when i started ohbing in 2018, i was slow with the tools i used and only got 10-15 seconds done in an hour.
nowadays i can compose 2 minute long songs with a lot of variation and im sure regular ohbs made me more skilled and quicker on the tools i use.

had this convo in chat with some people, and some said they still work slow even after years of ohbing, others feel the same as me.

wld like to know from more people!!

marginally faster. the more useful and salient property is that ohbs forced me to actually finish my work instead of continually making minor tweaks and then burning out on the project and leaving it to fester on my hard drive never to see the light of day

i think i improved quickly at being able to fill up time. like within a few months of weekly one hour compos, i was able to do 2 minute songs, but with lots of repetition. from that point, i focused more on improving my composition, which ends up slowing things down. now, i try to make complex and fulfilling (to me) compositions, and trying new things i've never tried before, both of which take more time so i often end up making around 1 minute.

OHBing helped me / forces us to identify the ways in which we have been using tools inefficiently, and correct them, which saves time in the long run. But I agree with nicole in that it's actually more fun for me when composing to take my time with some of the work.

I think one other thing it highlighted for me is the habits I fall into when I'm rushed or uninspired. A lot of my OHB tracks have a similar structure of composition / similar ideas to one another...

oh yeah definitely, i’ve gotten much more efficient with my composing, even for non xhb songs.

this is yet to happen

maybe

It most certainly did. I went from doubting my ability to even make an original song when I first joined, to being able to crank out a (sometimes) decent song in an hour or less.

I think OHBing made me realize that I tend to compose my best music when I am provided with a clear theme or direction.

I was already pretty fast, but I'd still say doing OHB's made me faster/ more efficient at translating ideas to notes in the DAW; the time pressure really helps a lot in that regard.

I wish I could say yes, since I don't perform badly on OHBs, but whenever I compose for a major I take ages again ;_; .

I think you need to approach the ohb with the right mindset to improve your composing skills/speed. Sometimes I do, sometimes not. I still did improve a lot at making music and making it fast though.

OHBing is an absolutely amazing way to develop workflow. needing to work quickly means coming up with processes that create as little friction for you as possible while getting your musical goals done. I would say I learn a lot from both OHBs and larger/longer works in that way, but as a social and creative impetus the OHB is powerful.

it's definitely true that OHBing helped me learn to compose/write quickly, much more quickly even, but more nuanced stuff still takes time I rarely like to spend in the OHB setting. I can write quickly if I have to, but I love spending time in the weeds fiddling about. in fact I might go so far as to say that many of my favorite formats to OHB are ones in which I can come up with something cool by spending time in the weeds fiddling about. BUT yes overall I can and do write more quickly, and my compositional processes are all so streamlined now in ways they were not before. I'm still capable of spending a billion years on one song though, every now and then :D

if u listen to my old ohb entries (god forbid) you'll discover how simplistic and repetitive they were, compared to now... so, the more ohbs i did, the easier those patterns became and the more i felt compelled to add on more things, change some chords, or try something new. at this point i think ohbs have made me faster yes, but only in the context of ohbs. somehow it has made my "outside ohbs" composing take much much longer, whether it be from my standards becoming so high or my expectation that composing should take no more than an hour.

I am honestly not sure but I consider myself not particularly fast at making music even though I do occasionally get into that flow state which feels pretty cool

the main fruit from ohbs for me has been just an increase in familiarity with the software being used. ideas and notes mainly come and go at the same speed they have always done.

I agree with GT&P for the most part, but sometimes the notes come pretty fast for me and the cap is on getting them out before they get garbled. So yes definitely

is more like, i am shy and dont participate in ohbs yet because i am very slow c,:

writing ohb tunes and writing non-ohb tunes are such different processes for me that i don't really know if it did make me quicker. in ohbing i tend to fall into easy familiar patterns, but normally when i'm songwriting i like to take my time and explore a little more. for me ohbing does exercise the muscle of committing to something and rolling with it even if you're not feeling totally sure and inspired about it though, and a lot of the time the end result of that does end up being cool in some way

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes it did in that it got me to think more quickly about producing something... but sometimes I just don't get that spark of creativity with what I'm provided. And these days, my participation in them is less common mostly because of either setup times cutting into the process or just not having that spark to make something. That, and I have other stuff I am attending to.

With ohbs, I'm a lot less careful. I'm not thinking "does this sound good?", I'm thinking "does this sound okay" and that ends up making a huge difference. With personal music without a time limit I'm a lot more relaxed and intentional with everything I do where as with ohbs I'm just trying to get stuff onto the tracker as fast as possible. I usually prefer making unique instruments for every project and using speed 1-4 in famitracker, and that workflow just simply isn't all that sustainable for ohbs. Ohbs have just made me faster at ohbs.

I'm definitely not a fast composer by any stretch, but joining BotB and doing OHBs basically lifted a decade-long "writer's block" in which I was almost never able to finish a track at all. So the answer, in a sense, is "yes, extremely."

It hasn't come up too often in conversation, but when it does, I always try and point people towards BotB and encourage folks to try OHBs, since it's a) less hard than it sounds, b) super-fun, and c) teaches you to accept that things aren't gonna sound perfect and that's OK. That third one is what flipped the switch for me and got me to actually be able to finish stuff.

Yes. In retrospect, it also extended to all other areas of my life, in that I developed an attitude that it's better to aim for consistency over quality.

what i have seen is that xhb usually helping on the priorities in the workflow, as what to do first and so on

It's helped me realize what you should start with to make a relatively good song (for me, I start with either a Bass and Drum beat or I start with a melody. I usually have better results starting with a drumbeat than anything else.)

I agree with what Torin said. I have such a different mindset when I'm doing an OHB that it doesn't really translate to tunes I make without a time crunch. Unfortunately I'm usually incredibly slow at finishing songs for major battles.

I guess in terms of my physical technique (knowing commands, keyboard shortcuts, making fami instruments), OHBs helped me gain speed, but once i gained a base level of comfortability with trackers, the mindset aspect is a much bigger factor.