EPOCH6

Regarding primarily western genres, rock, metal, blues etc...

I think most of the time it really just depends on whether or not the song can keep your attention start to finish, it has to be consistently interesting or at least, in the case of atmospheric / drone styles, infectious. A few days ago I had a conversation about this with a good musician friend who is primarily into classic rock (typically 3 - 5 minute tracks), we were talking about Pallbearer's new album Foundations of Burden. His main complaint about the album, although he does like it as a whole, is that he found the songs too long (most of the tracks exceeding 10 minutes). But he wasn't complaining that they were droning on and losing direction or focus, he was complaining that he could only listen to 2 or 3 tracks max before he arrived at school (he, like many other people, saves albums for highway driving). Obviously that's not a problem with the music, it's a problem with how much time he allocates for listening, but I think that does say something about why a lot of people prefer 3 - 5 minute verse / chorus / verse / chorus / bridge / chorus rock fixes over elaborate story-telling tracks. Most people just don't care to sit down with an album for 45 minutes to an hour uninterrupted. However when they do have that time, and they do give it a chance, I bet the same people complaining about the songs being too long will change their mind. Give the music more time to feed you and you'll have more to chew on.

When it comes to writing long music, again I'm talking primarily about western genres, I think a band ought to be rather careful with length. There's no use dragging things on for unnecessarily long periods of time unless they were designed to be effective in that sort of structure. It's easy for songwriting to take a sharp turn from expression to self-indulgence, sure 2 minute long guitar solos are fun as hell for you, but it may not be nearly as fun for a listener if it feels out of place. It works for Freebird because the first half of the song sets you up for that, you anticipate it, the song has a chance to explain itself before meandering off into a massive instrumental climax. If you took that same solo and dropped it off after the first chorus you'd find the listener waiting for the rest of the band to finish what they had to say. Structure matters a lot for long rock music, you need to be careful where you place things, the longer the track the more carefully it must be arranged.

Anyway, long songs can be great if they're handled correctly by the songwriters, long songs work better in some styles than others, long songs ought to be given the time to explain themselves fully, musicians should be weary of meandering off into self-indulgence when writing songs, the most effective long songs are songs that maintain a sense of expression throughout, the listener should be compelled to complete the track and that requires capturing their interest and holding it, either through evolution of song structure / progressively elaborating on ideas or complexity of texture / intricacy of rhythm.

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