Three-hour Song: The Result

To recap: Computer Music ran an article on recording a song in an hour, but I wanted to see if I could actually write the song and record it within a 3-hour time limit. After all, if you already have a song written and arranged, laying down a few tracks should actually be the easy part.

So, how did this experiment turn out? I'd say it was a mixed success. Although I ended up not timing myself (what was I thinking?), I'd estimate that the total time was somewhere between 3 and 4 hours, which is still not bad. But even finding those very few hours over the course of a week turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected, and finding time when the house was quiet enough to get some recording done was even harder. (You should see the black circles around my eyes this morning from staying up late to get this finished.)

So what did I learn? I guess there were some key points:

• Limiting yourself to a set time period won't do it for a multi-platinum selling CD, but it is a good way to force yourself to focus and get a song written and recorded.
• Templates rock. I had a couple track templates set up in Sonar Home Studio for vocals and guitar; after this, I'm going to also create templates for backing vocals, bass, and whatever else I can think of. This is definitely the fastest way to work, for me.
• One thing that worked to my advantage was my familiarity with my recording setup and with Sonar Home Studio. If I hadn't taken the time in the past to learn the program, this would have taken much, much longer.

So I'm sure you're at least slightly curious to hear the finished product. I'll get it posted and provide a link tonight. In the meantime, have a great day, and if you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to drop me a note!

Click here to take a listen. Hope you like it!