Playing time (music)
The duration of a piece of music is called the playing time .
Since the music industry came into being , the playing time of a piece of music has primarily been linked to the capacity of the physical sound carrier . The first shellac records produced in 1897 only lasted three minutes. In 1948 the first long-playing records appeared with 33 1/3 rpm and a playing time of 23 minutes per side.
According to a modern legend, the playing time of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was the measure of the maximum playing time of the compact disc . Sony's vice-president at the time, Norio Ohga, wanted to be able to hear Beethoven's Ninth without having to change the sound carrier. The decision was made in favor of the longest version by Wilhelm Furtwängler available at the time . This recording from 1951 lasts exactly 74 minutes.
Since music has been transformed into a digital commodity through the possibility of digitization , the playing time is theoretically no longer subject to any limitation due to the sound carrier capacity .
Despite this possibility of extending the playing time of a piece of music almost indefinitely, the typical duration of a piece of music, especially in the field of pop music , is still unchanged at 3 to a maximum of 5 minutes. The music producer and composer Trevor Horn sees the short playing time of less than 5 minutes as a fundamental characteristic of pop music. A short playing time is also advantageous for high airplay . As early as the 1960s, the trend towards compositions with a maximum playing time of 5 minutes became apparent in the area of upscale light music.
The so-called radio edit has established itself for pieces of music with a playing time of over 5 minutes that are published as single . The aim here is to shorten the music title to 2.5 to a maximum of 4 minutes in order to optimize the title for radio broadcasting as often as possible.
In other musical genres such as For example, in art and post rock or in ambient music, very long pieces with a playing time of up to 20 minutes or longer are common. The background here is the typical use of minute-long repetitive sound patterns and structures for some of these genres and the focus on the development of a certain musical theme over a longer period of time.
meaning
The playing time of a piece of music is used for. B. at GEMA as a criterion for the classification of a musical work. The classification of the work is decisive for the distribution of the royalties .
The playing time of a piece of music also plays a role in determining the music charts . The Federal Music Industry Association only allows maxi singles for the official German single charts that have no more than five tracks and a total of 23 minutes of playing time.
Selected pieces of music with a special playing time
- The song You Suffer by the British grindcore band Napalm Death is considered the piece of music with the shortest playing time . It was released in 1987 on the Scum , the band's debut album, and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest piece of music recorded to date , with a playing time of 1.316 seconds .
- The song Yoko Ono by the German band Die Ärzte has a playing time of just 31 seconds. The 45 second long music video was inscribed in the Guinness Book of Records because of its brevity.
- The piece of music for organ ORGAN² / ASLSP by John Cage is the longest standing piece of music in the world with a performance in the Halberstadt Sankt Burchardi Church in the former St. Burchardi monastery . To achieve this goal, the eight-page score was extrapolated to a playing time of 639 years.
- Also by John Cage is the piece 4'33 ″ , which gets its title from the playing time of the piece, whereby not a single note is played during the entire 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.schlaunews.de/info-test-tipps-18082007/wissenswertes-zum-25-geburtstag-der-cd-warum-beethoven-eine-wichtige-rolle-spielte/
- ↑ a b Pop music: technology and creativity: Trevor Horn and the digital revolution , on Timothy Warner
- ↑ GEMA: Work classification ( Memento of the original from June 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 20, 2010
- ↑ Bundesverband Musikindustrie: Chart system description ( memento of the original from January 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 20, 2010
- ↑ Sam McPheeters: Extreme Extremes. (No longer available online.) Orange County, March 9, 2006, archived from the original on September 29, 2012 ; accessed on September 15, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ RZ-Online from March 6, 2001: "New single, record music video, mega tour: The doctors are coming"
- ↑ USA slim down longest piece of music in the world , accessed on May 19, 2010
