This primarily for you solo singer-songwriter types.
How long are your original songs by the time you get to actually performing them?
Riffin’ off To Talk or Not to Talk… and some of the details that arose related to the balance between playing and talking I got to wondering about your opinion about how long songs should be.
I’m specifically interested in originals. Covers are different because the minimum length is established by the published version of the song. Although there’s many a popular song that I feel go on for way too long.
Most of my original songs are under three minutes in performance. There are a couple where, if everything aligns perfectly, the audience will sing along in the choruses. And while that energy is in the room and before it wanes, I might do an extra chorus or two.
As a writer, I have usually exhausted all I want to say within a couple of verses, a chorus, perhaps a bridge, and maybe a pre-chorus. And when performing I’m perhaps overly conscious of my pathologically short attention span and fear that others will tire of my material as easily as I do.
It wasn’t until I got my L1® that I found my voice for vocals and writing lyrics. Up to that point I expressed myself through my guitar. I still feel the expectations of some who have known me for a long time who want me to shaddup and play (the guitar).
Maybe it’s because I was in jam bands for a couple of decades and we were pretty self-indulgent with songs that would seem to go on forever as we, being each individual in the band, explored every nuance and wrung out every permutation of a string of notes loosely based on the head section, returning to the vocalists who would remind us of the central theme and then we would all coalese as a unit for the finale … Well you get the idea. Last Friday a family member thought it would be a treat to take me to a show like this. Everyone in the band was extremely talented, and the night was excruciating.
I still get called in for gigs as a lead guitarist, but when it comes to solos, I’m usually done within a pass or two through the verse and maybe the chorus of a song.
I’m not really into rambling narrative (e.g. “Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago,…” or “Now somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota…”) so I doubt I’ll ever write anything like that although this post may be an exception.
Back to the point. How long are YOUR songs?
ST
Hi ST,
I have written short pieces of poetry that I attach to other’s songs or medleys, perhaps the equivalent of one verse of an average radio song, which run about 2 min 45 sec to 3 min or so.
On the other hand, one original I sing, I have to rush it to get under 5 min. I go thorough the same thought process you go through, I think, about mid way through I began to doubt the audience will still be paying attention for the final act.
I’m currently working on a song that starts at a particular time and place and ends three minutes later at a particular time and place. Problem is, I started writing it 5 years ago and I’m not there yet. 
Content is more important than length. I like stories. I used to sing Hurricane, It took 8 minutes, but it was/is a great story.
Occasionally I hear a tune on the radio and and the music is catchy, as are the lyrics, but it will just repeat the same lines over and over. By the end of the song you can sing along. A soloist can’t get by with that unless they are looping or doing something else besides just singing. Writing for a band I think is easier.
It is hard to write anything from a completely new perspective. I have thrown away many songs that became ridden with cliches. The idea might be good but the expression was tired.
I listen to a lot of singer songwriters, many suffer from the same thing I suffer from, not enough words in my vocabulary. It’s frustrating to hear some one who really sings well, and plays in an interesting, accomplished manner, but just repeats the same old I loved her but I lost her to a drunk in a pickup while playing poker down by the railroad tracks. Wait, maybe I’ll write that one.
Not writing for radio means we don’t have to hit 120 beats a minute or the 3 minute time limit. I say write until the story is told. If it’s a good story it will work.
O…
35 cm, depending on the font…
Sorry, I really couldn’t help myself!
Not being a song writer, I can only say I don’t mind a longer song so long as the story keeps it interesting.
Even instrumental pieces have “stories” to tell. I remember seeing Andreas Vollenweider in Ottawa (1986): the show started and they didn’t stop playing for 15 minutes. But never a dull moment.
Thanks to all you song writers out there that make our lives brighter. Do what you need to do, It’s all fine.