How Many Minutes of Finished Music Can You Finish A Day?

Do you know your speed of writing music? Is your writing speed too slow to keep up with current music industry and costing you more money instead?

Last week I attended a google hangout hosted by Tom Holkenberg or also musically known as Junkie XL. In the hangout he talked about how he wrote the score for 300: The Rise of an Empire and also Divergent.

When being in the music scoring business, one has to be able to work quickly and deliver music before the deadline. In his hangout, Tom mentioned that he is able to score up to 3 minutes of finished music a day. That means he’ll be able to roughly finish scoring for a full feature film within a month or less.

So the question is how many minutes of finished music can you complete a day?

If you can barely even finish a minute of finished music a day, are you too slow? And if you can score near to 4-5 minutes of finished music per day, does the quality of your music suffer?

You’re Too Slow

There are many producers whom I know who really takes their time to produce music. It could take them near a month for them to finish with ONE piece!

While there is nothing wrong taking your time to write music, it just wouldn’t cut it for today’s music industry. It’s the same for business, speed is always king.

One way to make music fast is to make quick decisions. We sometimes spend too much time worrying if the guitar riff works or if that bass line would cut it.

Well the bottom line is we are afraid of producing something unlikable or undesirable. We want to get it perfect and sounding good for any listeners who will listen to your music. But wake up. There is no such thing as perfect in life and with the young & fierce competition we have in today’s world, you have to push your music out fast. You’ll never know the day you hear a 14 year old kid creating a world hit after spending 2 days in his house basement producing. The world as we know it, is that scary today.

You’re Fast. You Produce Music Like Flash

Then again I know many producers and home musicians who are able to create up to 5 minutes of finished music in a day or even a night.

If you can produce at this speed, I congratulate you. However so, you have to do a reality check on the quality of your music. Being able to produce music really fast is definitely good news for your label or for the director of the film you’re writing for but the quality of your music has to be top notch as well. Do too many rushed low quality music and you might go out of business sooner than you know.

In a nutshell it’s all really about the balance when it comes to the speed of creating music. Make quick wise decisions and move on. After all you might be requested to fix or redo your music compositions upon getting feedback from the label or director.

How fast do you write music? How many minutes can you finish a day? Comment below