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Friday, March 11, 2011

Beginning. Middle. End.

Beginning. Middle. End. 

I can’t think of anything in life that doesn’t have each of these elements. Everything has a beginning – a Genesis, if you will.  Everything has a middle period and an eventual end. Movies, relationships, employment, and even life itself all begin and eventually end. Hell, even your vacations each year (assuming you go on vacations) have a start date and end date. I dare you to think of something that doesn’t have a beginning and an end (and a sweet nougat center). As you can imagine, I have found something that ALMOST fits the bill. Fade-out songs. 

So you are thinking to yourself – HUH? Fade out songs? WTF is a fade-out song?  <thinking> HUH?

OK. What I am referring to is a music song that does not have a specific ending, but only fades out until the arbitrary point in time when the band decided to stop recording. According to wiki, fading-out is a technique that serves as a recording solution for pieces of music that contain no obvious ending. There are literally thousands of songs that do this. A good example of a song that fades out is Hey Jude by The Beatles. That song fades out, literally, for a full 2 minutes. The volume of the naa-naa-naa-na-na-na-naa’s simply goes down incrementally for 2 full minutes before the song eventually just ends.

I have a pet peeve with fade-out songs (actually, if you read this blog long enough, you will see that I have a lot of pet peeves – including the use of the word pet peeve).  Anyway, the issue I take with fade-out songs is that to me, they represent lazy songwriting.  I suppose you are now questioning why I, being a nobody from nobody’s-ville, would dare to criticize some of the greatest artists and musicians of all time – most of which used this technique. In fact, some would say that The Beatles, only the most popular musical group of all time, really popularized this practice.

The real problem I have with fade-out songs is that the songwriters are literally taking away the natural progression of things (as I said above, everything has a beginning, middle, and end). While technically a fade-out ending is still an ending, it is probably the worst thing that could happen to the end of a song.  Even with a most satisfying song can be transferred into a shitty song by going with a fade-out; which is simply the most unsatisfying ending I can think of (unless you ask my wife - *RIMSHOT*). Seriously, though, if you think about it, even fade-out songs aren’t presented that way in concert. When is the last time you went to a concert and heard a song that faded out? The answer is NEVER. Songs that were recorded to fade out on an album, mysteriously have an ending in concert. Why, you ask. Because the natural progression of a song is to have an ending. You can’t just end a live song by fading it out into nothing. So, why should we stand for this lazy songwriting on recorded albums?

Now, a not-so-distant cousin of the fade-out song is the cut-off song. OK, I just made that name up, but if you listen to terrestrial radio, you may have heard what I mean by cut-off song. This is the song where you know there is more to the song (possibly a fade-out song) that is cut off by the DJ and his/her incessant ramblings. This is actually becoming a huge problem and why most people (including myself) rarely (if ever) listen to terrestrial radio. Cutting off songs before the ending is EPIDEMIC. I don’t listen to the radio to hear my favorite song cut off in favor of a DJ and his incoherent ramblings (or even worse – an advertisement). I listen to hear the song in its entirety. Imagine taking the time to create a song, hearing it on the radio only to be cut off with a minute left in favor of an ad for a feminine hygiene product. I feel dirty just thinking about it.

The worst culprit of cutting off songs is the Jack FM station in my area. The concept of the Jack FM station is really neat. No DJ’s and more music that you want to hear. Sounds nice until you realize that they butcher the songs (not only do they chop off the end, but they also shorten the songs by cutting out lots of the middle parts). Its complete crap and I’m personally tired of it.

Sure I am only one person, but I am one person with an opinion. If musicians are going to take the time to crap all over their songs (by fading out), radio stations have a responsibility to play the entire song without crapping all over it (by cutting them off).

2 comments:

  1. if you really think about it, even songs that fade out, have an end. as for terrestrial radio, all of it does suck. satellite is the way to go, if you want to listen to radio.

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  2. I hate fadeouts that are repetitive. I mean, can the artist at least ad lib for a few measures?

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