The fade: Why Don't Modern Pop Songs End By Slowly Reducing Volume? - Slate article

McMusic

 

That's not what this thread is about.

People, this thread is not the place to bash pop or modern music. OK? The purpose is to talk about fades or cold endings, and all types of recorded music has both.

I do notice a tendency for some people to blame fades on musicians, but fades are a conscious creative decision, and is often indicative of the era in which the music was produced. Maybe some people don't necessarily like produced music and base their preferences on the live musical standpoint.

 

Vox covered this a few years ago as well. It can be abrupt on the radio, but the lack of fadeouts can be an interesting aesthetic choice in the context of an album.

The hard ending is definitely a trend now. Kanye's 2018 albums made pretty good use of the technique which he called attention too with a "no fadeouts" adlib on KTSE. In the context of the song in a vacuum those songs feel abruptly ended, but in the context of the albums, it feels fast and exciting. To me it reminds me of YouTuber's excessive use of jump-cuts vs traditional cinematic editing. In their context it helps to speed stuff up and keep pace, but it can also feel a bit too defiant to the "rules."

 

Read the article... talks of a classical music fade where women sing in a room and they recorded from outside and slowly closed the door for the fade effect.

 

I'm a hobbyist songwriter and of the 60-70 songs I've written over the years, I've always given each a definitive ending. I think sometimes it is the product of a band / artist figuring out the song in the studio. For example, songwriter has the general sketch of the song, it comes together there in the studio, and it never got "finished" to the point of having that hard ending - so they play a loop and fade it. Def. a style thing of a certain era, too.

I recall watching the making of Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and when they did Love Lies Bleeding, Elton was shouting out chord changes at the end when the band does the long outro jam. You don't hear them on the record, but when his producer was playing the stems for the film, you could Elton yelling them. So, sometimes it's also a jam session and they just play on and the producer makes the call on where to go out.

 

I know it was for mostly technical reasons, but pop records for decades had nothing but cold endings. Maybe fades were a fad.

 

A friend and I recorded an album in the 80s (Chris Biondo's studio, where Eva Cassidy's albums were recorded). It was never released, so you'd never have heard it.

Another friend recorded a blistering guitar solo at the end of one tune.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be there for the mix. My friend and the engineer (not Chris, someone else was working with us whom I can't remember) did it. For some reason, the engineer insisted on a quick fade-out just as the solo started.

I asked my friend, who was usually not shy about standing up for himself, why he let him do it. He gave some vague answer.

I've always regretted it. In fact, I listened to that album again recently, and thought about having the whole thing remixed and mastered in DSD. I only have a poor cassette copy and a poorer CD copy made by another friend from the cassette. I think I still have the reel-to-reel final mix in the basement somewhere, but who knows what happened to the multitracks?

 

Why do the instruments always end first, leaving the singer to finish one or two notes on their own?

It was cute the first couple of times Tori Amos did it 20 years ago, but now it’s just cloying.

 

I enjoy fades. They make me think the joy of playing that song continued long after the needle lifts.

That Mark Knopfler was still playing Sultans of Swing...that Van Morrison came up with another run of...mmmmmmmm, ah mama mama...after, well, virtually any of his songs.

 

It's hard to talk about this without being a bit technical. Classical music ended with a full cadence generally, with dominant to tonic progression in root position. To be really clear sometimes they would repeat this. Eventually this became hackneyed so endings became softer or more nuanced as with Brahms Symphony 3. Mahler ended Das Lied von der Erde with an actual fade out because it was signifying death and eternity.

Pop music started with final cadences but pop musicians were not often as skilled so they didn't get it quite right typically. Pop/rock songs then started using some atypical closings, occasionally even dissonant chords. Also radio had fade outs. So it became easier to do a fadeout since the radio was likely to do it anyway. If the fadeout symbolizes something then it is musically justified. Otherwise it is a tic or a dodge. I respect a group that comes up with an appropriate but non standard closing.

 

(puts glasses on). I see what you did there.

 

Then there's this. A fade where you can hear the cold ending.

 

Fades were an art form. Listen to the fade that ends Sympathy for the Devil and tell me otherwise.

 

The Beatles did this too; "Dr. Robert", if I recall correctly. Bizarre.

 

Abruptness as a recording tool?
It works well in certain instances, but overall I'm not a big fan of this technique.

Then again, that article is almost five years old.

 

Yellow Submarine too, and it's super annoying.

 

I tend to do fade type endings on my home recordings. Saves the hassle of writing something clever. I'll throw in extra sounds and do a lot of panning in these fades.
I guess I'm still trying to be clever... Yeah fades are cool........Bottom line

 

My wife hates fade outs. She thinks it’s not a natural way to end a song.

 

Observe a diner at a 4 star restaurant savoring every nuance of his meal and then observe the lard-ass wolfing down Big Macs one after another. A good fade-out is a short period of reflection and appreciation.

 

Bad analogy.

 

Josef Haydn's Symphony 45, "Farewell"...

 

Nobody does songs like this any more

 

Well, that's similar to what I think, in general. Either a lack of ability or a lack of discipline to work out an ending. But with some exceptions, sometimes the great take is a performance that moves into a jam that becomes too long for the album/single, or doesn't work well. And at other times the fadeout in a song is used to great artistic effect.

 

Or, the band is still playing and you're walking away from them....