How long does it take you to finish a piece?

I'm a slow writer too - I have to be in the mood, it has to be morning (I can't write late in the evening )... there are too many parameters. And I usually spend a couple of hours that day just for starting the piece. It definitely depends on the piece i.e. music period (whether its baroque, classical, romantic or modern composition) i.e. instrumentation - I'm faster on piano music and pretty slow on string quartets. At the moment I'm struggling on Haydn-like string quartet in d minor, and it's really a painful experience

It depends on the piece. I can plunk out an interesting piece in the timespan of a class (whoops... guess that's why I got a D in that one), but notating it and cleaning it up to make sense is a whole other story...

And then there's revisions.

If you learn your music theory backwards and forwards, the notation aspect becomes a non-issue and actually saves you time. I recomend intense musical theory study for any composer no matter their age or experience level untill they know all of it.

[Goes off to read a music theory book.]

The longest it's taken me is about.. a few months?

Though, I rarely start music, unless I have something that doesn't sound like shit, which itself is rare.

For me personally, it depends on what i'm writing. Some nights, i can write a whole 3-5 minute piece in an evening. Unless the melody just doesn't come to me, or there is some other area of difficulty (i.e. harmony) I can usually finish a piece quite quickly. I even can put all phrasing, articulation, and dynamics in within a day or two. Now this is for piano. when i orchestrate something.. well.. that obviously takes MUCH longer. Probably around a month or two.

It depends on how inspired I am at the moment. Most of my work now is for clients (I'm a workaholic too) so sadly I don't leave much time for composition just for the fun of it. On my website (. : : Madsen Studios : : .) I have several trailers that were written in a matter of hours.

Mushi-shi took 8 hours

Glass Fleet took 6 hours

Tsubasa took about 12 hours.

Aquarion took about 14 hours or so. I was also working with EW Symphonic Choirs for the first time so there was some learning curve going on.

Just for example. Keep in mind that is starting with no audio and seeing the trailer for the first time. Then I begin to draft ideas, select patches, polish up the music and then begin to produce the audio.

I don't always work so fast- but writing to media seems to be my niche. I really enjoy seeing how sound and visuals come together.

I am planning on writing a larger piece just for myself. Once I get something pulled together, I'll share it with you all!

Thanks,

Nathan

So all that stuff on your website was made with EW?! Wow. I need to get that.

It was made with East West and VSL and some Logic or Sonar synths that I tweaked the crap out of. At times I would also use some stuff from Reason 4. But yes, those samples can make some incredible sounds!

I write relatively short pieces (ranging from 3-5 minutes) with a modest ensemble of instruments, so if I know exactly the direction I want to take a piece, I can have a polished copy finished in a matter of days, working about 1-2 hours at a time, if not more.

The fastest time I achieved writing a song was 2 weeks (and it's not "classical"/"serious" music). If we're talking about really "serious" music of considerably ambitious length, it could takes around 2 months the fastest to about a year (or more) for me.