Just a quick question for the thousands of lovely SCOREcast readers out there:What’s your batting average?
Or, rather, how many minutes of finished music can you crank out in a day?
Note: for ‘crank out’, read: craft, create, splurge, sketch, mix, master, etc. – I’m being deliberately vague here to leave the forum open 
It’s important for planning your workflow and schedule to know what your average is. I read in the comments (really sorry, can’t find it for the moment!) for one of the recent posts here on SCOREcast that one chap knows what his music-making output is per hour – that’s super-aware!
I know for a fact that I make more usable music in the earlier hours of the day, and that later hours are best used for more low-level tasks, admin etc, so this hourly rate varies so much to not be a useful tool for me… but is it for you?
Also, on longer projects (as Deane et al have already stated) as the musical themes and flavour get under your skin, writing gets faster towards the end of the project. This is useful to know if only for your sanity at the start of the project when you’re looking at a blank sequence!
But, on the whole, knowing your daily average is most useful, I find. I know that on one day I may only make 2 minutes of decent score and the rest is waffle, but on another day there may be a new 10-minutes-worth of glorious musical loveliness, mixed and mastered, perfectly synced to score (though, trust me, this is more rare ). I can’t predict from one day to the next which it’ll be, but I do know that over a period of time, say, a month, it’ll be clearer what the per-day average is, and I can use that to plan the next project.
). I can’t predict from one day to the next which it’ll be, but I do know that over a period of time, say, a month, it’ll be clearer what the per-day average is, and I can use that to plan the next project.I used to average about a minute (if I’m completely honest, that was on a good day, if you know what I mean) when I first started out many years ago. Now it’s up to about 5 minutes or so.
So, let me know: what’s your batting average?
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Heather's response to this topic reminded me I still hadn't answered you Jim! Sorry about that. The score was pretty sparse. It featured an alto flute, with piano, and strings. The strings were 4-part, sometimes up to 6: violin, viola, cello, bass. In another place in the cue I changed it completely to include marimba, harp, pizzicato strings, and castanets (that was fun). But it never got above 1 dozen tracks or so, averaging around 6 tracks at once overall.
So yes, to hijack Heather's point, there is definitely for me a correlation between quantity and complexity.
Great comments, thanks people! So the general consensus appears to be a few minutes a day, it seems.
I was very interested to read daviddas' comment that he believes that there's an inverse correlation between quality and quantity. I think this is a tricky assessment to quantify, especially when talking about that sweet spot of between 1 and 3 minutes per day.
I might propose instead that there's an inverse correlation between quantity and complexity, but that sometimes the simplest pieces are the most apt for the job at hand, that 'less is more'. Complexity doesn't always equal quality, notwithstanding that we as composers often find the fun in the detail and can quite easily pick at a 20 second cue for an age if so taken
James,
I think 1.5 minutes per hour is an awesome pace! Was this for the 2B1 project? Can you give us an idea how many instruments you were scoring, and what sort of musical style?
I think if I were able to achieve 1.5 minutes/hour on a sustained basis, I'd be extremely happy!
That being said, I tend to compose in a very tweaky, very detailed manner. I'm quite aware that there are ways to work faster — what I need to get calibrated on is what customers consider to be acceptable.
Thing is, you can spend a lot of time polishing end end up losing big time. At dub time, the customer can still bury the music you're most proud of under other elements of a soundtrack, put it at a very low level, or even leave it out altogether. So it seems like it might be better to shoot somewhere in the middle.
It depends on the project and the complexity of music, but I guess I'd say about two minutes a day for me. That includes the whole bit, from spotting, mapping out the cue, writing and sketching it, to sequencing and mixing. “Crunch time” helps, though, and I've been known to crank out as much as five or six minutes when that happens. Long-term, I'll basically take as much time as I'm given, which I suppose is true for about every composer.
As an example, similar to James, I completed about 20 minutes of music for a recent project in just slightly less than two weeks.
I've been fortunate so far to work on a couple of theatre projects where I've been involved very early on in the process, giving me plenty of time to write. I've found that how fast I write partially depends on how far along the project is in general, and I'm not just referring to the pressure the eleventh hour can bring. At an early stage, the whole project can seem like a mirage, far off in the distance—especially if you're working with an inexperienced director.
Of course, I prefer these challenges to the alternatives—one of them being not getting hired at all!
Conventional wisdom is a few minutes of music a day. In reality, it varies widely, depending upon the type of score and the intensity of the music. It's also an inverse correlation between quantity and quality. I could write 60 minutes of music in a day, but it's not going to be very good — it's going to be repetitive, uninspired, and not very detailed.
Conversely, if I only have to write 1 minute of music in a day, I can get all the detail work done that I want and make it sound as good as I dream it can be.
I prefer the latter of course, but there's all kinds of shades of gray in between that get imposed by deadlines and other realities of life.
I had an assistant once who came from the world of rock 'n roll—a serious veteran guitarist who was making the switch to film composing. One of the early shock-moments for him was just how *quickly* cues have to be cranked out in our world. He'd been in film scoring classes, where he had to write maybe a cue a week, and had sort of become accustomed to that schedule. Quite a difference between school and the real world on that account… and I think it's a shortcoming of most film-scoring curricula not to give students at least a taste of the true pace of the Real World.
Soon after that we did our first recording session, and again I think it was a real eye-opener for my assistant: the pace at which we were recording was completely different than what he'd experienced making albums.
Of course, there's a lot more “finding it at the session” that goes on in album-world. Much of the magic of an album happens as a result of experimenting in the studio, whereas a scoring session aims to minimize those kinds of changes (for most situations it's simply too expensive to keep several dozen musicians—all of whom are being paid for their time—waiting!).
Wandered a little off-topic, but Ben's point is an important one. We're all creating music, but the method is radically different. Measuring our “batting average” is a good benchmark, and important for us to know, at least in some general sense.
BTW, when I first wrote that last paragraph, I typed “battling average.” Not sure that wasn't an even better description.
Yeah it really varies for me too, largely depending on the project. On one day I worked up a 6-part a capella arrangement of an existing tune, with full notation, printed on sheet music, and a demo track in about 8 hours. Another piece for a CD project took me about 6 weeks to complete- about 6 minutes long, fully orchestrated. That's partly though because I was only able to work a couple hours per day on it, which actually applies to me in general since I don't compose full-time.
That said, I averaged about 1.5 minutes per hour on my recent scoring project- that's per hour of sitting there working on it. I wonder (and sort of doubt!) if given 12 hours if I could produce 12-18 minutes of solid score music! As it was, because I have to work in spurts, it took me just over 2 weeks to do 20 minutes of music for the above scoring project.
Heather, great post. I think the most important thing to take away is we should figure out our own batting average using whatever scale makes sense! I did, and it helped me to keep from overcommitting. Perhaps more importantly though, I now have this information for next time.
Hi Ben – great comment!
I really wanted to leave it open to anyone and everyone who responded to be as specific as they needed about how finished a product they expect to write in a day (personally I mean a product that's a least semi-mixed, at least good enough to go to mix there and then).
When specifically composing to picture I find it really does help to plan this way, however, in your case it's a completely different setup (rock/band style recordings), so thinking in terms of minutes-per-day may not be helpful, but rather, as per your example, in songs-per-month.
Interesting question, I'd like to encourage people to be clear about what is meant by 'crank out' in any given situation as I find it a confusing concept.
I'm yet to do a film score, but I've done lots of rock/band style recordings, and turning out x minutes per day is just not a term that's ever been applicable.
(For those who may not have worked in this way, the usual process starts with writing/rehearsing/demoing 90% or more of the material, booking as much studio time as can budgeted for and then working backwards as to what has to be done in what time frame.
For an example, you might book 30 days to do 10 songs, mixing 1 song per day at the end, leaving 20 days to record; this might then be sub divided as 1st 4 days for drums, next 4 days for bass, next 4 days for guitars, next 4 days for keyboards and next 4 days for vocals.)
That being the case, I'm sure you can see why the idea of 'cranking out' x minutes per day leaves me with some further questions :-s