You can toil for hours over a section that will take three seconds in performance; then in a few minutes you can write a few bars of a slow movement that will last for half a minute.
Even with notation software playback, it’s important to step back and recognize the real time of the music you’re writing. It’s really easy to let the time you take to write a section to color your subjective sense of how long it lasts.
When that happens, you cannot effectively gauge the listener’s experience of the music. Only when you assess the real time of the section do you know if it’s too long, too short, or just right in length. When you really engage with real time, you might say:
- “That passage lasts too long.”
- “I didn’t give the listener enough time to process that section.”
- “The cadence happened too quickly.”
- “The development happens too slowly – I’ll lose the audience’s attention.”
The same, of course, is true for plays, essays, speeches, and any other work of art that incorporates the passage of time in its presentation.