sopsych

Says John Cage, maker of boring music.

Janszoon

Who DO you like out of curiosity?

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Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Howard the Duck

so sorry for you if you don't know what is 4' 33"

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sopsych

Pop-rock, pop, rock, alternative. From Ozzy to Depeche Mode. Of the artists I like, only a few have a reputation for length - Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Yes, Pink Floyd- and I dislike most of their long stuff and barely own any of it.

Key

Which is pretty much 85% to 90% of their entire catalog.

rostasi

Oh, yes! I'm quite familiar with this work, but the length is determinate.

Burning Down

Hardly. Boring if you're not into more avant-garde music, but Cage had a lot of interesting, sometimes innovating concepts in his compositions.

Zyrada

The thing that surprises me is that you'd think his bite-sized prepared piano Sonatas and Interludes would be perfect for someone who hates long songs.

sopsych

I think I confused John Cage with some gravelly-voiced singer-songwriter. Although I doubt I'd like Cage.

I like much of Pink Floyd's material from The Wall to the end (although The Final Cut is mediocre). Some of those songs run slightly long and to me drag a bit, but.... I don't think Gilmour-era material was intentionally long like a psychedelic jam.

VEGANGELICA

The point in limiting yourself to the minutes or even hours of a song is to limit the time you spend listening to music while maximizing your pleasure.

I'll try to explain my viewpoint in other terms so that you might understand it better:

I view songs as being like assorted chocolates in a box. I remember that when I was a child, I used trial and error to learn which chocolates I liked. This led to a lot of discarded, half-eaten chocolates. Later, I made my selection after reading about the characteristics of the chocolates. I found I tended not to like cherry liquor fillings. (Similarly, when I read that a song is 15 minutes long, I tend not to want to listen to it.)

I don't feel I have to eat the whole box of chocolates or even a whole chocolate candy out of some sense of obligation to the chocolate-maker. If I do try a piece of chocolate that has cherry liquor (a long song), and I find that I don't like the first taste (the first 5 minutes), then I don't force myself to eat the whole thing. And even if I like the chocolate at first, I usually find that I start to get sick of it if the chocolate bar is too big (just like I can start to get tired of a long song).

My point, contrary to yours, is that we can respect a band's choice to make a song short or long, but that doesn't mean we have to listen to the whole song or even listen to the song at all.

My tendency to avoid or dislike longs songs has nothing to do with respect or lack thereof for the musicians. A song isn't the ruler of a single-party dictatorship where we are forced to give only adoration. Music is a democracy where we can express appreciation and criticism, and elect a different song when we want.

In fact, the musicians I know like constructive criticism (when solicited). Giving them my honest opinion, such as by telling them if I feel a song is too long, actually shows my respect for them.

More about this issue of respect: do you feel you have to listen to all of Robert Rich's two-and-a-half-hour song "Somnium" to show your respect for him? And, if so, given that he intended the song for people to listen to while dreaming/sleeping or while awake, do you feel have to listen to it with your full attention to show respect?

If you choose not to listen to this song in its entirety, I won't feel your choice means you lack disrespect for Robert Rich's creative process. Perhaps your choice simply means that you have other ways you want to spend your time:

Robert Rich -- Somnium (Part 1 of 4)
This song lasts over two hours. Are you going to listen to it all?


Robert Rich - Somnium Part I - 1 Of 4 (Somnium) - YouTube

In answer to your question, yes, I can enjoy a song without analyzing it, but I find that analyzing *why* I like or dislike a song adds to my appreciation of it.

And yes, the song's length always has some impact on my feelings about the song. If you say it makes no difference to you whether a song lasts 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, or 100 years, I will think you are exaggerating your indifference.

By analyzing a song, I don't view myself as analyzing it to death, but rather analyzing it to life. After all, the musicians had to think about exact moments for entrances, exits, and other changes in the song, so my thinking about them, too, probably mirrors more closely the creative process of the song rather than just thinking about the song's emotional impact on me. Considering the nuances of the song is a way of REconstructing the song rather than DEconstructing it, in my view.

You find minutes and seconds to be cold and overly analytical? It is true that when discussing the length of a song and its sections, I prefer to be precise *and* accurate by giving the exact minute and second rather than use time approximations like you do.

My reason is that precision allows the description to be shorter while giving more information to a fellow listener so that she can, if she wants, go to the song and find exactly the portion to which I am referring.

Compare "After a nice piano solo from 3:15 - 3:43, the mood changes with harpsicordal music until 6:00, when the vocals reenter," to your longer, less precise description: "In the third minute there's a nice piano solo that lasts about thirty seconds, then the mood changes and for the next two minutes it's harpsichordal music until minute six, where the vocals come back in." I prefer my description. It's shorter and has more content.

If it makes you feel better about my apparent aversion to length, notice that I don't mind reading or writing long posts *about* music. I just don't tend to like to listen to long songs.

Please see my comments above to Ki about the issue of music criticism and respect for the musicians. We can respect a band's choice to make a song short or long, but that doesn't mean we have to listen to the whole song or even listen to the song at all, or avoid suggesting changes that we'd make if we had created the song.

Just like you have the right to criticize my method of critiquing music, I have the right to criticize music. Sharing opinions isn't inherently disrespectful.

Yes, I'm aware. I don't care for Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" poem, either.

If it helps, you may like learning that song length is only one of many song qualities that impact the degree to which I like or dislike the a song. I have songs that I hate for a variety of reasons, not just length. http://www.musicbanter.com/general-m...-you-hate.html

Thanks for your support, Mr. Hale.

I actually listened to some of the songs twice, the first time to get a feel for the song, and the second time to note more carefully the sections that felt especially long to me. I was generous.

We agree yet again, wisdom.

Following up on a comment you made earlier, I also feel that lengthening a short song I like will not make me like the song more, and in fact would probably decrease my appreciation of it.

Below is an example of a very short song that I love (in a genre I think you perhaps hate) that I feel would be less appealing if longer.

I love Behemoth's cover of Morbid Angel's "Day of Suffering" because this 2'10" song sounds to me like rage and defiance feel. I would like the song much less if it were stretched out to ten minutes, because when I feel rage it is a short burst of emotion, rather than a long, drawn-out one. Hearing ten minutes of rage would get very old and tiring to me and wouldn't feel like rage as I experience it, since rage to me is a burst of seething malevolence that rushes quickly through me and then dies down quickly (as reason prevails...usually ). But for those two minutes that it lasts...it's quite a rush.

Behemoth -- "Day of Suffering" (Morbid Angel cover)
An example of a short song that I feel would lose its impact if it were longer


Behemoth-Day Of Suffering (Morbid Angel Cover) - YouTube

EDIT: Another benefit of short songs compared to long ones is that it is easier to listen to a short song again and again to get the full impact and experience of the whole song, and this allows you more easily to tailor your listening experience to your mood.

For example, I've listened to "Day of Suffering" around 30 times while typing this post!

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