how much time do you put into your tracks?

[Rhua]

I'm just asking cause I feel like it always takes me an eternity just to lay down the drums and then find out how to put the samples on top. Just choosing a set of drums can take me half an hour, putting them into sequences at least another 30 minutes...
Most of the time I get a basic track together after 2 or 3 hours or so and have to come back another day to finish it.

I wish I had a better workflow, more often than not I put in a few hours of work and end up with half finished ideas on my hard drive :/

How does it work for you, do you put out a beat in an hour and move on or do you take your time to polish everything before you move on to the next track/song/beat whatever?

[Wonka]

Songs can take up to a week for me. One day to get ideas (drums, samples etc). Another day to decide what type of feeling I want to song to have (and finding more samples). And several days to organize the song (decide how the song's structure should be layed out) and to record it. I am almost never able to write a song in one day.

[tape smoke]

sometimes, 10 or 15 minutes and i make a banger , sometimes upto a week, and it turns out the same as a 15 minute beat.

[Teewok]

Usually takes about 1-2 hours for me to fully complete a beat. If things aren't working out within the first 15 mins I scrap it move to another sample - keep the drums

[hatym]

Same here it can take a long time or not. I don't scrap the samples though if nothing works, I'll leave them on some bank to think about and it's always happened that I'll come back to them and I can work them into something a week later.

This is after dealing with less space for a good few weeks though... :/

[Cornelius The Third]

am i the only one that rarely sequence drums first? thats always the last thing i do after sequencing my samples

and ehh idk it varies sometimes ill finish a beat in one session like hour or two other times ill never completely finish em or record em and maybe play em as loop jammys at shows, or just delete them when i need the banks for a new beat

[Teewok]

i sequence drums last too, makes a lot more sense to me as you can experiment with diff drum pattern over your chops and see what works best. I see youtube vids and stuff tho and yeah they always start with the drums first. I never do that.

[hatym]

Making the drums first sounds awkward.

[ALCscratch]

I usually use the complete sample all the way through. original drums and all. takes me about 20 minutes to get something together. Then the samples will sit on my SP forever (6 months or so) until I decide after playing the songs over and over again whether they are good enough to graduate to the MPC or get deleted.

some tracks will be done and put out within an hour though. Most of the stuff I do purely on the SP stays on the SP because it's a pain in the ass to clear the banks on the 303.

The MPC has a much faster work flow because of the deleting capabilities are quicker. But it's more fun to use the SP effects.

[Rhua]

Hmmmm, maybe I'll have to rethink my approach a bit and start fixing the samples first and then find the fitting drums to it instead of the other way around. That said it already makes ore sense to me now ;D Most of the time I chose all my drums and samples before I got to work maybe cause I feared that I get too distracted if I start looking for more fitting sample in midst of the process.

[KOMSAT]

I generally lay a skeleton drum pattern first then bring in my samples and synths and effects and blah then rework the drums to better fit the fuller mix.

Usually it takes me an hour or two to come up with a general outline and then WAY TOO MANY DAYS to finish it. I get antsy and if I don't have a beat "done" within a few days from starting it's probably never going to get there. I feel like once I get a better sequencing workflow I'll be cranking out several quality beats per week.

In the meantime, weep for my hard drive beat orphans.

[Unfolding]

Hmmmm, maybe I'll have to rethink my approach a bit and start fixing the samples first and then find the fitting drums to it instead of the other way around.

Perhaps another way is to resample your drum hits with the other sounds you plan on using... For instance:
pad 1 plays: kick drum & bass hit
pad 2 plays: same kick & legato strings hit
pad 3 plays: snare drum & guitar sound
pad 4 plays: closed hi-hat & record crackle
etc

That way jamming/sketching out your track the drums, rhythm & melody are written at the same time. But then again, there shouldn't be anything stopping you from ONLY arranging drums or rhythm/melody samples first. Try to vary what you do from track-to-track to keep things fresh & you'll be OK.

[Rhua]

I know what you mean and I've tried that but if I remember right, I felt like could flip some cool stuff with that, alright. But to do some switch ups on the drums or samples I'd have to resample everything again in another order cause the drums are bound to the samples.

But you gave me an idea right there, I could have like a main frame built out of drums layered with samples as you suggested and some extra samples and some extra drums each on their own to paly along with that and give it some twists. Awesome, now I've got two methods I have to try out!

[Wonka]

Hmmmm, maybe I'll have to rethink my approach a bit and start fixing the samples first and then find the fitting drums to it instead of the other way around.

Perhaps another way is to resample your drum hits with the other sounds you plan on using... For instance:
pad 1 plays: kick drum & bass hit
pad 2 plays: same kick & legato strings hit
pad 3 plays: snare drum & guitar sound
pad 4 plays: closed hi-hat & record crackle
etc

That way jamming/sketching out your track the drums, rhythm & melody are written at the same time. But then again, there shouldn't be anything stopping you from ONLY arranging drums or rhythm/melody samples first. Try to vary what you do from track-to-track to keep things fresh & you'll be OK.

Tried that a while back and it is definately a fun way to approach a song.

[kel]

usually takes me about 2 hours to get a good grip on the song, less if i can hear it in my head beforehand. but sometimes i stumble into something cool in a matter of minutes. i always do my drums last as well (probably cuz i hate writing drum patterns). if i start out messing with drums and get a dope kit or loop, i'll remember it and push aside for later. I'm more about tuning/combining musical samples and rearranging chops... drums are not my specialty.

off topic, but for peeps w/ mpc/sp combos... a few days ago i changed my setup a little bit. now the 404 is the last stop for the sample. my new signal flow is.. sample source to mpc to sp to protools to monitors. several advantages....

realtime pitch,
better filters/adsr,
swing/quantize,
vinyl sim in my monitors as i work,
can be played live w/ 404 alone(preferred by me),
perform on mpc and 404 at the same time (ext source on) when going to tape,
sample long phrases and skip around very quickly with tap tempo/jog wheel in trim mode on the mpc,
save changes on mpc (no searching for og samples later, makes me less lazy, somehow i can remember where to retrieve specific samples on my mpc cf cards even if i can't remember what i had for breakfast this morning)

workflow is also faster because i propped up the sp using some books and leaned it against upper part of table above mpc (2500) screen. now it looks like one big machine and i don't have to move around, and more room for my tt and synth as well...