadmau5: When he asked how long it took him to make a track on average he said, "well i get up and get situated eat and all that, then i usually sit down around lunch time and don't get up until it is done sometimes even until 3am." Of course he does spend days on tracks but the majority of the creative process happens in one sitting.

The Bingo Players: They tweeted, "It is 11am, still in the studio, been at it since last night."

Every time I make a track I always think about these cases and say to myself that there is no way in hell that I am done if these professionals are spending this much time on a track.

[Broton42]

on average I don't put more than a day's work into my experiments, however some projects which tend to be of a specific design often merit more meticulous handiwork.

I didn't have my own computer for the longest time and I suppose have "gotten used to" working quickly. I would have to re-install the tracking software and soundfonts which I used every time I wanted to work on music!

[davidane]

Considering all the stages of music production ( composition, arrangement, mixing, mastering) I would say it's an average of 40 hours.

[gbsr]

depends what you do. the last thing i did was around 10 hours of work per day for about a week, give or take. at times i can spend several hours on not more than 1 second of music. in certain situations i can make an entire ep in, say, 20 hours. all depends on what you do, what genre you work with, and where you want to go.

[RFJ]

Originally Posted by gbsr

at times i can spend several hours on not more than 1 second of music.

Can you elaborate on this point a bit? I tend to spent hours/days working on something but that's because I'm not an expert in this field and have to check documentation, look for answers and so on.

I'm just curious as to what it is that would take you hours for 1 second of output.

Moreover if you have an example of what you are talking about I'd love to hear it and try to learn something in doing so.

[Br/ainfu+ked]

Originally Posted by gbsr

at times i can spend several hours on not more than 1 second of music.

i've done this composing breakcore

[stem collector]

10 if it takes a while

[bbb]

At the moment more than I thought it would. Wanting it over now

[gbsr]

Originally Posted by RFJ

Can you elaborate on this point a bit? I tend to spent hours/days working on something but that's because I'm not an expert in this field and have to check documentation, look for answers and so on.

I'm just curious as to what it is that would take you hours for 1 second of output.

Moreover if you have an example of what you are talking about I'd love to hear it and try to learn something in doing so.

depends. when i do stuff for my milehighscientist noise alias i tend to work at some 700+- bpm, alternating, and i tend to cut audio into really freaking small microscopic pieces and put them back together as new sources. you can easily spend several hours moving a 1ms peice of audio back and fourther a couple of ms to get that perfectly aligned hit, and then you could spend a few hours more automating things to get it just right.

you might think that you can't hear a difference when we are talking less than a millisecond of audio, but since it's not a continous stream your brain will discern the difference between the hits and for me the timing is the most important aspect of those things. take these examples here:
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this even had to be rewritten when the pitchdrop edit enters the track because i couldn't get the automation just right. that oscillator-like pitchy sound (at: 51 seconds) is each an individual slice of audio edited together and different intervals, and the tempo is automated to increase or decrease the "pitch" (the interval between the slices). that took a lot of time. so did the bassdrum rolls before it

this here:
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all hand edited. literally thousands and small audio snippets placed out.

this:
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hand edited, reprocessed, re-edited, re-reprocessed, and so on from a 20 second white noise sample as part of the whitenoise contest we held on the forum a year or something ago.

this:

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all sounds except the drums and the synthline come from the very first sample (the cracking ice). reprocess and so on.

so yeah, spending hours on 1 second of music is EASY.

[RFJ]

Hey thanks man.

I appreciate the insight. I'm unable to listen to the examples but I intend to this afternoon.

Awesome.

[gbsr]

Originally Posted by RFJ

Hey thanks man.

I appreciate the insight. I'm unable to listen to the examples but I intend to this afternoon.

Awesome.

you're welcome. it's actually kind of fun to work that way, because you get into some very technical intricate details you probably wouldn't if you just threw something together really quick.

my two cents, of course.

[millenni]

i would say a good 8 hours