Quote:
Originally Posted by ribbons
Just my two cents here. In answer to your question, Erica, whether a song is long or short, melody is key for me. Admittedly, this is the reason why I tend to like short-to-medium songs: usually melody is better "contained" in songs of that length and there are fewer interludial passages breaking up the melody. Even if I'm listening to longer jazz tracks, for instance, melody has got to be there and returned to before too long, or else I lose focus. Maybe I just have a short attention span!
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I doubt you have a short attention span! Maybe you just have to be listening to something you like in order to want to listen a long time. I like melody, too. I like a song to nestle me back up in its arms and not let me drift
too far from its main themes. Thank you for your input, Liz.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rjinnx
Like giving songs a chance by stopping half way?
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Oh, I rarely get to the half-point of long songs if I'm listening to them solely for my own enjoyment (rather than to review them, which provides a different sort of pleasure). I usually stop
much earlier than half way through.
For example, Anteater posted two longs songs earlier in the thread, "Milliontown" (26 min) and "Gates of Delirium" (20 min). I only listened to 2 minutes of "Milliontown" before I felt like stopping. And I stopped listening to "Gates of Delirium" after only 20 seconds because I disliked the sound of that song so much!
Earlier in the thread, Burning Down posted the classical "Boléro" (22 min version) and "Totentanz" (15 min). I had heard shortened versions of both before and was surprised (and dismayed) that the full versions are so long. However, I was also curious if the longer versions dffered much from the shorter ones I'd heard. So I did something that I occasionally do with songs when I want to learn about them but not spend much time doing so: I listened to the songs simultaneously!
Listening to two songs at once can work if the two songs are equally loud, but this turned out not to be the case for those two videos...so I aborted my effort at dual listening and just stopped listening entirely.
I *do* like the meditative "Boléro"...but I didn't want to listen to 22 minutes or even 11 minutes of it. I prefer this short 4:30 version to which Torvill & Dean performed in the 1984 Olympics:
Ravel - "Boléro" (Short 4:30 Version).
Ahh.
Perfect length. And the ice skating choreography brings the song even more to life for me, especially near the tumultuous, climactic end:
Torvill & Dean Bolero - YouTube
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wisdom
Another long song that benefits from editing: "Shout," by Tears for Fears.
Re the band's "whopping 24 times" repeating the line "Sowing the Seeds of Love," it raises the point that the simpler a refrain is, the most irritating it is likely to be as the minutes of the song go by.
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Agreed and agreed. I've noticed, though, that with children the simpler refrains don't seem to irritate them. At least with the elementary kids I've observed, they latch onto the repetition in simple pop songs and enjoy hearing the same simple phrase over and over (and over and over) again. Here's one such song my child currently likes:
Shake it Up - "Made in Japan"
Popular with elementary school kids. The chorus "made in Japan" is repeated...twenty times. :/ Thankfully, the song only lasts 3 minutes.
Shake It Up "made in japan" (full song) + Lyrics - YouTube