Do The Order Of Songs On An Album Really Matter To You?

anathematized_one · 06-10-2013, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic

^ Thanks for sharing the results of your experiment with us, Zer0. I´m glad it wasn´t a total disaster for you!

I´m still surprised at how unpopular "shuffle" is, so I´ve tried to think up a couple of things in its defence:-

Firstly, I often want to hear a bit of music but don´t have the time or inclination to hear a whole album side. So back in the days when vinyl or cassette were the only options, I always heard the opening tracks more often than the subsequent ones. Not only that, but it´s natural to be much more attentive to the first tracks that you hear. These two circumstances combine to give you, over time, a lopsided perception of the music, all weighted to the open bars of the opening track. Isn´t "shuffle" the perfect way to correct that imbalance and give all the songs an equal chance?

Secondly, artists themselves are quite happy to mix and match when they play live. Dylan is notorious for treating his repertoir like a pack of cards, even to the extent of dealing out the same card twice in one night. Pink Floyd, those intimidating AOR perfectionists, often play great slabs of sequenced songs, but a glimpse at the track list of Pulse shows that they also resort to a little cutting and pasting when it suits.

Finally, as Eno indicates, no artist with ten or so tracks to juggle with can possibly check out every track-list combination, and, although I have no evidence to support this, I suspect that some artists either don´t worry, or get over-ruled when it comes to working out their song order.

So come on guys; engraved in vinyl doesn´t have to mean carved in stone!

About the track order...

As an artist myself, I don't try every possible track order, but I also don't need to.

Even if I am not working on a concept album, I want the track order to have a good flow and all my projects and albums have central themes and it is the central theme that determines the order.

And album I am working on now is called "From the Seat of Emotions" and lyrically centres on my personal feelings (in an abstract yet concrete way).

The album will open violently with a song about self-hatred, then a song about a horrid ex ("Voracious Lamia". I haven't conceptualised half of the other tracks but I have a really strong one about a complex mix of hatred and depression and an instrumental that is really depressing. So that complex mixed emotion would be between the two ends of the spectrum.

As far as the individual tracks within the general flow, I want to not stick all the stronger ones together and the weaker ones together, I want them mixed in so that the listener is more likely to go through the whole thing. If you lead strong then follow with three weaker tracks, they may just stop and not continue. Sort of putting strong ones in such a way that it holda their interest until the end.

Some bands don't have a problem mixing it up live because they alter the songs slightly so that they don't have to flow together musically, but there also usually is a pause between songs for a bit of talking. On the albun though, that pause and talking isn't there, so I have the intro and outro of all the songs flexible so that when I finalise the order, I can alter the intros aand outros for better musical flow.

So I can't ssay I agree with the live shuffle argument or the not trying every possible track order argument. Then again, that is only the case for me, I can't say what the general case is for most artists.

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