The longest song you know

If you don't think a song requires vocals, Darkest Before Dawn clocks in at one hour and fourteen minutes.  Philip Glass' Music With Changing Parts One hour one minute as does Eno's Thursday Afternoon.  Oldfields' Amarok falls just a minute short of those.

The longest thing I've heard so far is (Ithink) the 66-min long ''The Girl who Was... Death'' by DEVIL DOLL,but this one includes about 27 minutes of silence.

I must confess I actually listened to Darkest before Dawn today 73.58 (no vocals) perhaps with vocals and excellent is Green Carnations Light of Day,Day of Darkness at 60.05 and already mentioned Galleon's The Ocean at 52.05. Not as long but as good Echolyns Mei at 49.33. These are the longest of many lengthy tracks in my library.

Originally posted by rod65 I'm inclined to stick with vocals as an integral component of a song. The word "song" means music that is sung as opposed to music that is exclusively instrumental. That said, the longest song I know is Galleon's "The Ocean," clocking in at 52:05. Though it is divided into parts in the notes, it is a single track on the CD. Not a huge fan of the lyrics, by the way--too heavy-handed for my taste--but instrumentally it is quite good.

Holy cow you are right. I had to look it up, but yep, its in the definition. I guess I have to start calling Canvas Solaris tracks "pieces" or "movements", neither of which are attractive terms.

Originally posted by Tapfret Originally posted by rod65 I'm inclined to stick with vocals as an integral component of a song. The word "song" means music that is sung as opposed to music that is exclusively instrumental. That said, the longest song I know is Galleon's "The Ocean," clocking in at 52:05. Though it is divided into parts in the notes, it is a single track on the CD. Not a huge fan of the lyrics, by the way--too heavy-handed for my taste--but instrumentally it is quite good. Holy cow you are right. I had to look it up, but yep, its in the definition. I guess I have to start calling Canvas Solaris tracks "pieces" or "movements", neither of which are attractive terms.

Originally posted by Tapfret Originally posted by rod65 I'm inclined to stick with vocals as an integral component of a song. The word "song" means music that is sung as opposed to music that is exclusively instrumental. That said, the longest song I know is Galleon's "The Ocean," clocking in at 52:05. Though it is divided into parts in the notes, it is a single track on the CD. Not a huge fan of the lyrics, by the way--too heavy-handed for my taste--but instrumentally it is quite good. Holy cow you are right. I had to look it up, but yep, its in the definition. I guess I have to start calling Canvas Solaris tracks "pieces" or "movements", neither of which are attractive terms.

Hi,

"Just an Old-Fashioned Schulze Track" from La Vie Electronique 4 ( I believe) is around 75 minutes.

The real winner is Cage's "As Slow As Possible."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2728595.stm

Originally posted by Textbook

I prefer to call them 'pieces' once they get beyond a certain length, usually around 15-20 minutes.

And on the subject of The Whirlwind, the new live version of that piece is one single track lasting 79:52, which must mean that the band consider it to be one single piece of music. Same goes with The Incident, Garden of Dreams and Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. The only reason they split them is for ease, so you don't have to scroll through the disc if you want to hear a particular section.

That is the difference, imo, between a 'track' and a 'song' or 'piece'. Classical symphonies are split into movements, usually with one CD track per movement, but they are still considered one single, unified piece of music.