Hey Musicians? How Do You Know How Long A Song Should Be?

I like to go for as long as humans are able to endure and then add a section arbitrarily on top of that

I try never to record a song that is over 2 and a half minutes. If the 4-track counter has gone past 80, it's time to rewind and record the next track. I usually end up just keeping bits of what I've recorded or break up a track into two or three songs.

oops i like to make em short and sweet. i have a short attention span and im willing to bet most of the people that listen to me do too.

Can we expand this question beyond "songs", eg into improvised and composed music? Not all music has choruses.

Hmm, I think it's mostly instinctive. It goes for as long as it sounds right to me, and then it ends. The only time that isn't the case is when I'm writing something that's based on a form (like a sonata), and then the form determines the length to a certain extent.

Well, I do sample-based instrumental stuff that only involves vague 'hooks' at most. I still think in terms of pop so I do end up making judgements on "song"-structure and how loops should repeat and such. A track is really just a chaotic cluster of potentially related ideas..... most of them die along the way but you begin to organize the mess that's left and snap pieces together so its not just soup. At that point you're left with 1 of 2 scenarios... the track is rambling, or the track is for people with really short attention spans... it really depends on how you spread yourself. At this point comes editing until you feel you have the right time-to-variation ratio. Mine tends to be sort of Avalanches-level with a lot of stuff flying around all the time but I'm sure others would go for something more minimalist or whatever.

Jeff - the expansion is implied in the qn, which is why I said "for example" when I mentioned choruses. Improvisers should answer too of course!

(mine is all improvised...but still not for more than 2 and a half minutes!)

Long enough to cover everything, but short enough to catch the eye.

I'm sorry...

Anyone trying to write pop (inc. r&b) always has this dread of exceeding four minutes - that being about tops for the '7 inch' format required by radio stations. A great example of this is the fantastic single by Moony which fades, abruptly, at 4.02. Each time I listen to it I think 'what a shit fade' and that the track should have carried on for another 30 secs-1 minute. But clearly they were desperate to keep the length down.

I think some choruses carry on too long because the people who wrote them are just too in love with their own creations so don't want them to end even though common sense tells them they should.

I'm a merciless editor--I like editing my own songs and other people's. I'm rarely comfortable when a song I've written comes out to be more than about 2 1/2 minutes long.

Tom - I know, I was just poking fun...

To answer the question then, yes the same thing has struck me as struck you, but often the context determines the length. For example, when I commented on a friend's recordings that the tracks wore out their welcome 2 or 3 (or 10!) minutes before they ended, he pointed out that the pieces were envisaged by him as being "systems", the sort of pieces he could imagine playing as a slowly evolving "installation" in a gallery for hours on end.

It is true that genuine systems music, like 60s and 70s Steve Reich for example, does work best when the system is allowed to unfold and the music is allowed to becoming hypnotic. That's when it's at its most powerful. The same thing in just three minutes just wouldn't work.

Also, what dominique said.

Music that is created for the single format/radio play (i.e., catchy and accessible) should be short (<3:30), music that tries to build an atmosphere rather than fit within a "song" template should be repetitive and long (>7 min). Music that is made for DJ mixing needs at least 1:30m extra both at the beginning and end, and at least two tension-release cycles (>8 min). Punk songs should not exceed 3 minutes. Grindcore songs should not exceed 1 minute.

To hear an amazing example of a brilliant track damaged by excessive length, I invite everyone to find/download the track Pulse by Amara. This is a monster of a track (10:20) which takes almost 4 (four!) teaser filled minutes to build up to that wonderful pumping main theme. At least one minute should have been cut out. After that it's the usual high energy roller coaster ride with another 3 (three!) tension-release cycles, at least one too many. I've heard this track played in clubs and DJs tend to mix this in somewhere at the 2:30 mark, and mix it out before after two cycles.

karlheinz stockhausen to thread!

nam june paik wrote a piece of music called "symphony to last a million years"

I just know.

I've lately become more into editing my songs, shortening bridges and removing meandering passages for a more pleasing and complete musical journey. most of my songs are gtr/kybrd, vox, and drums. the pop/rock verse-chorus repeat form started getting old to me a long time ago tho I still utilize it when it works. I'm more likely now to have a iii part song w/o returning to a section after departure (which of course is a form itself). but I'm also likely to do an eight-minute song based on one riff, so I can't say I dislike repetition (when doing something like that on stage I usually stop when I start feeling self-conscious about how long it is or if I feel I've said all I had to say). I don't have a hard time listening to a side or two of Reich, so I don't feel bad about putting something like that on a record. I usually trust the ideas and my own personal flow. and I think David was right-on about ppl being in love with their choruses. sometimes a chorus is repeated so much it seems the writers thot the song could only be heard once.

I used to have this problem where I'd write moderately slow and ostensibly "hypnotic" tracks with lots of space to them: I'd demo them and realize after verse-chorus, verse-chorus that I was already at the 4 minute mark. I also used to go pretty heavy on stiffly organized vertical-integration stuff -- e.g. guitar figure for four bars, add drums for next four, add organ for next four, etc. -- which can eat up a lot of time and is really only effective if the actual texture and sound of what you're doing is really interesting on its own.

To answer overall, though, I think it really really depends on the mode of production. When I was working with a four-track I did short snappy 2-minute pop songs. When I was recording live onto a PC multi- tracker I'd do four to six minutes so I'd have time to feature all the extra instrumentation and arrangement I could fit into the additional tracks -- plus, unlike live-to-tape, you can just cut-and- paste to expand sections for whatever purposes. These days I'm doing a lot more with programming, which presents weird dilemmas: sometimes I spend weeks and weeks programming out a hyper-precise two minutes and then stop there because from there on I'd need to program in a big change (and once the architecture of the programming gets really complex, it's sort of daunting and brain-hurty to go back in and figure out where you put everything and reorganize it for a bridge); but on the other hand sometimes I wind up programming out so many parts, sections, bits, and fills that I could arrange the track for 10 minutes without repeating anything.

Choruses should be repeated absolutely no more than 3 times. Twice, preferably. I've written a couple of songs that are upwards of five minutes but they have long instrumental breaks and are rather slow. The pop songs are all 3 minutes or less. 2 minutes 20 = perfect length for a pop song.

I'm always trying to bring tunes in under 4 minutes, preferably around the 3 minute mark. Choruses only two or three times at a push and two verses.

The structure often seems to be: intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, breakdown (or middle eight), coda.

I know I should probably move into a chorus before the coda, but it never feels right.

Not all music has choruses.

This is where so much music goes wrong. You know you have finished once you have gone verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, break, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus fading out. If that takes more than three minutes you should play faster. I don't know why people have to complicate things beyond this.

You forgot the intro and you have one too many verses (the last one isn't required).

i have a pathetically short attention span. hence my music is almost always under three minutes long.

We have only written two songs, and only one of them has words. This we have tried to record on tape; it was nine minutes long. The other we made up on the spot last night in boredom. I think they are both too long and will need editing.