Yes, for the type of music that I do, it takes typically about 5 hours to complete a 30-45 second music loop with around 6-10 instrument tracks.
I understand that for SOME composers it can take as little as 30 minutes to produce 30 seconds of music, but I would question the quality, complexity, and appropriateness of such a track. I can produce 30 seconds of music in 30 minutes if I wanted to. Any composer could. Loop a simple drum loop over and over, come up with a simple melody, simple backing chords, duplicate it a few times. Don't edit it. Don't automate it. Don't mix it. Voila. 30 seconds of generic under-produced music that does nothing to improve my reputation as a composer, and barely meets my client's needs. I don't know about any other composers here, but that is not my approach!
Here are just a few hurdles that may factor in to your 30 seconds of music taking MUCH longer than 30 minutes to conceive, execute, and deliver:
- The client requires the song to loop in on itself seamlessly. Problem? This immediately restricts what kind of track you can make (suddenly your ideas for a frilly fantastic open-ended intro and ending are SHOT, because they don't conform to a seamless looping structure). Now you have to scrap your idea that took you 15 minutes to come up with, and start from scratch.
- The clients requires music that is for a specific genre, let's say Pirate music. What kind of pirate music? Happy? Serious? Epic? Comedic? Neutral? Ok, now I need to come up with a melody that is ORIGINAL (ie, not a Pirates of the Caribbean rip-off), but still awesome, and has all the signifiers of a pirate song. These signifiers include: What historically and thematically appropriate instrumentation should I use? What key should it be in, and what intervals, chord changes, and groove should I emphasize to signify to the listener that this is indeed a Pirate-specific song, and not some generic orchestral stuff? All of these decisions take time, research, and planning in order to execute properly and at a high-quality.
- The client requires historical ancient chinese music fused with modern electronic elements, and orchestral elements as well. Hoo boy! Ok, I need to come up with a NON-annoying, NON-generic ancient Chinese melody, and then somehow fuse that with a fast electronic track, and then layer on some epic orchestral stuff on top. And make it sound good. Since I'm not a super-expert on ancient chinese music, rather than pick the first cheesy cliche melody that comes to my head and run with it, I would instead take 30 to 60 minutes and research the theme thoroughly, see what my options are for production style references, and THEN start composing. Simply taking the extra time and effort to research or plan your approach is super important in my opinion, whether you bill your client for this time or not (I do).
- The client wants a very complex, active, and fast-paced orchestral arrangement to suit the battle scenes in his game. Problems? Very simply put, it simply takes MORE TIME to sequence MORE NOTES. Duh! A 30 second music loop consisting of 4 instruments, all playing whole note, half note, and quarter note melodies (yawn) IS NOT THE SAME AS a 30 second music loop consisting of 10 instruments, all playing 8th, 16th, and 32nd note melodies. And that's just SEQUENCING the notes, I'm not even talking about automating/editing the velocities, and other MIDI parameters, of EVERY NOTE in your track, so that your track breathes and isn't stale and lifeless.
- The client wants the SFX in the game to harmonize or be in the same key at least, as the music. The SFX have to be harmonious with the music and not jarring in any way. Problem? Depending on how 'harmonious' the client wants these two elements to be, it can be something of a minor struggle to compose music with this restriction. Suddenly your amazing composition doesn't quite jive as well as you want with the sound effects you've created.
Just based on those observations alone, I am still struggling to see how a typical music composer can compose/perform/edit/mix/master a high-quality, moderately complex 30 second music loop in 30 minutes, from conception, to delivery. Music can be a complex beast. Different key signatures, tempos, time signatures. Multiply that by the operations carried out by your DAW (every click, every drag, every slide, every render, every playback, every record pass, every thing!). And this is all assuming that your brain is pumping out ideas at the same speed that your hands can execute those ideas on screen (which rarely happens). That's a lot of mouse-clicks, folks. You can only click your mouse so many times in 30 minutes.
Am I alone here? Or is every music composer except myself capable of making 30 seconds of awesome music in 30 minutes? Am I missing something? Is there a speed-composing book I should be reading?