sopsych

Correct, I don't like classical. I also don't like jazz (though "Lily Was Here" is good). I'd blamed that on the usual lack of vocals, but now I realize length likely is a factor.

I like probably thousands of songs between 3 and 5 minutes in length. Those between 3:30 and 4:30 tend to be best.

I did listen to a little of that melody "Belfast Child" comes from. Meh. I then went back and listened to the Buckethead song. Mostly because I'd seen him praised on this site but had never bothered with his music before, as I doubted someone called "Buckethead" could be a great. I was wrong - very good guitar work there, and the other instruments on the track are good, too, and the thing flows and experiments nicely, so that it felt a few minutes shorter than its 8 minutes. Still, I'm not interested in seeking out lengthy pieces like that, because I'm almost always busy and have trouble concentrating on other things when listening to music (though that's one benefit of instrumentals, no distracting vocaals).

This thread was never about me convincing anyone or daring people to try to change my mind. To each his own, as long as people don't claim Rebecca Black or other cr*p is actually good. But I am surprised that I'm not finding supporters - radio and music television wouldn't be so full of 3-5 minute songs if that weren't the public's preference.

Janszoon

A site full of music fanatics isn't exactly representative of the general public.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

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

last.fm

Key

As Janz nicely put, welcome to a music forum. If you can't break the habit of being so disciplined with the length of a song, you'll miss a lot of great music.

Neapolitan

3:30 to 4:30 is just statistically the most common duration of your favorite songs - the ones you think are the "best." I can't see how the length of the song could be taken into consideration whether or not a song is good or bad. It's almost like saying if you could eat dessert between three & a half to four & a half minutes it would taste better. No, either the dessert taste good or it doesn't. If you hear something you like.

In Art music e.g. Baroque music a peice can be a Suite or Concertos which can be broken into movements, and some of them are in binary form A-A-B-B. So even if the peice might be lengthy timewise it's actually composed of short sections. And the same is true for most Porgressive Rock songs they are a bunch of short songs that are strung together to make one long song. So if you used that critea that shorter is better and you broke a long song down into it's components it should be still acceptable to you, right?

I like Song 2 (~2 minutes) & Teen Age Riot (~7 minutes) and I can play the latter more than once, too. And they're both out of your 3:30 to 4:30 range. But how long they are really doesn't come into consideration what I like about them. Song 2 is hooky and Teen Age Riot developes as a song.

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