Brilliance of the 3 minute 4 minute Song, Instrumental.

[tea for two]

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/john-adams

John Luther Adams, modern Classical composer.

"I'm often asked how I liked writing pop songs, and I answer that I found it the hardest thing I ever did."

"When you're an opera composer, and especially a minimalist opera composer, you'll take a long time to get off the runway, maybe 20 or 30 minutes.
People will indulge you because they pay an enormous amount of money [public laughter] and they figure they're going to be there for four hours anyway.
If they don't understand it, that's OK, because it's opera! [More laughter].

But with rock 'n' roll and pop songs it's completely different. People expect the message right up front. They want the very best idea in the third bar of the piece, and if they don't get it, the song is a complete bore‑out, not good.
You have to state your point immediately, and it also has to be intelligible. It was a very hard thing to do, and sweating out 25 songs was a long march."

::::

I'm fairly sure were the Imaginative Inventive Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic, Avant Garde, composers brought to now,
their minds would be blown by the Brilliant, Diverse, Inventiveness in thousands of 3 / 4 minute Songs :
Folk, Country, Blues, Motown, Soul, Rock, Reggae, World, Funk, Disco, Pop, Metal, Electronic, modern RnB, variations of HipHop.

(They would also recognise some hit songs as borrowing an aspect from their works for a particular part in the Song lol).

::::

Many of us could, off the top of our heads, recall tens of brilliant diverse inventive  3 / 4 minute Songs, Instrumentals from bands, musicians.

::::

I have made several Instrumentals over 10 minutes, a couple approaching 20 minutes.
Yet when I can make a compact Instrumental of 3 / 4 minutes it does bring contentment to me.

[Martin Walker]

Yep, those quotes contain a lot of sense.

I used to write more ambient music, where each track often lasted 10 minutes, and that enables you to really explore the theme and incorporate plenty of variations in mood.

Nowadays my music is more aggressive and immediate - four minutes for a track is a long one, and sometimes they are only a couple of minutes long.

However, I probably spend as long perfecting the two minute tracks is I did on the 10 minute ones.

Martin

[Mattsong]

Brian Wilson’s Good Vibrations was called a “pocket symphony”.
Mark Twain had an interesting take on shorter pieces.
“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.”
Being concise is very difficult.

[BWC]

Mark Twain had an interesting take on shorter pieces.
“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.”
Being concise is very difficult.

Love that! So true! So concise! I wonder how much time he spent coming up with that one...

[The Elf]

I think the 'brilliance' of brevity is over-stated. it often hides an inability to develop and expand.

[BWC]

I suppose, like everything else, it has its positives and negatives, could be a great strength, or a veiled weakness. But it can be difficult to be concise, and the ever decreasing attention spans have made it an even more useful skill.

[OneWorld]

Like everything else in life, there must be a reason for it. It could be a technical reason, eg, when recorded music was first distributed, maybe the media used could only accommodate a maximum of 3 or 4 minutes, eg the original 45rpm singles, and that format stuck, despite the technological advances we have made. And seeing as the 45RPM disk became the norm a 'standard' was established.

That said, if one looks back through history, a troubadour would roam from village to village telling yarns and bringing news in the form of song, how many songs would have as many verses as Eskimo Nell, not many I guess.

If one considers a communicative exchange between friends that chance upon each other in the street or over the garden fence, each 'packet' of gossip would probably take up about 3 or 4 minutes "Did you hear about him and her, from round the corner and over the hill........well I never, I'll go t'top of our stairs, bye" Any longer than that and people lose interest, their eyes glaze over.

Of course there are the exceptions to the rule, EDM for example that goes on for an age, but the purpose is to get people dancing, or the examples from the days of progressive rock, where the listener is more likely to ruminate their way through the day and the longer the song the better.

I often wonder why jokes always come in 3's .........baby balloon climbed i father and mother balloons' bed and untied the knot and deflated them. Father Balloon caught Baby Balloon in the act and said 'Son, you've let me down, you've let your mother down and yourself down too' " or why politicians make pledges in 3's - "We'll tackle the effects of crime the damage caused by crime but what's more the causes of crime" or "Education, Education, Education"

So I guess pop music is almost like the musical equivalent of a Limerick, short and sweet

[Mattsong]

Time is relative. One of the beautiful things about music composition is you can suspend the feeling of time for the listener.
I was shocked when I revisited Miles Davis’s, Birth of the Cool. Average song length is 3 minutes. Move 2:35, Israel 2:20. This is a jazz record, two minutes is usually the warm up for the bass solo. Absolutely a masterpiece of arranging by Gil Evans. If you haven’t heard it for a while, take a listen.
A 2:20 Trance track is not going to cut it, the genre needs longer time to develop and suspend time in the other direction.
Or in the case of Herman’s Hermits, “second verse, same as the first, I’m Henry the Eighth, I am”

[Drew Stephenson]

I often wonder why jokes always come in 3's .........baby balloon climbed i father and mother balloons' bed and untied the knot and deflated them. Father Balloon caught Baby Balloon in the act and said 'Son, you've let me down, you've let your mother down and yourself down too' " or why politicians make pledges in 3's - "We'll tackle the effects of crime the damage caused by crime but what's more the causes of crime" or "Education, Education, Education"

Triads have been a popular mechanism for speech and emphasis for millennia. We can see examples in the writing from ancient Greece and the scraps we have that predate that.
One thing is an example, two things can be a coincidence, three things makes a list, and hence delivers either the point or the punchline, but four starts to labour the point and you risk losing your audience.
Or as the old quote goes, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

[OneWorld]

I often wonder why jokes always come in 3's .........baby balloon climbed i father and mother balloons' bed and untied the knot and deflated them. Father Balloon caught Baby Balloon in the act and said 'Son, you've let me down, you've let your mother down and yourself down too' " or why politicians make pledges in 3's - "We'll tackle the effects of crime the damage caused by crime but what's more the causes of crime" or "Education, Education, Education"

Triads have been a popular mechanism for speech and emphasis for millennia. We can see examples in the writing from ancient Greece and the scraps we have that predate that.
One thing is an example, two things can be a coincidence, three things makes a list, and hence delivers either the point or the punchline, but four starts to labour the point and you risk losing your audience.
Or as the old quote goes, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Where's the other 2 replies then - LOL

[tea for two]

I probably spend as long perfecting the two minute tracks is I did on the 10 minute ones.

Same here. On shorter tracks I'm trying to make each element just as I want it, every note.
As I'm getting older I'm finding this easier to do on shorter tracks.
On longer tracks I have to take lots of breaks these days to make each element just so, whereas when I was younger it was easier to work on each element on longer tracks lol.

::

Mark Twain had an interesting take on shorter pieces.
“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.”
Being concise is very difficult.

I think it's easy to ramble (witter on an on) I often remind myself lol.

Being concise requires so much judgement, to cut cull.
To be sensitive to the situation, the reader, listener.
Simplifying is difficult.

::

I think the 'brilliance' of brevity is over-stated. it often hides an inability to develop and expand.

For me one of the finest 3minute tracks I've heard is Ennio Morricone's theme The Good The Bad The Ugly.
In those 3minutes Ennio puts so much into it.

Vangelis' Chariots of Fire album is a brilliant example, one side containing 20minutes of exploring themes improvising, the other side short 3 minute tracks.

Mike Oldfield (my favourite English fusion musician) Ommadawn opening probably my favourite opening to any album I've heard, transitioned into shorter pieces from the 80s onwards.

Even Yes (opening Guitar for Roundabout sends shivers into me even now) transitioned into shorter in the 80s.

Tangerine Dream as well. Herbie Hancock. Jan Hammer.

For those that make hit records it's almost as if it's second nature for them to make compact 3 minute 4 minute tracks. Several are brilliant musicians composers, have brilliant session musicians playing on those records.

::

I suppose, like everything else, it has its positives and negatives, could be a great strength, or a veiled weakness. But it can be difficult to be concise, and the ever decreasing attention spans have made it an even more useful skill.

True.

We were used to 20 minute tracks from the 70s, youngsters generally these days 2 seconds lol.
It's just the time was ripe for what once was yet no longer ripe.

For hit Song makers the 3minute 4minute is just something they are drawn to, natural at.
It's an art.
If they went longer the Song would loose its impact.

The journey in a 10minute 20 minute track is something else. To have this imagination, to be able to keep listeners interest for 20 minutes is an art.
One of me favourite tracks is a 45minute by Jarre : Waiting For Cousteau 1990 on CD only.

(I'm working on a 3minute track it has 1 main theme, 2 bridges, 1 solo.
Main theme is a banger as the kids might say, just to grab attention, it starts the track.
Other tracks I make seem to have a life of their own, just traveling by themselves, they just keep on going).

::

Like everything else in life, there must be a reason for it.

troubadour would roam from village to village telling yarns and bringing news in the form of song,

If one considers a communicative exchange between friends that chance upon each other in the street or over the garden fence, each 'packet' of gossip would probably take up about 3 or 4 minutes.

I often wonder why jokes always come in 3's .........

So I guess pop music is almost like the musical equivalent of a Limerick, short and sweet

This is such an interesting take.

Most times in life we have so many things on our plate, so many things to juggle, we just don't have spare time to ruminate.

Short and Sweet gets to the point, giving us what we require from a Song, Instrumental :
whichever emotion we wish to feel at that moment to get us through the day, through life.

::

Time is relative. One of the beautiful things about music composition is you can suspend the feeling of time for the listener.

Suspend the feeling of time : you know this is the first time I've considered music this way.

As others I've felt music took me somewhere, wherever this may be inward outward regardless of length.

::

One thing is an example, two things can be a coincidence, three things makes a list, and hence delivers either the point or the punchline, but four starts to labour the point and you risk losing your audience.
Or as the old quote goes, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Three is a crowd lol.

I think with music as different people are wired differently, different things float their boat.
For some a 3minute 4minute they can't get into it as readily as they would a 20minute.
For others 10minutes 20minutes is rambling lol.
People's personality has alot to do with how they react to length of music, I would say.

[jxnWHITE]

Mark Twain had an interesting take on shorter pieces.
“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.”

I wonder how much time he spent coming up with that one...

...
He didn't.

"e n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal

[Arpangel]

Some of my pieces are up to an hour long, with fade in's and fade outs lasting up to ten minutes.
Some of my piano pieces are under a minute in length, time isn’t a consideration for me, it’s just how long it takes me to say what I’m trying to say.