what i do on weeknights when im too tired to write a track is just make loads of samples of sweeps, bangs boofs calps slap click pip pop slah etc etc and process them, bounce them down to audio and save them in my folder for use in a track sometime in the future as sweeps or sound effects.
[quote]howiegroove (15/06/2010)[hr][quote]UnitedVision (15/06/2010)[hr]For me tracks seem to be getting faster for creation and longer for arrangements, transitions and breakdowns. Trying to perfect these is very time intensive. I’m still a newbie at mastering and i need better monitors. lol.[/quote]
You should spend alot of your time arranging. Spending the majority of your time making it FEEL good should be a big concern for you. There are so many amazing songs that have very simple sounds. You can always tweak things as you go along in a project.
[quote]UnitedVision (15/06/2010)[hr]I think that the ammount of time that you spend on a track has to do with how many sounds that you have in the track. House track with 7-8 sounds takes less time than a trance track with 14-20 sounds. How many breakdowns, buildups do you have? The more u have the longer it will take to perfect these tasks. Workflow also helps. My friends that produce all use templates to help speed up workflows. However my I feel as though the style and complexity of the track is really the biggest factor in how fast it gets done.[/quote]
I disagree a bit. My last track had 73 channels of sounds. There was alot going on there. But you have to look at it as a whole. It doesnt matter how many you have, the feel is the hardest part. Think of it this way. Imagine you have 10 sounds in a track, right? Keeping those 10 sounds changing and constantly keeping the listener interested and making sure they dont get bored is going to be a challenge. So just because it has less sounds, doesn’t mean that its gonna be easier to make.[/quote]
this makes total sense. the feel of the track is what sparks emotion. thats 4 sure.
i guess my though process was the more sounds the more time it takes.
i totally see your point.
[quote]UnitedVision (15/06/2010)[hr]For me tracks seem to be getting faster for creation and longer for arrangements, transitions and breakdowns. Trying to perfect these is very time intensive. I’m still a newbie at mastering and i need better monitors. lol.
I think that the ammount of time that you spend on a track has to do with how many sounds that you have in the track. House track with 7-8 sounds takes less time than a trance track with 14-20 sounds. How many breakdowns, buildups do you have? The more u have the longer it will take to perfect these tasks. Workflow also helps. My friends that produce all use templates to help speed up workflows. However my I feel as though the style and complexity of the track is really the biggest factor in how fast it gets done.[/quote]
Exactly what I do, works a treat.
From listening to alot of tracks by the same artists you can tell they all use the same layouts every time. Their breakdowns and builds are all the same length and in the same place.
that last track that i did was written in 4 hours give or take a few mins but the arrangement has taken a week already to get fully sorted.
[quote]jon_fisher (15/06/2010)[hr]that last track that i did was written in 4 hours give or take a few mins but the arrangement has taken a week already to get fully sorted.[/quote]
Yeah…make sure not to blow your load too early, huh! 
At the end of the day sadly there are no rules to the whole creative process else we’d all just follow them and be awesome.
Some dude could spend half the time on a track, but at the end of the day just be much better and banging out tracks than someone who takes weeks longer ‘getting the mix right’.
Spending painful hours on tiny detail doesn’t make it a better tune if it’s over all sucky.
Vice versa though obviously (and more commonly I guess) that just boshing things out means a lot of the finer detail and or foundations might not be set.
Point being, spend as long as it takes for you to get it sounding right, not someone else.
I usually can make the arrangement in less than 5 hours with brakes and everything . but it takes more time for me to work on a loop. sometimes it can take more than 24 hours or a week of coming back to work on the same loop. .now about the mastering i dont care that much since i would prefer someone else do it for me .
usually the Biggest Issue for me is creating the Loop and having and the Melodic Idea of the leads and bass. i heard the first 2 hours on making a beat are the most productive . and i actually was able to confirm that since i made a track before 12 hours with the arrangment and everything mixed . i still cant beat that record of mine since i think i have mental Block again or maybe i need more Inspiration. i dont know what it is but it just kills me that sometimes inspiration can play a big part of making ur music sound Groovy and original
the track i posted about a day or two ago took me about 7 hours to make.
i have a default template set -up with all the bass, lead, vocals, fx, pad, groups routed to a buss.
when i start a track i usually make a arrangement template for the first minute or so , until i get the basic idea down
i do feel though the more i make tracks and the more i learn theory , things are getting easier, and in my opinion my track quality is getting better in small steps
id like to see other peoples template set ups and see if we could benefit from their specific workflow
[quote]tommyt (15/06/2010)[hr]
id like to see other peoples template set ups and see if we could benefit from their specific workflow[/quote]
i dont have any templates as i feel using the same “instruments” the tracks will end up sounding similar. i havent heard your tracks before writing this so im not sayin your tracks sound the same.
As for workflow:
i usually work on an 8 bar loop with everything going (the final drop), once i feel ive completed that (the instrumentation/recording), then i work backwards, filling in the gap to the intro. then when i got the whole arrangement sketched out i just keep playing the track, over and over, dropping things in where i feel things are missing. be that perc, sweeps, new sounds or whatever.
hope that helps someone. probably what everybody else does anyway lol… 
See… for me, templates are great and all, but its never the same. Thats why I like to start out with a completely blank slate. The beauty of Live is that everything is so easy and streamlined, that I wouldn’t like to have a template. Anything I really want to do is just a couple clicks away. I will use templates for effects and instruments (ie. wet/dry on reverb starting at zero when I first open it up or the modulations set a specific way in Operator). The routing/signal path selectors are easy peasy. Don’t hold yourself back by doing the same thing every time. Think outside the box and force yourself to do things different ways. You will expand your mind, your technique, and your sound if you do.
if your using live one way is to get the loops ready spend a day setting everything you want to control to a parameter on your control device and when your ready hit play/record and jam for an hour or so, cut the best parts out of what you’ve got and try to make a track out of it
Jez, this all looks very scary. I have never, ever made a track in 8 hours, I have never even made a track in a week. I am the slowest producer in the world I think. I have however spent 3-4 months on a track (not solidly). Maybe some people are that good they can do it in 8 hours - I can’t, but it doesn’t bother me. I t takes whatever it takes…
[quote]chris agnelli (17/06/2010)[hr]Jez, this all looks very scary. I have never, ever made a track in 8 hours, I have never even made a track in a week. I am the slowest producer in the world I think. I have however spent 3-4 months on a track (not solidly). Maybe some people are that good they can do it in 8 hours - I can’t, but it doesn’t bother me. I t takes whatever it takes…[/quote]
chris. I would be interested in hearing what you find takes the longest for you to complete? sound creation? arrangements? mixing/mastering?
my feeling is that since your a pro… you are probably a crazy stickler about the details.
howiegroove recently had a great post that the details are what seperates the pros from the amateurs.
do you think that this true? or is it creating the new sounds that take the most time…
btw - i’m a fan!
[quote]UnitedVision (17/06/2010)chris. I would be interested in hearing what you find takes the longest for you to complete? sound creation? arrangements? mixing/mastering?
my feeling is that since your a pro… you are probably a crazy stickler about the details.
howiegroove recently had a great post that the details are what seperates the pros from the amateurs.
do you think that this true? or is it creating the new sounds that take the most time…
btw - i’m a fan![/quote]
Im sure its different for everyone dude. People that do this for a living, have more time and know their sound better. Frankly, it should take them less time.
[quote]howiegroove (17/06/2010)[hr][quote]UnitedVision (17/06/2010)chris. I would be interested in hearing what you find takes the longest for you to complete? sound creation? arrangements? mixing/mastering?
my feeling is that since your a pro… you are probably a crazy stickler about the details.
howiegroove recently had a great post that the details are what seperates the pros from the amateurs.
do you think that this true? or is it creating the new sounds that take the most time…
btw - i’m a fan![/quote]
Im sure its different for everyone dude. People that do this for a living, have more time and know their sound better. Frankly, it should take them less time.[/quote]
makes sense. my friends that do it for a living say it takes about 1-2 weeks…
but they have their workflows setup properly and know their sounds.
Its is just I’m pretty rubbish, short attention span, and really into detail, all that adds up to a long process. The one thing I would say is that I wasn’t really into putting out any old crap. It really had to stand up for me, a lot of questioning whether it was good enough. Most likely scrapped a few big singles in my time cause I felt they weren’t good enough. You also have to remember, I had my first big single out in 98 - 12 years ago, and technology was very very different back then. If I remember the setup it was a Macintosh Quadra 630 with 4MB ram, 250MB hard disk and, wait for it - 33Mhz. The very first version of Cubase VST and a 2GB external harddrive that cost around £600. Everything ran live from MIDI -you would spend two days sorting out MIDI timings, and a desk with no recall. Ahhh fun times.
I’d really love to hear some of these tracks that were made in a day. I think it extremely unlikely that a quality track can be made from scratch in that time in any genre. An average track maybe. Bear in mind that time spent making/processing loops and programming synths is time spent on a track. People that make a track in a day must be using sounds that have been pre-created in some way and simply spending all their time on arrangement/effects/mixing.
Making a track for me involves experimenting with sounds. Albeit as I am still learning the craft. Could take me a week to get a lead or a bass! Sounds crazy to think of guys doing it all in a day.
I’d rather spend weeks making a good track than hours making a **** one.
well, you be the judge kieran, my track lowrise that its the n tune section was done in 8 hours. i would say its okay
Well for me, It takes me about 4 hours for sounds, and another 2-4 hours to come up with the notes in each line. From there, add another 4 hours to arrange. Then its all up in the air. I am constantly tweaking sounds, adding effects, adding automation, adding more sounds, experimenting, and… most importantly… getting it to feel amazing. After arrangement, because I have a full time job and everything, the second half could add at least 2 weeks onto my production time. All in all, if you want to calculate it in hours, I spend about 24-36 hours per song. My first release is coming out in about a month, and that had over 70 tracks and took a TON of tweaking.