And now a nice bit of music history
May. 16th, 2019 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3epEnJAyu4
A really neat 10-minute exploration of how disco changed the length of pop tunes. tl;dr blame the (disco) clubs.
For about 20 years, from the mid-50s to the mid/late 70s, the length of a song was 2:30 to 3:30. That's largely because it's how much music you could fit on the 7" vinyl disc, aka the "45" because it spun at 45 RPM. It did that on personal record players, jukeboxes, and most importantly, on radio turntables. Radio controlled what was played and what was popularized, so the 45 dominated and songs adjusted their lengths to suit.
Then along comes (the) disco - first as a dance club and then as an identifiable set of musical styles that get played in those dance clubs. Club DJs needed longer material to work with - this is in the day of mixing being two analog turntables and a lot of finger action - and club owners wanted to keep people on the floor longer, dancing, rather than stopping and restarting every few minutes.
Theoretically you could put more music onto a 45 by making thinner grooves and squashing things mechanically, but the result was a poorer, squashed sound with less bass and less dynamic range. Disco is nothing without those things so the DJs rejected this. After a few years of back-and-forth, club/disco hits began appearing on the Billboard charts, even before they got significant radio airplay. In effect, the clubs and the club DJs supplanted the radio stations and their DJs as the drivers of popularity and money.
Once the 12" format became available record companies realized they could have both things out and sell both - usually the base song rerecorded as a "club" mix or similar going out to 8 minutes. But by the early 1980s songs started being made in the new format, not as remixes but as longer originals. And radio hits followed.
See if you can guess the first song specifically released for the new format before you watch the video. Hint: it's possibly the most popular single ever released in that format.
A really neat 10-minute exploration of how disco changed the length of pop tunes. tl;dr blame the (disco) clubs.
For about 20 years, from the mid-50s to the mid/late 70s, the length of a song was 2:30 to 3:30. That's largely because it's how much music you could fit on the 7" vinyl disc, aka the "45" because it spun at 45 RPM. It did that on personal record players, jukeboxes, and most importantly, on radio turntables. Radio controlled what was played and what was popularized, so the 45 dominated and songs adjusted their lengths to suit.
Then along comes (the) disco - first as a dance club and then as an identifiable set of musical styles that get played in those dance clubs. Club DJs needed longer material to work with - this is in the day of mixing being two analog turntables and a lot of finger action - and club owners wanted to keep people on the floor longer, dancing, rather than stopping and restarting every few minutes.
Theoretically you could put more music onto a 45 by making thinner grooves and squashing things mechanically, but the result was a poorer, squashed sound with less bass and less dynamic range. Disco is nothing without those things so the DJs rejected this. After a few years of back-and-forth, club/disco hits began appearing on the Billboard charts, even before they got significant radio airplay. In effect, the clubs and the club DJs supplanted the radio stations and their DJs as the drivers of popularity and money.
Once the 12" format became available record companies realized they could have both things out and sell both - usually the base song rerecorded as a "club" mix or similar going out to 8 minutes. But by the early 1980s songs started being made in the new format, not as remixes but as longer originals. And radio hits followed.
See if you can guess the first song specifically released for the new format before you watch the video. Hint: it's possibly the most popular single ever released in that format.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-16 06:22 pm (UTC)Oh, neat!
See if you can guess the first song specifically released for the new format before you watch the video. Hint: it's possibly the most popular single ever released in that format.
I have no information from which to guess this question, but if the background is disco, something by Donna Summer?
no subject
Date: 2019-05-16 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-18 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-19 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-28 09:20 pm (UTC)Fooey.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-29 01:14 am (UTC)