Quote:
Originally Posted by
danbronson
The length of a song is pretty much determined by the beginning stages of writing it....
I agree. You're probably better off just writing new stuff from scratch that fits the 3:30 goal than trying too hard to widdle down the longer stuff you already have.
I actually really LIKE the 3:30 limit because, in my opinion, most independant tunes I hear in my daily stumblings are almost ALWAYS too long... too much repetition... too much stuff that is just not exciting and totally unnecessary. And it harms the end result. Even good friends of mine who are extremely talented musicians and write great stuff, I could probably take any one of their songs and chop out a full minute easily if not cut the song in half and make it MUCH BETTER in the process. Of course this is just my opinion but I feel pretty strongly about it.
I surely dig the whole part about "music is art"... indeed... but I think, at least in a lot of cases, the artist tends to self indulge a bit when composing... the artist can get too "artsy", worrying too much about the trees and not seeing the forest and all that. This is where a good outside PRODUCER / arranger can really come in handy to help aid the artist in properly presenting the strongest ideas in the best and most concise manner chopping off all the junk that is just unnecessary and counter-productive.
Finally, if the goal is to let the art run free, then one should not be getting involved with situations that pose time limits. Perhaps save your longer more artful songs for a different project, and write some newer shorter things for the people with the time limit.
Less is more... it really is. Many Beatle songs are between 2 and 3 minutes in length if I remember correctly, a few even under 2 minutes I think.... maybe go back and listen to some of that stuff for inspiration. They get right to the point, intros and such are super short and super effective, it all works beautifully, very intense, like a focused laser beam... that's the way to do it.