fade-outs

[Wombatz]

can anyone think of a musically interesting fade-out?

i have vivid childhood memories of burning hate every time the mulligan solo at the end of walk on the wild side gets faded out so quickly (awful song except for those few notes). or cortez the killer, that should play out and never fade. there a lots i don't mind (though i don't remember them), but is there an actively great one?

(i'd be especially interested in a satisfying fade-out not from a situation of relative stability (i.e. 1-chord jams to 4-chord chorus loops) but where possible musical events are fruitfully silenced)

[Wombatz]

fb gave me life during wartime by talking heads, bad girl by lee moses, and, erm, hey jude so far

[Hayao Yamaneko]

The in-track fadeouts in Van Diemen's Land by Shirley Collins and The Albion Band

[Wombatz]

The in-track fadeouts in Van Diemen's Land by Shirley Collins and The Albion Band

they're actually in murder of maria marten. great song, thanks! (i have the cd but had forgotten. though these are more like transitions ... )

i know that there is a song that does a complete fade-out and then after some seconds of silence abruptly switches back on again, but no idea what it was ...

[Hayao Yamaneko]

they're actually in murder of maria marten. great song, thanks! (i have the cd but had forgotten. though these are more like transitions ... )

Good catch. And fair point re: transition vs fade-out. But in context - with it otherwise, being a band-together-in-one-room record - I feel like it keeps the associations of a track fade out. It's a great little moment.

Re: full fade and silence before restarting - almost certainly not what you're thinking of, but William Hutson, late of this parish, did something similar on "Some Kissed Charms That Would Not Protect Them". Again (in the context of a drone record, with the continuity that implies) it's pretty striking.

[Piano Mouth]

I always thought that Reckoner song by Radiohead should've went on a bit longer. the strings at the end are quite nice. I like Bardo Pond's Aldrin on their Lapsed album, not really a fade out, but it's like the second part of the song and it just wrecks you and it goes on for a really long time which is cool.

[Steve Minkin]

Dream Theater -- "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence"

Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway -- Back Together Again

A Day In The Life
>>Following the final orchestral crescendo, the song ends with one of the most famous final chords in music history.[16][22] Lennon, McCartney, Starr, and Evans shared three different pianos, with Martin on the harmonium, and all played an E-major chord simultaneously. The final chord was made to ring out for over forty seconds by increasing the recording sound level as the vibration faded out. Towards the end of the chord the recording level was so high that listeners can hear the sounds of the studio, including rustling papers and a squeaking chair.[23]
The piano chord was a replacement for a failed vocal experiment: on the evening following the orchestra recording session, the four Beatles had recorded an ending of their voices humming the chord, but after multiple overdubs they wanted something with more impact.<

[Wombatz]

Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway -- Back Together Again

that is one nice long fade! (while the beatles thing seems to be the exact opposite of a fade, i must say i really enjoyed that sound which normally i wouldn't have listened to as is comes prefixed with a song by the beatles)

(others from fb: wealth by talk talk, in every dream home a heartache by roxy music, and, erm, tunnel of love by dire straits)

(miles must have some state of the art fades)

[Mo Noyz]

How about the fade out of Eclipse from Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon? The orchestral version of The Beatles' Ticket To Ride is barely audible, but definitely there.

[Steve Minkin]

One could argue that this non-traditional fade starts around the 13' mark in this old favorite, one of the great cult folk records, Patty Waters' "Black Is The Color of My True Love's Hair"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTF_NyJuBAo

[Wombatz]

but i want real fade-outs, mixing desk despotism as opposed to musicians' real-time decisions.

here's the best one so far (courtesy j panzner):

[Steve Minkin]

The final track on the US version Traffic's first album is titled "We're A Fade, You Missed This," and is the original fadeout from the first cut, shortened to be released as a single:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI38nkXaPu4


This fade-out is also a coda, semi-disconnected from the main part of the song. Dolly Parton's version of Those Were The Days opens and closes with the Moscow Circus Orchestra; the tail end's a fade, although too soft and brief for my taste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R43ec1inV-Q


And, totally off-topic but I'll take any excuse to post this, here's my favorite version of that last song, with the GREAT Sergey Kuryokhin and Kenny Millions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBUKxya72wk

[Steve Minkin]

For the past two days I've had a great fade-out ear-worm buzzing in my head, "goodbye, goodye, goodbye . . ." Couldn't place it, sang it into Midomi, no luck. Now, in the moment just before sleep, I hear it!

Van Morrison -- Madame George https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrOgYjp20j0

[Moon]

I agree that it can be useful in pop music – but this electroacoustic composition teacher I had was so adamant that it was the worst offence, that every time I hear a fade-out, some part of me thinks they couldn't find a real way to end. Still, interesting question.

I can think of two:

Shakti's Lotus Feet has one of those fade outs that sounds like the ending is where the song is actually beginning, and the part you just heard is some pre-recording jamming. That's a really useful effect.

The third part of Sunn O's Kanon has an amazingly weird fade-out. First time I heard it I thought I was receiving a Skype call or something else that automatically mutes music. It's really annoying, but in an interesting way.

[mono tony]

https://youtu.be/0NySz4SR-0Q

autechre - nodezsh

there's a minute or two of gradual decay, though it's quiet there's a lot of mass to it - sort of a shuddering reverb or soft-gating effect. haven't heard much else like it, but the AE_LIVE sets feature sounds with a similar, more pronounced gate or limiting effect.. it creates a strobe/tremolo effect where the sounds cut in and out.

[Wombatz]

Shakti's Lotus Feet has one of those fade outs that sounds like the ending is where the song is actually beginning, and the part you just heard is some pre-recording jamming. That's a really useful effect.

The third part of Sunn O's Kanon has an amazingly weird fade-out. First time I heard it I thought I was receiving a Skype call or something else that automatically mutes music. It's really annoying, but in an interesting way.

These are both very good, thank you!

Hendrix' Little Wing from Axis, they shut down very quickly to avoid any jamminess diluting the pop, which works well (as does the whole record, maybe exactly because Hendrix is reined in at every corner). Not on youtube: https://vimeo.com/138154323

[J.F.]

Porque te vas: https://youtu.be/-zerygmvhg0?t=2m50s

I hear its fade-out as a sudden switch from melody, harmonies, lyrics to a quite interesting band texture.

I once made a loop of two bars from that and was very happy listening to just that - made a great rhythm track that wouldn't be out of place in a post-punk context.

[Dan Warburton]

hey jude so far

I can think of some pretty brutal fade-outs - the first one that comes to mind is Pleasure's "Joyous", damn that guitar solo was so good too - but I'm not sure any of them are "artistic" in the way you seem to be searching for Lutz.. OTOH the most annoyingly sloooooooooooooow fade-in I know is Yusef Lateef's version of "Hey Jude" on The Gentle Giant (1972)

[Wombatz]

OTOH the most annoyingly sloooooooooooooow fade-in I know is Yusef Lateef's version of "Hey Jude" on The Gentle Giant (1972)

excellent! (never heard this, my lateef fade-out date is around 62 or so, with his move to impulse.) one still can make out how cloyingly faithful his reading of the verse is ... so this is a brilliant reversal of the original, where the fade-out produces overwhelming relief that the pain is finally over, while here you're relieved they don't fade in earlier, and the fade-out at the end is kind of a pity. will check his work from around this time.

[h. lampshade]

"Golden Lady"

"Here Come the Warm Jets"