TAXI.com

Whether its for film, TV, or just a song being recorded. How long is too long before I have to "trim the fat" in other words.

On a song I'm working on now, the intro is 42 seconds long. Granted, its because the tempo is slower yet inviting however, I don't want it to be too long for radio airplay.

So as a rule of thumb, how long should an intro be?

Fox wrote:Whether its for film, TV, or just a song being recorded. How long is too long before I have to "trim the fat" in other words.

On a song I'm working on now, the intro is 42 seconds long. Granted, its because the tempo is slower yet inviting however, I don't want it to be too long for radio airplay.

So as a rule of thumb, how long should an intro be?

you'll probably get a variety of opinions in reply to this question.
I'll just address mine regarding songs; and even then, it may vary depending on genre.
IMHO - by 10 seconds in, I wanna start hearing the story you're gonna tell/sing.
GREAT songs hook you by the 2nd, or maybe, the 3rd note of the Intro.
One of the/our Taxi gang recently achieved that (again, just my opinion) with this offering:
https://soundcloud.com/paulbergren/i-ne ... k-from-you

(they actually have a 5-note riff... but it's an instant "hook"... they get you right "into it"!)

hth;
your mileage may vary.... or, you may need bigger thumbs, as a rule.

Instrumentals I try to keep to a 2 bar intro, possibly 4 at the most.
Same for songs

I suggest you take your intro and make it an instrumental break after your second chorus, and shorten the intro perhaps using bar 42-46 as a lead in.

Outside of TAXI screeners and peeps on P2P here, most music biz prof who might review your music will decide within a few seconds whether to go on listening. Best not to be ignored because you haven't gotten to the 'meat & potatoes' within a reasonable time.

JMHO
H.

Keep 'em short. For a vocal song, you really don't want the singing to start much more than 10-12 seconds in. 4 bars is a general guide (# of bars is tempo dependent of course).

Vikki made a great point that intros should be even shorter for instrumental cues. Get to the meat. Just to add to that, often if I take the no-vocal backing track from a song to use as an instrumental cue, I'll remove the intro bars altogether since they often are identical to the verse.

Never pitch a song to a library or publisher with some 20 or 30 seconds of intro!!

Casey

In general as short as possible while still making it work musically. There can be exceptions though. For example not long ago I did a series of Post Rock instrumentals as a work for hire for a publisher and he consistently wanted longer intros, I was keeping them short because I've always thought short intros were the rule but not in this particular case.

eo

I tested it at a bit of a faster tempo, came down to 35-36 seconds. I'm not sure if any of you are aware but this is concerning a pop punk song of mine that I had a slower tempo in mind, but then again I've seen 4 minute songs get airplay on FM stations, but a general rule of thumb I think is a 2 or 3 minute bracket.

Fox wrote:I tested it at a bit of a faster tempo, came down to 35-36 seconds. I'm not sure if any of you are aware but this is concerning a pop punk song of mine that I had a slower tempo in mind, but then again I've seen 4 minute songs get airplay on FM stations, but a general rule of thumb I think is a 2 or 3 minute bracket.

If you are asking regarding a specific song/piece of music, it would be helpful if you were to post a link to the item in question.
Likewise, if you are preparing something for a particular listing, it's always a good idea to include when posting here
the entire text of the the listing AND your track,
for proper review and comment.
hth,
cheers.

The short answer: not any longer than it needs to be.

Keep it short and better still...... Unique

It can be an instant identifier to the listener
Treat this section as important

Don

I remember listening to Blink 182's Buddha demo, the first song "Carousel." had an intro as long as 40 seconds into the song.

But then again the song was short