Fade away or gradually die...

[reynardo]

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.

Comments

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

... the Beatles did have a fade-out, in Hey Jude

I thought it would have to be very late-period Beatles...

Makes me wonder if Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone had a fadeout. The theory being that once songs started going over the 3-4 minute mark, either the studios imposed a fadeout, or the musicians just didn't write a coda, or were too stoned & kept jamming on the chorus chords until they keeled over ~ see the fadeout & return during Helter Skelter by the aforementioned Beatles... "I've got blisters on my fingers!!"

More research required...

[hacked2death.livejournal.com]

Fadeouts are just for lazy songwriting sometimes. I remember reading in an old Nirvana book how Kurt used to proudly boast he never used fadeouts ever.

Then I pulled out Bleach and found "Negative Creep".

I suppose sometimes with songs that are a little repetitive you can expect the fadeout. I have a feeling the fadeouts were more popular in the 80s... I dont know..

[hacked2death.livejournal.com]

Not a big fan of the song, but Living End's "Save The Day" had one of those false endings, it slows down, you think it's the end and they jump loudly back into the riff for a second. I remember laughing at all of the JJJ DJs that always forgot about the end and started talking.

Oh! Best Fade out ever - "Please play this song on the radio" by NOFX. It fades out, but then starts again, and the band start swearing, singing about how the DJ is going to get into trouble from the FCC. :P

[quatranoctal.livejournal.com]

Surely you need to mention "A Day in the Life" where they took the normal fade out that occurs as the piano strings' vibrations are dampened, and turned up the gain to catch the very last bit of the note. And then did the final groove trick as well, with the famous clue to the death of Paul hidden in it backwards, of course.

[klishnor.livejournal.com]

Back in the Early 70's Focus had an instrumental single called Sylvia which was very big over here. It has a traditonal slowdown ending with no fadeout, then suddenly comes back at full volume for another "chorus" round ending with a fadeout.

On the other hand, Mike Oldfield did a version of the Blue Peter (A British TV Childrens show) theme which had absolutely no clues it was ending and just stopped dead. DJ's were so mad at having to guess when it was safe to talk and yet not leave a load of dead air that he had to release a second version which ends on an up sweeping chord sequence. OK, it was still sudden, but at least the DJ did get a few seconds warning.