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.