Fade away or gradually die...

waitingman and I were discussing last night about the fade-out part at the end of a song, when it started and why. (Not knowing how to finish is the usual guess).

Today I've decided that while it might not be accurate for some librarians I know, I still love Wikipedia.

First fade out: "Neptune", part of the orchestral suite,"The Planets", by Gustav Holst, was the first piece of music to have a fade-out ending. Holst stipulates that the women's choruses are "to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed", and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) is "to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance".

And yes, of course, the Beatles did have a fade-out, in Hey Jude. Mind you, it takes 2 minutes.

I found them very useful when one was a radio DJ, and had to have the music finish at an exact second for the news. While you could calculate so that the last beat of a song ended the second before the news theme started, sometimes the length on the records would not be as accurate as one wanted. Fade-out can usually be bumped up or down a little to cover that 2-3 second error.

And the most memorable record ending? The Fixx had a song "The Beat" where the band ended singing "Beat. Beat. Beat." and it was recorded onto the final groove, so that if you weren't paying attention you wouldn't realise that you'd come to the end of the song. Left it on once for about a minute before I realised.