How long do you spend on a mix?

[Nutritious]

I'm just curious how long, on average, everyone spends on their finished mixes - especially those who've submitted accepted mixes on the site. Do you spend most of your time on arrangement, mixing, mastering? How much time do you spend refining your mixes (days, weeks, months?)?

I'm just curious because I tend to get really into mixing a specific song, which can last anywhere from a week, to 2-3 weeks, but then I find myself somewhat losing interest in it. Anyone have a similar experience? Do you just have to work through it to still try to produce a quality piece?

[Shadow Wolf]

I don't have any mixes posted to the site, but for me, I spend months on a mix. I'll spend a few days on the beginning of a mix, just transcribing, modifying, etc. I'll get tired and run out of really good ideas, then set the mix aside, or move over to another mix for awhile. I might come back to it weeks later, make some modifications, realize that something I did before downright sucks and needs to be changed... the point is I never mix until I really really want to. It would be harmful to the mix to do so, to just push on it until it's done. If I'm not on a deadline, I'll be damned if I'm gonna can my creativity to make one. Not only that, it frustrates you. If you're going in circles and out of ideas, STOP. The projact will still be there whenever you come back to it. So, in a year or so, when I have a finished mix that I'm completely satisfied with, I might submit it.

[sephfire]

Months. This is partially due to a lack of available time and also the same periodical inspirational shortages shadowolf referred to. I despise those long gaps inbetween, but I've found no way to overcome them so far. Oh well.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Months and months. I have at least two mixes that have been "in the works" for over a year, and one that's been in progress for well over two years (though admittedly I haven't actually touched it in well over six months.)

The reason is that I rarely get a chance to sit down and spend several hours on a song; I usually spend an hour or so, then come back to it and do a little more a few weeks later, and so on and so forth. Combine this with the fact that at any given time, I probably have four or five WIPs going, which slows me down even more.

[bladiator]

2 weeks at most. If it's not done then, it's probably not going to get done. 3 days usually.

[Sole Signal]

Depends. I can usually force myself to finish something up. Once I get an inspiring intro going, it helps a lot in keeping me going on that specific track. The total time I spent on Devastation's Doorway was maybe 15-20 hours over a few weeks, with the majority of the time being spent doing mixing and doing sound design (tweaking drums, percussion, EQing, etc). I've become a lot more efficient since then, though, and learned some new production tricks.

Talking specifically about remixes, I can usually get a decent one and a half minute start in about an hour and a half or so. Actually, last night I found an old Mario Kart track I started of the ending theme and added another minute and a half in about an hour (I'll probably post the WIP here soon). I do most of the mixing as I'm going along and then do a final revisit once I finish the track.

So yes, if I had time I could easily finish a mix every two days or so.

[djpretzel]

Highly, highly variable.

Two of my better pieces were done in a couple days, Pachelbel's Ganon and Love Hurts, but Consent took a really long time, and my most recent mix for VotL took over a year. On and off, of course, but when I get stuck, it can be a huge demotivator. In the case of Short Skirts, I didn't know what to follow Jesse's guit solo with... I liked it perhaps too much, and couldn't find something that could hang. I think the combination of vibes plus livening up the drums was the right way to go, but damn if I didn't try at least fifty other ideas first.

Bottom line is that, for me, it can take days, weeks, months, or even a year, but the total amount of time doesn't necessarily guarantee that the mix is any better, or worse, if it's longer vs. shorter.

[Flexstyle]

I measure my working time in total hours. Usually my projects (remixes and original) take at least 40 hours, but sometimes a lot more. This is usually spread out over the course of 3-12 days in general, but some mixes have taken me a couple weeks to finish. This with at LEAST 80 hours or so of working on it.

[zircon]

Agreed w/ Dave. "Calamitous Judgment" came together in a matter of weeks, as did "Monstrous Turtles". "Nomura Limit" was more like 3-4 days. "Above Reason" basically took over a year, on the other hand.

It all boils down to inspiration... most of the time, when I'm working on a remix, when I actually have an idea I can execute it VERY quickly. I have that down to a science. But most of my time is spent without any ideas, sitting at an arbitrary point in the song and listening to it over and over to see if I can figure out what to do next (or perhaps I've done one section and need a section to precede it.)

With this in mind, I suppose I spend most of my time on arrangement - mixing/mastering goes by pretty quick as I generally do it as I go. There are exceptions, though. For example, in my new Megaman 2 remix in the WIP forums, I've spent a great deal of time getting the right mix/frequency balance and setting up killer drum sounds, because those are really crucial to the track overall.

[JH Sounds]

I don't think I've ever spent more than 40 minutes on a mix.

[Tensei]

Of all my mixes that are more or less complete now in terms of arrangement it never took more than a week to get the arrangement 95% done. The production and tweaking is a whoooole different story though.

[Fishy]

Omnislash took 2/3 weeks...

Basically every now and then I have a sudden inspiration and i'll get loads done all at once and then ignore it for anything up to a year. Sometimes I get it done very quickly, sometimes I don't.

[Dhsu]

I try to finish my arrangements in a day or two, because otherwise I'm afraid all my inspiration and ideas will just leak out of my ears when I go to sleep. Sometimes that meant staying at the piano lab for 8 hours straight and waking up with marks on my face and arms realizing I just drooled all over the keyboard.

Hey, nobody said making video game piano arrangements was glamorous.

[OceansAndrew]

Arrangement takes a few days, production has traditionally taken forever.

However, now that I am learning Logic, production is much easier.

Overall a mix takes about a month or two for me right now, but it's speeding up a lot.

[Sir_NutS]

The ones on the site, months, with the exception of Welcome to the Metropolis.

Usually a good mix takes months for me, mostly because I get lazy, but also because they require quite some work.

[Vurez]

A couple of days, couple of weeks, or a few months for me. I found it's taking much longer for me to finish an arrangement now than when I first started. It's partly because I just used Reason in the beginning and it's really quick and easy to work with. Now I moved on to Cubase using Kontakt, GVI and various VSTs and it takes FOREVER to finish a mix in that environment.

[Harmony]

3 months is probably my average. The first half of that is usually arranging and generally deciding on a direction for the mix. Practicing a solo part on piano or guitar, or working out the harmonies for an accompaniment is a big chunk as well. I also end up doing a lot of playing around that really doesn't end up in the mix. If I get a sweet bassline going for example, I might end up drumming away to it for an hour, just having fun and not really recording anything. I <3 MIDI drums.

By far though, the biggest portion of my time gets put into making all of my cheap/free gear sound slightly less cheap/free. Noise reduction on vocals and guitar, EQ on anything having to do with my el cheapo mic, pitch correction for my pitifully untrained voice, applying automation and plugin after plugin to get my predominantly soundfont based samples to sound a little more robust, final mastering, etc etc. Very time consuming, but fun, and I think worth it.

[suzumebachi]

there is no set time for me. it's done when it's done. to give you an idea of what i mean, here's how long each of my OC ReMixes took to make:

Ultima Online CreateDeconstruct OC ReMix: 2-3 days

Chrono Trigger Forever OC ReMix: a little over a month

Xenogears Heart-Felt Recollections OC ReMix: a week

Kirby's Adventure The Ballad of Sir Kibbles OC ReMix (and bits and bits and bits): 6 months or so

Final Fantasy VI Lamentations OC ReMix: 3 years

Highway Hunter The Final Stretch OC ReMix: 3-4 days

Final Fantasy VII Black Wing Metamorphosis OC ReMix: my part took about an hour, as for the whole, you'd have to ask spekko

Final Fantasy VII Scenes From A Memory OC ReMix (to be posted): 1 1/2 years

[The wingless]

It varies a bit, but I think the least amount of time was like 2 weeks. The longest was probably 3 months

This song I'm working on now (and no, it's not the Portal song... just yet) was 66% completed before, probably over a period of about a month. Now I'm adding and tweaking a little bit everday. About 30 minutes to an hour a day, which is a pittance in the grand scheme of things.

Writing the music is easy. Tweaking, leveling, ornamenting, and creating subtlety is the loooooooooooooong of it.