Order Of Songs

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plainrat

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I will soon have my project mastered. Any opinions on the order of the songs on the album? Best first or in the middle ?????contrast styles or keep them together??? Any suggestions welcome.
 
well, thats entirely up to you, but i have a few suggestions...

what do you want the overall atmosphere of the album to be?
(angry, relaxed, depressed, happy etc...)

think about reading a book, the first and last chapters are what you keep with you the most. so you should have the first and last parts of the album be the songs that best define what you want the listener to feel, whatever emotion that may be.

I would suggest putting one of the strongest songs in the begining, so people who dont know of you yet, are hooked from the start, and have a motive to keep listening.

just some things to consider....

also, excuse my spelling and grammer. its really late, and my shift button is broken, im too lazy to keep finding the right place to press.

.peace.
 
Have u heard of Immortal Technique?

If not, go on iTunes or something and listen to his cd Revolutionary Vol.2 from start to finish. I think that cd is a great example of putting songs in a good order.
 
im not sure how much of this you could apply to your album, but i try to put the songs in order lyrically, if there is an order for that. Putting catchy songs as the intro song is never a bad idea. It's the persons first impression. It doesnt have to necessarily be the best song (actually it shouldnt be) but definetly something engaging, if only for a little bit.
On my album the tone gradually changes throughout from more light hearted, catchy, poppy, etc, to a more serious, grandiose sound.

and transitions are always good.
 
best song

Why do you say the best song shouldnt be first?
 
plainrat said:
Why do you say the best song shouldnt be first?

well, it can be, not saying theres any rule against it. if it were a demo or something like that, I would say put your best song first, but on an album, what you do by doing that is you heighten the expectation with the first song and then you dont live up to those expectations... you know?
"wow the first song is awesome, i cant wait to hear the rest!! ....oh.. actually the rest is worse...darn"
 
Kasey said:
well, it can be, not saying theres any rule against it. if it were a demo or something like that, I would say put your best song first, but on an album, what you do by doing that is you heighten the expectation with the first song and then you dont live up to those expectations... you know?
"wow the first song is awesome, i cant wait to hear the rest!! ....oh.. actually the rest is worse...darn"

Yeah, that makes sense. i wouldnt put the best song first.
but i would have one of the strongest songs 'in the beginning', aka, have it be one of the first three songs.
 
well you got some good advise there...some to add:


Song order really has to be this organic thing above all. You can't really come up with a formula for this. It's like a stiff back, you just have to keep on working out the knots until it just feels right.



But having said that, now the technical and Lee Rosario's theoretical stuff:


You have to consider the psychological effects of the songs by tempo, the key they are in, it's feel and it's structure.


Traditionally, you set up your CD like a live show. A live show usually consists of maybe 3-4 song bursts. There's a name for this in a classical sense, but I'm too lazy to go get the book right now.


If you think about all the shows you've been to, try to remember all the times the band went straight through about a few songs in and then suddenly says something like, "yeh! hello! dankyooou! we are (whatever), how yall doin tonight?"

Meanwhile, you don't realize that Mr. Piano Extraodinare is taking a shot of Jack Daniels in the back to prepare for the next burst of songs. Thats your 'segue'

Anyway, when you want to change a mood, you put a long ending on the song before the change to set the mood. It's about that point where you give the listener a few seconds of suspenceful silence. Just like a play when the lights dim to change to the next scene.

So if this is a 12 song album, then you factor about 4 straight bursts of 3. Or 3 bursts of 4 songs each. That way the brain can clump your album into subdivisions.

Not down to the T, but generally. Remember, the only way you are going to keep the listener is by a constant assault of texture, color, emotion. Then occasionally you let them come back up for air, before you start putting thier heads back into the water.


So if you consider your CD to start with high energy, then your first 3 to 4 songs are usually like in tempo and would be spaced tightly together.

Then you can slowly progress into slowing the train down and lengthening the spaces. Remember, whatever change you make has to slow the listener down with you.

If not, you would have slammed on your brakes and your passenger would have flown out the window. You don't want to kill your listener do you?

So the order is a very artistic thing in itself. Also, check out like genres of music and see how they do it. Cause although you are trying to be different, introducing something wildly different from the rest might have adverse affects on playability.

So you want to present a familiar mood in the order of the songs, and have the songs themselves present your individuality.


Also standard things, like you always consider your first song to be the most exciting, simple and straightfoward one. You never start on a complex number because that defies the laws of the evolutionary process in the musical journey. So you can sort of say that you usually start off your album with the singles and end with singles, then have your in between be the grey area for you to experiment with.

Some say that it dosn't matter what you do, just that your first and last impression matter most. But I think it *all* has it's place. A good book is a book that grows on you because it was good as an overall, not in bits in pieces.

It's the way the human brain connects the dots. We all learned in physcology that when the human brain sees two dots, it automatically draws an imaginary line to connect the two. Same with your first and last song.

You have to find a way to guide your listener in a straight line from begining to end.

But honestly, this is something that you can only plan from the begining, even before recording the album. Cause to have that unified sense of music in one album dosn't come without seriously extensive preproduction.



If you do it right, then in 6 months, you'll have people reminding you how great an album it is.

If you do it wrong, then in 6 months, you'll be reminding them how great an album it was.


So you can imagine how important song order really is.
 
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If you have any sort of theme then consider that one song tells part of a story, the next song continues the story and so forth. One song sets the mood for the next. If you have a lot of variety then this wont be easy to do. Whatever order you put songs in, try to leave the listener wanting more.
 
I see it like this listen to your song and see if they tell a story...them you fix your songs order like its tellin a story.. this one you will have good songs throughout the album vice only in the beginning and somewhere near the end..JAT
 
One thing that i've heard, other than just setting tempo on songs, is to do it by key. Sometimes if you use a key, then then the next song is a key that isn't fitting the previous song, then the song could sound flat or sharp to the listener. Of course, i've just heard that and do not have solid proof, but it actually sounds kinda logical. Have you ever been listeing to song and then the following song just sounds flat ect?
 
Yeah, I think you should think about the order, burn out a copy of the CD, listen to it all the way through, maybe take some notes and revise the transitions that didnt fit and revise.
just experiment.
 
hmmm...i think the best way to order them...at least how we did it was to first take our song that had the most commercial potential and put it first. we had toyed with burying it, but why? that didn't make any sense. especially if we're thinking about radio play. that PD is going to listen to each song for like 10 seconds. if you burry your best song, you're toast. anyway, we took that "best song" and made it first then through ITunes i was moving songs around and it just "feels" right. Trust me. it DOES make a difference with the order. again in ITunes, I also found orders that absolutely sucked. the most natural progression will just feel right, it's hard to say what that formula is, but as soon as you hear it you're kind of like... "YES!!!" here would be some advice that i can grab from my own experience...speaking of which, i think playing live can also follow this same line of thought (save the best song first...put that bad-boy at the end)

• try not to put songs that are in the same key near each other.

• best song first

• songs with similar strumming (or whatever) should be separated if possible

• songs with similar tempo should be moved

• if you have a long song, put a short song after it. (and vice versa)

• if you're like us and only have like 2 pretty slow tunes, keep them about as far apart as you can...more just to break up a batch of quicker tunes...and again, vise versa...

I think a lot of it comes down to the pacing. you don't want to bore the crap out of people by groups of similar sounding songs. keep it fresh with constant change ups. the funny thing is, i think i asked that exact same question 6 months ago, but with no solid suggestions, i just kind of figured out what worked for me and these ideas pretty much work.
 
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