Blog > The order of tracks on an album
The order of tracks on an album
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When I first started listening to music, I took each album as it came. I listened to it from start to finish and went onto the next one. After a while though, I started making my own CD compilations. They weren't just my favourite tracks all on one CD - many of the CDs had a very logical track order. They had to be played from start to finish to fully appreciate them.
A larger body of work
When I write music, it isn't just a case of completing the tracks. After I've written some tracks, I spend forever moving them around in
Winamp. I play tracks over and over and try different sequences to see what works best.
I consider a track listing to be more than a simple list of tracks. It is a recipe that should be followed in sequence. I tweak it as much as possible, adding or removing tracks and seeing if the album has improved or degraded. There's a lot of trial and error in this process, but it's worth it.
If you've only listened to my tracks individually and not as an album,you're missing a very important part of what I do.
Besidewalk Plight has some progression in it, but not as much as my later albums. As time goes on, I am more and more specific about the order of the tracks.
The Unravelling of Travelling is split into three groups of 7 tracks, and
Twice Midnight has 15 tracks with running themes and lots of progression. It's not just a few tracks thrown together in any old order. It's a larger body of work.
Follow-on albums
A follow-on album is an album that can be played immediately after another to form a natural link. For instance, consider Elton John's second and third albums, "Elton John" and "Tumbleweed Connection" respectively. Assuming you exclude the bonus tracks on the reissue of "Elton John", you can play "The King Must Die" immediately followed by "Ballad of a Well-Known Gun" and they go together very well indeed.
A similar link can be found with "Reg Strikes Back" and "Sleeping with the Past", providing you play "Rope Around A Fool" followed by "Durban Deep". This is a bit of a cheat as "Rope Around A Fool" is a bonus track, but I think it rounds off the album a lot better than "Since God Invented Girls".
Completely reordered albums
Occasionally I take it upon myself to completely reorder someone else's album to see how it sounds. Everything But The Girl's album "Temperamental" is a good example of an album I like, but that bores me due to the ever-changing styles. It just doesn't flow too well.
However, when played in a slightly different order, I think it goes to another level. Now, I can't listen to it in any other order without skipping some of the slower tracks. You can see my preferred order in
my review of "Temperamental".
What do you think?
Does the order of tracks matter? Which albums do you know that are well-ordered, or badly ordered?
Posted by Ben on November 03, 2007 22:12 | Permalink | Hits: 309
Tags:
track order, track listing, winamp, follow-on albums, reordered albums, everything but the girl, elton john
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