
The gradual decline of the fade-out in popular music (2014) - otoolep
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2014/09/the_fade_out_in_pop_music_why_don_t_modern_pop_songs_end_by_slowly_reducing.html
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mrspeaker
Ha, interesting observation! When Kurt Cobain died I remember someone
postulating that the fact that no Nirvana songs ended with a fade out was a
metaphor the band. I liked the idea, though the stats make it look like it was
just a trend in the mid 90s!

I was in a cafe the other day and it was playing pop songs from the 40s or
50s. A large number of them would end by simply stopping the main song, and
everyone playing a quick "dun-dun-dun". It was kind of jarring. I wonder if
the "fade out" will be as jarring to people in the future.

~~~
mayank
Darkly ironic, because "it's better to burn out than fade away" is a Neil
Young lyric that Cobain quoted in his suicide note...

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SyneRyder
This was also discussed on the Sonic Talk podcast #543, Cliff Drop Ending.
They start at 12:57, but I thought the best bit was at 20:23:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bkJpKtZMl4&t=20m23s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bkJpKtZMl4&t=20m23s)

They make some interesting points about how fade outs were a manual skill
before digital audio, something you had to do with your hands on a mixing
desk. So if your hand twitched during the fade - especially if you were fading
the individual instrument channels at once, and not just the stereo master
channel - then you would have to start all over again & try re-recording your
fade out until it was just right.

They also discussed some of the more creative approaches to a fade out - maybe
you fade out the instruments faster than the vocal, so that the vocal at the
end is left floating on its own. And rather than just decrease the vocal, you
also increase the reverb at the same time, leaving a ghostly sound of just the
echoes of vocals that remain through the fade out.

I usually think of fade-outs as a cop-out, but that made me consider there can
be more craft & artistry to it than I'd considered.

~~~
earthicus
>I usually think of fade-outs as a cop-out, but that made me consider there
can be more craft & artistry to it than I'd considered.

I'm not sure this argument is entirely convincing, because 'fading' (be it
acoustic or analog-electric or digital) is not incompatible with a
traditional, more explicit ending. On the contrary! The diminishing, whisper
quiet ending is one of the most effective techniques in classical music, and
intelligently varying the presence of your instruments and/or singers is an
essential ingredient for high quality orchestration.

\-----------------------

Some concrete examples:

Ligeti - Musica Ricercata No. 7 (1953)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmuK8Wtux6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmuK8Wtux6Q)

Simeon ten Holt - Palimpsest for String Septet (1993). This one kind of starts
out as a fade but then ends more abruptly, which i love!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSX-
TK_8Y90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSX-TK_8Y90)

Philip Glass - Violin Concerto (1987)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owf8tk1MdPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owf8tk1MdPM)

Dvorak - Piano Quintet Dumka (1887)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SInKlybxgQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SInKlybxgQw)

\----------------------

The fact that fades and explicit endings are not mutually exclusive is, I
think, rather important: the implication is that (IMHO) very close to 100% of
fade-out songs can be greatly improved by adapting those techniques our
Classical friends showed us.

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AdmiralAsshat
It won't be missed.

It especially sucks when the band sounded like they were doing something
interesting before the fade-out. The ending to the song "Demon Cleaner" by
Kyuss is midway through an amazing solo when the fade-out occurs.

~~~
throwaway0255
Yeah, I’ve always had the same thought.

Another musical pet peeve of mine is when, usually during the intro, a song
doubles the number of bars for a sequence, basically repeating itself for no
good reason.

My ear is ready for the song to kick in, but at that moment it just repeats
the previous 8 bars. Every time I think “really, we need to do this 8 more
times? Can’t we just get on with it?”

It’s like the musical equivalent of waiting in line.

~~~
dylan604
Not sure about pop music, but in the EDM world, I've always considered this as
an artist actively considering how the DJ will use this track. For DJs that
simply fade in/out of one track to the the next, they wouldn't care. However,
for the DJs that actually beat match and mix tracks together, this added
phrase at the head of the track allows for a much more seamless mix before the
song "kicks in".

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ozzmotik
as an active musician (and having been one for 15 years) i personally almost
never find myself using fades on the macro level. i think they're super useful
for controlling the build up and release of tension throughout the song but i
tend to prefer a cold close just because of how sudden it is. now, i do
sometimes use tape stops to end sections or songs, and you can consider those
to be a fade in terms of the pitch and speed, if you view fade in the most
general terms as an envelope that is decaying over a period of time automating
a specific parameter. to me i think it's less that fades have become less
popular and more that they have found more application in modulating tension
across different tonal aspects (pitch, duration, filter cutoff, really
anything that can be automated) and a lot of that is a side effect of moving
to a more digital culture where the idea of patch bays and plugging generators
into each other is a lot cheaper since you no longer have to buy all the
expensive hardware to do so.

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gerbilly
How about this for a cold close?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKmnW6NWPZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKmnW6NWPZY)

The song even opens harsh too.

It was supposed to be sandwiched between "Mean Mr Mustard" and "Polythene Pam"
but Paul asked the engineer to throw the bit of tape containing the song away.

The engineer was under direction to never throw anything the Beatles recorded
away, so he tacked it on to the end of the Abbey Road master.

When the Band had a listen through, they liked the effect and decided to keep
it there.

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nayuki
A Vox video on this topic - "Why more pop songs should end with a fade out":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpKypvDjiPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpKypvDjiPM)

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kazinator
The fade out is basically stupid because it has to be replaced with a proper
ending when performing live.

I've almost always preferred the song endings from the live version compared
to the fade-out on the album.

An electronic volume fade out is not appropriate to serious music; there is
the diminuendo, but that's an instrumental technique.

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sanjiwatsuki
"Build Me Up Buttercup" ends with one of the most interesting fade-outs. It
actually ends with a key change during a climax, ending unresolved. I've
always found that to be one of the most interesting artistic fade-outs from
the oldies.

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humbledrone
When a song fades out, I always like to picture that the song didn't really
end, and that the track I heard was just a small window into a universe where
the band just keeps jamming on the last part of the song forever.

~~~
WorldMaker
It's sometimes fun to find those bands where that's actually the case when you
see them live that after the fade out is a wild jam session that eventually
just shifts into the next song.

It's also sometimes quite taxing to find those bands when you aren't expecting
them and the studio engineers were doing you a favor in fading out after all
the best parts.

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blt
I really wish I knew what Ghostface says at the end of "Scary Hours"...

~~~
kazinator
Maybe you can find a live version that doesn't fade out?

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jancsika
> A Little Bit Softer Now, a Little Bit Softer Now …

... isn't a fade out that ends a song. It ramps down in loudness but is
followed by the lyrics, "A little bit louder now," while the loudness ramps
back up.

Edit: clarification

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ozzmotik
definitely not a fade out but still conceptually a fade. still i do think it's
important to note the distinction regardless

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dbatten
I appreciated this. I've always disliked fade-outs, in particular because I
grew up listening to "oldies" (50s-70s music, don't know if the term has
changed in meaning since that time) with my dad, and DJs would often fade a
song out artificially early in order to meet time requirements. It always felt
like you missed out on part of the song.

Cool/refreshing to see that a lot of artists were legitimately using it to
create novel musical effects, or add new meaning to their songs. I hadn't
considered that it could be used for that purpose.

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PeanutNore
Maybe it's the musician in me, but I can't listen to a song that fades out at
the end without wondering how the band really ends the song when they play it
live.

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squarefoot
For some creative fade ins/outs listen to Cygnus X-1 by Rush. The sound
engineer fades in or out the instrument while leaving constant the send to the
reverb room (late 70s, there was no digital gear at that time). 1:24 bass,
9:40 guitar.

[https://hooktube.com/watch?v=1OMibr8CqQ4](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=1OMibr8CqQ4)

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21
I just noticed that yesterday, there was a segment on a TV music channel with
90-00s music, and I noticed how almost all ended in a fadeout, and how it made
me feel that it's wasting my time in today fast paced world.

Just like that recent article about long form press or books, we just don't
have time for that or fadeouts anymore. Everything must be TL;DR

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jackconnor
This is very unscientific, but fade-outs are the most boring way to end a
song. I don't see why we need them.

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bitL
So the title is basically "fade out of fade-out in popular music"?

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teknico
Yes, pun intended: "And like a classic example of itself, the decline has been
long, gradual, and barely noticed."

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ravenstine
This means the fade-out will eventually become cool and make a comeback.

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Waterluvian
I always thought the fade was just a radio friendly way to make it easy to
transition seamlessly with 90s live radio technology.

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klodolph
I always thought the bands just didn't know how to write an outro.

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tbirrell
This is the theory I subscribe to.

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klank
This is the theory I put into practice when making my own music.

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NickBusey
Sad? I always felt the fade-out was a cop out for people who couldn't figure
out how to end the song. Good riddance.

~~~
tjr
As I listener, I would generally agree, and as a musician, I would definitely
agree -- about myself! But sometimes it does seem to work nicely. For example,
I'm not sure that a definite ending would have improved The Beach Boys' "God
Only Knows".

