how much has it been a problem historically that "albums" are all the same length?

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you know what i'm saying

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 30 August 2002 07:13 (twenty-four years ago)

they've been getting longer over time. CD meant albums could be longer, therefore cockfarmers felt they had to be longer.

Longer does not equal better.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 30 August 2002 07:19 (twenty-four years ago)

Increasing album length has not just been due to the mediums capacity but also the means of production have made it much easier to make long music. In the early 60's everything had to be played pretty much live so the longer the take the more chance for mistake and the more of a problem that would be. With sequencing and improved tape editing technology it became much easier to create a track which the drummer never had to play all the way through, thus you can easily knock out a much greater volume of stuff and the temptation to stretch the song to 5 minutes rather than 2 and half with the same ideas.

But really the question concerns the expectation that an album is 45 minutes (or whatever) meaning an artist stretches insufficient material or ditches useful stuff. Definitely an issue, Cope's Jehovahkill is perfect and was a 3 sided LP (the company hated that idea) - stretching it to a full double would have been crap and dumping stuff to make a single lp likewise. Similarly Felt's albums were often perfect at about 25 minutes.

― Winkelmann, Friday, 30 August 2002 08:20 (twenty-four years ago)

I agree with Winkelmann, but just to offer a different perspective, I think 35-45 minutes is an ideal length for a piece or suite of music from the listener's perspective, so the fact that the 12" vinyl LP could accommodate that length comfortably was good news for the consumer. (See also: the C-90 cassette.) There is that famous quote by a child that - I'm paraphrasing - wasn't it clever of Beethoven that his symphonies exactly fit onto one side of an LP (or two sides, in some cases). So the limitations of technology, or the cost of going double or triple LP, actually worked in our favour for a while. In short, no it didn't used to be a problem. In the CD era, yes it might be.

― zebedee, Friday, 30 August 2002 09:47 (twenty-four years ago)

B-b-but the reason CDs are the lengths they are (OK this is a bit of an urban myth) is to fit Beethoven's 9th!

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 30 August 2002 10:01 (twenty-four years ago)

haha is that true? i mean, is that a genuine myth? (what length are CDs anyway?)

Thesis: If Wagner had recorded on the formats available, he would have made Merzbow look like Brinsley Schwarz...

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 30 August 2002 10:06 (twenty-four years ago)

also, stockhausen's Theory of Temporal Octaves to thread...

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 30 August 2002 10:07 (twenty-four years ago)

http://www.snopes.com/music/media/cdlength.htm

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 30 August 2002 10:10 (twenty-four years ago)

what length are CDs anyway
Originally specified by Philips as 74:00:00 minutes, or exactly 333,000 frames (1 frame = 1/75th second). Quite soon though, CD manufacturers discovered that if they disobeyed the standards and wound the spiral just a little bit tighter, they still would be within the specified tolerances for CD players and could fit 360,000 frames (80 minutes). So they did. And fifteen years later, we now have 90 and 99 minute CD's that work in most but not all CD players.

― Siegbran Hetteson (eofor), Friday, 30 August 2002 12:52 (twenty-four years ago)

The 80-minute CD was introduced specifically so that Mission of Burma's entire catalogue could fit on one CD! It's tro0o0o0o0o0o0!

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Friday, 30 August 2002 13:27 (twenty-four years ago)

These are all great points. So, what do you suppose will happen when DVD-audio reaches its full 18 hour potential? ¥

― christoff, Friday, 30 August 2002 13:53 (twenty-four years ago)

The new IPOD was given a 10 Gig harddrive to fit the collected works of Merzbow.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 30 August 2002 13:57 (twenty-four years ago)

I thought Mark S's problem* was when the two sides are the same length? Not a concern for CDs, obv.

*misrepresentation warning

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 30 August 2002 16:42 (twenty-four years ago)

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