How long does it take you to finish a piece?

Title says it, basically: How long, on average, does it take you to completely begin and finish a piece?

I consider myself VERY slow. I can easily produce ideas but assembling them into a coherent, attractive picture takes a long time.

I do find writing for a text is easier as the text may guide you with the struture of the piece and even the rhythmic/melodic choices. So, after studying a short liturgical piece from my organ teacher, I wrote a nice Kyrie lasting about 1.5 minutes over a two week period (It will be part of a Mass).

The only "complete" piece I have posted on YC was a 3-4 min organ work which took about 7 months to write (between work and school asssignments), though technically even longer as I used some material I had written over a year ago for the piece. More recently I posted some variations for solo clarinet which are "temporarily" finished ( a work in progress if you will). The main part of it took about 2 weeks to write, revisions another 4 weeks. I took a break from it but am now writing a conclusion and verifying i one variation is doable.

ONe of my "issues" though is a tendency to overwrite or overedit. And I have taken composition seriously for about 4-5 years and only recently started taking classes at a music school (prior I studied privately).

What I see from more experienced composers is as you write more you will be able to write "decent" to "pretty good" pieces very quickly. These pieces would have been considered great ones by them earlier in their careers, but their standards (hopefully) improve, and /or tastes, philosophy change. So in the end, everyone feels like a beginner when starting anything new -- no matter how many times thay may have done something similar.

Years - if that. I can't say that I have a single piece that I don't think could be improved or revised in some way. Most of my pieces have very long compositional lifespans marked by constant revising and developing. My shortest time to complete a full piece was a day - longest time was 2 years.

if you don't only want input from "young" composers" but from some of the "old" ones as well, well, speaking for myself, I'm a rather slow writer.

It partially depends on what I'm writing.

I have gotten the thematic ideas for a 6-minute symphonic movement out in a single afternoon, while I've struggled on a 4-minute clarinet sonata movement for months.

On the other hand, the "offical" longest time it's taken me to write a single piece, from conception to final score, was my Requiem, clocking in at a little over 10 years to complete for one hour of music. After a partial premiere, the work was withdrawn.

I've knocked off "quicky" pieces in as little as an hour. Especialy if I'm not as gung-ho about the notation. While my 2nd symphony is giving me a bit of a work-out, since only the first three movements are finished, and I've been banging away at the 4th movement for nearly 3 years now. (Nevermind the 5th movement, which is still barely on the drawing board)

1st symphony took me three months, working 6 days a week, averaging 12-14 hrs/day.

Clarinet sonata took me around 3-4 months.

Cello sonata took a little less than a month, if I recall correctly. Although the work underwent major revisions at a later date.

I find that when I get "stuck" it's often on an "ending" section. I guess I'm just one of those composers who hates to say goodbye.

A long, long, time. I think I've only finished one complete piece for a student orchestra, which probably took me about two months working mostly on weekends. Usually by the time I've written a few pages, I decide that what I've written is so horrible that I just can't go further, so I've started lots of works, but rarely finish them.

I often write things very quickly(2 days), but I am slowing down now, which I think is just a sign of maturing on my part...

for a choral piece it's only a few months. For other things, who knows? I haven't really composed much that I'd actually have performed.

I can't give an average as it varies so much. For a sketch, it could be done in a few hours, but for a completely developed and orchestrated work, my fastest time is about 2 days (took a week to finalize). Or... 5 years (and counting).

oh wow--like foreverish..

I generally don't finish works :(. But when I do, it's takes a damned long time: 12-20 bars a day is extremely good going for me.

It's not so much the writing that takes so long for me, it's the revisions... :(

For a small instrumentation piece like Organ or Brass 5tet, a couple weeks. A few days if I'm fired up about it.

For an orchestra piece, a few months, a few weeks if I'm fired up about it.

For a choral piece, a few years, a few months of I'm fired up about it.

For an opera, never.

:D

Just remember, it took Brahms 20 years to write his First Symphony.

Very long, because I spend maybe a couple hours or less a week composing. 30 bars a week is average for me. Most of my pieces are quite short, though. I usually compose in short bursts.

I know, I'm slow, but composition is just something of a hobby for me, and not being trained in it makes it take longer.

For me, it absolutely depends on the piece. I haven't written loads of works or huge works, but for example it took me about two weeks' time to finish a solo clarinet, 3/4-minute piece (from sketches to highly-polished handwritten score), and it took me 4 days to write a 3-minute piece for nine instruments, because it was for a competition and the deadline was on a Friday, and I found out about the competition on the previous Monday. Pressure can be good some times, but I generally go by the adage we have here in Greece, "If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening my axe". So the preparation for the piece and gathering all the information I need will probably take me more time than writing the piece itself. :)

EDIT:

Just remember, it took Brahms 20 years to write his First Symphony.

Well, Brahms was quite the exceptional perfectionist, methinks. He destroyed many of his sketches/drafts/works because he didn't think of them as "worthy", so basically he kept re-writing and re-writing the symphony until he got something that he like 100% in the end. :P

I suddenly don't feel so bad about how long it usually takes me to write something. In the past I would spend a few months on a 3-4 minute song. Nowadays I'm in the habit of writing 1 minute pieces in a day or two.

I always thought I was spending way too much time trying to fix the things that I wrote, especially because I was rarely any happier with the result after each fix. I figure it's probably more productive to write a lot of music and if it's not perfect, screw it. Instead of trying to fix a piece until the end of time, nowadays I just look at what I wrote and note the things I liked and didn't like so that I can keep them in mind on the next piece.

Hi

I often have times like many of the people on here - short bursts of quick working and longer periods of frustration. I think there are so many parameters it is hard to say - pressure to complete something for someone else, or writing a hobby piece to make yourself proud will make a huge difference.

In general I write fast, but my stuff is often more about ideas getting thrown out there , than well-thought out developments and structures...although as I'm getting older these latter things start to appeal more and more.

I also find that my emotional attachment to pieces I'm writing only lasts so long, and then I lose my momentum. Unless I working for someone else, I find y own drive goes on a work after a few weeks - but having said that I tend to write smallish pieces, as I simply don't have time to write on 80 stave paper...much as I'd like to!

For me it all depends on how quickly the ideas flow. Sometimes I can pretty much write a whole piece in one long night, even for a decent-sized instrumentation, or I recently rattled off a 4 minute piece for solo recorder in one evening, but other things take me ages. I finished my three pieces for brass choir which vary somewhere between 3 and 7 minutes I think. First two I each finished in one month each, the last and longest one which was based on a text took two months. An 8 minute set of variations for horn and orchestra took a single month. Now I'm struggling on some piano solos, tuba sonata, and other stuff for a couple months now. Every once in a while I go back an add a couple measures to my brass quintet, but I just can't sit there and work on it, I get stuck.

So really, I work two ways. Either all in one go, which might take my anywhere between 1 evening and 2 months, or little by little just taking pecks at a piece when I feel like it, which my take... a year. :sadtears: I struggled with 2 movements of my bassoon duet in maybe two months or so, then hadn't touched it for 8 months or so, came back, and wrote two more even longer movements in one month. So go figure.

I like to take my time. Whenever I rush, crap just comes out. Also I have to be in the mood. If I'm not in the mood for writing a particular piece then crap is liable to come out then too. I took roughly 5 weeks on and off to write a 12 minute piece. The piece didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped due to rushing it through 5 weeks. But the first of the two movements (2-3 mins) took me about 2 days, and it turned out fine, although it was definitely a lot easier to write than the second one.

I have this terrible habit of beginning to rush my way to finishing a piece once the end is in sight.

Wow. A lot of responses, so thank you for that. I suddenly don't feel so bad for being so slow. :D

It really depends on what I'm writing for. If its only a little solo, generally, only a few hours. If it's a huge orchestral piece, then I take a "little" longer.

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 scraggy, 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.