[habiTat]

Hi guys,

As you know I'm working on this 'Seven Deadly Sins' concept album. I'm still a way off completion but I'm starting to piece together the songs and demos in my DAW as one continuous stream, each part flowing into the next, in some cases without any silence to divide the songs.

My questions are..

Is it acceptable/sensible to eventually present this as one single continuous track? Or is that asking too much of the listener? The intention is that it should be heard in its entirety so the listener can appreciate the story/context but I'm unsure as to whether people would bother at all, if they can't skip through like a normal album.

Should I just chop it up and hope that Bandcamp/the cd will play without pauses between songs?

Is there a precedent for this? Even my cd of War of the Worlds is separated into tracks, although it does play through as one..

[ShinyThang]

Ooops! I hit 'report' instead of 'Post' - Hope I didn't cause any trouble?

I guess you'll find an audience whichever way you go but speaking personally I'd prefer to see it divided into songs which play continuously if required. It's what Pink Floyd did. I mean If I want to hear all of Dark side of the Moon in context I can and if I want the tracks to be included in a random selection I can do that too. Obviously you get some odd beginnings and endings.

On my old phone there used to be a sort of glitch between each track but not on my latest one. Nor on the car USB player. Or the computer come to that (strange, I almost forgot you can play tracks on a computer too )

I'm afraid my attention span is no longer capable of actually sitting and really listening to concept albums in the way that I used to love to do when I were a lad. On top of that there is always something else that needs my attention (my bladder more often than not). I shouldn't think I'm the only one thinking like this but I do only speak for myself.

Good luck with it

[Stephen Palmer]

I definitely think it should be presented as one continuous piece - and no listener who makes the effort to listen should have any problem with that, not least because it's you, the creator, who wants it that way. To listen to 'Dark Side Of The Moon' (to take the example mentioned by ShinyThang) with the tracks out of order is verging on an insult imo!

[habiTat]

It's a tricky one because I'm putting a lot of time and effort into the continuity, trying to write and compose the songs as such. It'll be a shame if certain ones get cherry picked out of context. Saying that, any audience is better than none, I need all the listeners I can get.

Is it just pretentious of me to expect people to listen and appreciate it as a whole?

Maybe I should offer two versions, one as a single continuous player and one chopped up version..

[ShinyThang]

Stephen? ... Ouch!

[Neil C]

How long is it going to be?
You could do both - have it as one continuous suite track one 1, and bonus [ hidden? ] tracks 2 to 8 [-not dance remixes though!!
Good luck
 
Neil 

[S.T.C]

If they blend of do it..wouldn`t put me off

[Stephen Palmer]

No offence to you or anyone ShinyThang, just my opinion.

I very strongly believe that the original artistic vision of the creator should be respected. It would annoy me a lot if my albums were chopped up by anybody. I've lost a lot of fans by expecting them to follow wherever I go, but I've gained a lot too. Swings and roundabouts...

All the artists I like and respect refuse to 'stay put' in a particular style and refuse to compromise their original artistic vision; just to mention a few off the top of my head - The Stranglers (classic case maybe?), Rush, Kate Bush.

[Michael]

Hm, I'd say go for both options if practical.

As a concept album it is of course meant to be listen to as one continuous track, but if somebody wanted to listen to their favourite track on the album, single tracks might come in handy. On professionally mastered CDs they often manage to implement both of these features seamlessly, no idea though how that is accomplished 

[Stephen Palmer]

It's done during the "placing" of the tracks with respect to each other, e.g. using Waveburner with Logic Pro.