Songs
- Thread starter Bdrum
- Start date
Aaron Cheney
Favorite Chord: C 6/9
Depends.
If you are member of the early Beatles, any early rock or pop band, or any punk band that writes really up-tempo songs, 2.5 mins can work.
If you write modern pop music or you want to be an independant songwriter and you want your songs to have any reasonable chance in the marketplace, 3 to 3.5 is your target window.
If you are writing your own material and you intend to perform it yourself, you can make it any length you want, although 5 minutes is the point at which most people start to lose interest.
If you are a member of any rock band whose name contains the word "Iron", anything less than 8 mins is a failure. About 15 mins is ideal, and over 20 is not unheard of.
A
If you are member of the early Beatles, any early rock or pop band, or any punk band that writes really up-tempo songs, 2.5 mins can work.
If you write modern pop music or you want to be an independant songwriter and you want your songs to have any reasonable chance in the marketplace, 3 to 3.5 is your target window.
If you are writing your own material and you intend to perform it yourself, you can make it any length you want, although 5 minutes is the point at which most people start to lose interest.
If you are a member of any rock band whose name contains the word "Iron", anything less than 8 mins is a failure. About 15 mins is ideal, and over 20 is not unheard of.
A
Garry Sharp
Lost Cause
If it's not commercial, and you're just asking out of creative interest, 2 1/2 minutes is plenty. Leave them wanting more, not wishing it was over already. Once you've lived with it for a few months you might feel ticould bear another chorus, or lead break, or something, but don't stretch it just for the sake of length. (Unless like Aaron says your band likes to bite the heads off hamsters)
philboyd studge
New member
Bdrum said:How long should a song be?
I wrote one thats only 2 1/2 minutes long.
Two seconds before redundancy.
rapedbyape
New member
Any length you like...
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
While I generally agree with those guidelines, there are no hard and fast rules. There are ways to write a long song that works. It is rarely done, though....
IMHO, there are two ways to kill a long song: sameness and variety. In my opinion, the key to keeping the audience's attention in a longer song is just the right balance of sameness and variety. Too much sameness and the audience gets bored. (I'm sure you can think of a lot of songs that qualify.) Too much variety and the audience loses its frame of reference, e.g. a lot of jazz w/ long solo sections.
The key is to add a little variety to the passages that are basically the same and to add a little bit of sameness to the passages that are basically different. For example, you might change a few critical words in a chorus each time through. You might always come back to four bars of ensemble playing at the end of every jazz solo, etc.
Case in point, the longest song on my current project CD (a whopping 10 minutes, 9 seconds of soft rock)....
* Intro: a minute-ish: breathy reed recorder/piano
* Key change up minor 3rd, add brass
* 1:00-ish: vocal entrance: Leading Chorus
* Verse
* Chorus (slightly different words)
* Verse
* Chorus (again, slightly different words), ending around 5:30-ish.
* Instrument break (~3 min.): impromptu fantasia on main theme. Periodic infusion of the main theme ties everything together, while avoiding becoming boring.
* Last half of verse (vocally)
* Key change up a step
* Chorus variant (tending towards the relative major, different melody, significant word changes)
* Final chorus (again, slightly different words)
* Instrumental tag
In other words, it's a 1 minute song, a 4.5 minute song, a three minute song, and about a two minute song. They just happen to flow together and have a lot of common threads running through them. I still wish it weren't quite so long, but it's still a decent example of the sorts of tricks you can play to make the listener feel revitalized during a long song....
IMHO, there are two ways to kill a long song: sameness and variety. In my opinion, the key to keeping the audience's attention in a longer song is just the right balance of sameness and variety. Too much sameness and the audience gets bored. (I'm sure you can think of a lot of songs that qualify.) Too much variety and the audience loses its frame of reference, e.g. a lot of jazz w/ long solo sections.
The key is to add a little variety to the passages that are basically the same and to add a little bit of sameness to the passages that are basically different. For example, you might change a few critical words in a chorus each time through. You might always come back to four bars of ensemble playing at the end of every jazz solo, etc.
Case in point, the longest song on my current project CD (a whopping 10 minutes, 9 seconds of soft rock)....
* Intro: a minute-ish: breathy reed recorder/piano
* Key change up minor 3rd, add brass
* 1:00-ish: vocal entrance: Leading Chorus
* Verse
* Chorus (slightly different words)
* Verse
* Chorus (again, slightly different words), ending around 5:30-ish.
* Instrument break (~3 min.): impromptu fantasia on main theme. Periodic infusion of the main theme ties everything together, while avoiding becoming boring.
* Last half of verse (vocally)
* Key change up a step
* Chorus variant (tending towards the relative major, different melody, significant word changes)
* Final chorus (again, slightly different words)
* Instrumental tag
In other words, it's a 1 minute song, a 4.5 minute song, a three minute song, and about a two minute song. They just happen to flow together and have a lot of common threads running through them. I still wish it weren't quite so long, but it's still a decent example of the sorts of tricks you can play to make the listener feel revitalized during a long song....
question444
New member
It depends on the music. If you have 5 minutes of great detailed lyrics that you are very proud of, why trash half of them? You have to work at it, to fill the song with music in all of those 5 minutes. Riffs/fragments/lyric-ideas all come to you pretty fast, but arranging everything is the part that takes effort, I think. I agree with dgatwood, you need to balance the sameness and variety to keep the listener interested of what happens next, yet keep them in the same song. I must mention the best/shortest song I've ever heard, U2-The Ocean (Boy,1980). It's only like 1.5 minutes, but it works somehow. Good luck.
invisiblenemies
Active member
'I Like Food' by the Descendents is 15 seconds long.
In that short time, I now know that they do indeed food.
Also, the Minutemen are known for quite short songs as well. Of course, that explains why there's 45 tracks on their albums.
In that short time, I now know that they do indeed food.
Also, the Minutemen are known for quite short songs as well. Of course, that explains why there's 45 tracks on their albums.