Starting with a blank page, how long does it take you to come up with the melody & harmony for a verse, pre-chorus, chorus, & bridge, etc?

 

Last edited: Jun 7, 2024

Anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 years.

 

I'm with @Moogerfooger , sometimes you write a song in less time then it takes to listen to it, and other times you chase your tail for a decade.

Usually it's the ones 'I' write quickly that are the ones I end up like the most, but sometimes you really have to spend some time in the woodshed....and those can work out just as well...

I also believe in moving quickly, and if you get jammed up on something, moving to something new and looping back later with a different mindset or perspective.

 

Once you hear the melody or a song in your head, you try to learn it with an instrument as soon as possible - as close to the original in your head as possible, with all the little nuances and all that... And try to get it recorded somewhere before the idea starts to pale and fade, and you somehow lose the whole point.
The lyrics can be a beast.

 

I usually pack it in after 5-10 minutes if there's not a lot happening. I use Scaler, so you can get a lot of things done very quickly.

 

I'm surrounded by musical instruments most of the time. Even my laptop keys are mapped to a virtual piano keyboard.

 

Usually 5 minutes. Sometimes it hits me after x years. Where x is equal or smaller than 67.

 

Usually it takes me 30 minutes of fiddling in the daw to start finding an opening or direction I want to take. Then I spend much of the day trying to hone where I feel it is coming together best. Then that takes me a week to flesh it out proper and develop something that *could* turn heads. By that point, I can easily walk away from it, only to begin something anew... and then it may take up to 5 months for me to return to it again. I like to let ideas gestate awhile.

 

Making a song considering all the possible conditions is not easy. Let me explain what I mean.

Suppose you start making a song, what should you consider:

1- You should consider the audience you are making this song for. This is the first step.
2- In the second step, you have to consider whether this song is going to be performed live or it was made only for uploading to YouTube.
3- If you are making it for a live performance, is your song going to be performed by a group of musicians or is it just a singer who will perform it on stage with a microphone and play the song in the background.
4- You should consider the number of musicians and back vocal and prepare a suitable piece for each of them.
5- A song writer is required to write the lyrics.
6- If the song is going to be composed for live performance, the emotional atmosphere of the song should be taken into account at the very beginning of the forming of the song.
7- The emotional parts and emotions that the song induces should be considered second by second.
8- The danceability of the song should be taken into account so that the dancers can dance to the song.
9- The idea you want to convey with the song must be thought through.
And ...

If none of the above conditions are considered, the music is practically a simplified song ...

 

There's always that one sound or something that launches everything, I can have whole thing laid down, but until that magic spark happens, track have no soul or purpose, so it can take days or years, have bunch of ideas that are decade and more old, no rush.

 

I struggle with melody. Songs i care the most, are the ones i take the longest
But if i'm creating something just for the sake to create something, then it takes about 15 minutes

 

to outline the melody, that takes a couple of hours to really flesh it out. but the flesh out the idea? the transitions. the drum choices. the counter melodies. vocal stabs. the approach to the verses. the approach to the choruses. how to make the song continue to grow over the course of the song to keep me(and the listener) engaged because they all do it differently for me. there is so much to consider. that can take months depending on how much i have going on in the song. i walk away from ideas and revisit them often as well.

 

Song is a big entity that needs a lot of experience and means. It needs a big plan that includes all the conditions.

 

For a full-length tune, most of the cases it takes me a few hours, plus a day or two polishing it. My last one, for example, I started and finished during a friday night.

 

Somewhere between 30 minutes and never.
The initial hook/chorus/other thing comes to me really quickly. After that, all bets are off. Sometimes I have the whole song sketched out in a couple of hours. Sometimes I get stuck or lose interest and park it for an indeterminate length of time. I recently finished a song that I started over a decade ago. I've no idea what prompted me to do that but my main advice would be to never delete anything.

 

I regularly do speedwriting set to 5min. I usually get the verse, pre-chorus and chorus in that time frame (or at least the roughs to them). I can do 3-4 of these in a row before I get "drained".
It's not uncommon that I at the 4min mark have a pretty clear picture/idea of how the song will go/sound.

Interestingly, this technique (where you put the inner critique in the trunk due to the time-limit) has an interesting "side-effect" which expresses itself as awaking music in my mind/brain when I'm in relaxed state, like when driving, taking a shower/bath or even having a shit. I can "hear" parts of a song or even more, as it's being played in my head. The trouble I find then is to quickly find a recording app on my phone and sing/hum the stuff that I hear.

 

Last edited: Jun 7, 2024

80% or so of the time the inspiration spontaniously stands and delivers the vibe and melody. If I don't let myself get in the way everything falls into place like round pegs into round holes. If I try to brute into place a squared dowel into that yoni'd space, no matter how I try that camel just never fits through the eye of that needle. Sometimes a verse always wanted to be a chorus, a chorus a verse, a bridge can be a road to Mandalay or just to nowhere, man. I breath harmony in my sleep, always have, always will. It's my oxy-gen.

 

@Zenarcist
I think you should define the song first. Because most of the combinations are not songs in my opinion and only the name of the song is on them. If making songs was so easy, everyone would be a billionaire by now due to the attraction of a great deal of audiences towards themselves.

 

Well not finished songs, just a rough outline of the different sections. I usually start on piano or acoustic guitar as I am mostly looking for interactions between the melody and harmony, so I want the sound to be as pure as possible. I do use an electric guitar if I am looking for a riff to start it off, and then I will add some melodies on the piano.

 

Last edited: Jun 8, 2024