The longest song you know

I think there's a sense in which the "song"/"track"/"suite"/etc. terminology we're using is kind of a relic of recording technology.  Thick As A Brick is clearly one song, but it's traditionally been listed as two because of the way vinyl works.  Plus, what you're recording it on sets limits: forty-five minutes in the vinyl era, seventy-five or so for the CD era.  Since record labels aren't ready to give up entirely on CDs yet (with good reason - people do still buy them), it seems like that's the limit for professionally published music for right now.  But there must be some band out there with a ninety-minute, two-hour song on mp3!  Where?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnium_(album)

The longest song I know?

The tune Walter sings

JasonL wrote: I think there's a sense in which the "song"/"track"/"suite"/etc. terminology we're using is kind of a relic of recording technology.  Thick As A Brick is clearly one song, but it's traditionally been listed as two because of the way vinyl works.  Plus, what you're recording it on sets limits: forty-five minutes in the vinyl era, seventy-five or so for the CD era.  Since record labels aren't ready to give up entirely on CDs yet (with good reason - people do still buy them), it seems like that's the limit for professionally published music for right now.  But there must be some band out there with a ninety-minute, two-hour song on mp3!  Where?

For the most part, I agree with you, especially where the limitations imposed by the medium are concerned. On a related but rather speculative note, yes, TAAB is definitely one song, but its form has been affected by the necessity of breaking it up roughly in the middle--not just in terms of the physical split, but in terms of writing the song to end at one point and then begin again on the other side while clearly remaining one song. That is, the vinyl medium imposes compositional constraints other than just a 45 minute upper limit. I wonder what the composition would have sounded like had they been able to take that break in the middle out of the picture. Probably almost exactly the same, I imagine, but maybe not. Like I said, pure speculation.

Bass Communion's Epidural from collaboration with Nick Potter and Jonathan Coleclough.

questionsneverknown wrote: Perhaps not a song, but one of the longest compositions I'm aware of is Morton Feldman's String Quartet II, which takes around 6 hours to perform . . . and it actually does get performed.  For the musicians, it's an endurance test, like hiking the Grand Canyon, with similar experiences of beauty to compensate for the pain.

What about The Ring Of The Nibelung By Richard Wagner.
I consider that one 14-hour piece in 10 parts.

As for continuous non-stop pieces I might go for The Whirlwind or any old fashioned Klaus Schulze tracks.

The longest I've heard in its entirety is Green Carnation's Light of Day, Day of Darkness at 60 minutes and 6 seconds.  Surprisingly it's very good and almost never resorts to ambiance.

This thread is giving me deja-vu, I'm sure several of these have been mentioned more than twice already.

rod65 wrote: JasonL wrote: I think there's a sense in which the "song"/"track"/"suite"/etc. terminology we're using is kind of a relic of recording technology.  Thick As A Brick is clearly one song, but it's traditionally been listed as two because of the way vinyl works.  Plus, what you're recording it on sets limits: forty-five minutes in the vinyl era, seventy-five or so for the CD era.  Since record labels aren't ready to give up entirely on CDs yet (with good reason - people do still buy them), it seems like that's the limit for professionally published music for right now.  But there must be some band out there with a ninety-minute, two-hour song on mp3!  Where? For the most part, I agree with you, especially where the limitations imposed by the medium are concerned. On a related but rather speculative note, yes, TAAB is definitely one song, but its form has been affected by the necessity of breaking it up roughly in the middle--not just in terms of the physical split, but in terms of writing the song to end at one point and then begin again on the other side while clearly remaining one song. That is, the vinyl medium imposes compositional constraints other than just a 45 minute upper limit. I wonder what the composition would have sounded like had they been able to take that break in the middle out of the picture. Probably almost exactly the same, I imagine, but maybe not. Like I said, pure speculation.

Very true - and the same is true of The Passion Play, where I actually think the side-to-side transition is a bit more logical (even though I prefer TAB on the whole).  But were there any other forty-five-minute songs in the vinyl era?  I can't really think of any.  The necessity to break it up is enough of a discouragement, it seems.

Off the top of my head I would say Gravedigger by Janus. The title track is all of side two and has gotta be twenty minutes long.