Endings

[badrail]

On my own compositions, I have only faded out on one song and it works. The others have a definite ending. I was chasing some 80's You-Tubes this evening and came across one of my favorite songs from Steve Perry (Journey) From his solo album entitled Street Talk, he has a tune called "You Should Be Happy" It has a somewhat background intro with keyboards and guitars for 8 measures in a fast beat, then Steve gets with it on vocals. The ending of his song finished with an extended chorus with "But Now I'm Happy, Now I'm On My Own" then the ending is the exact same as the intro but with only 4 measures, then it dies out with some lead guitar feedback to end it. Take a listen on You-Tube, this song ends but has an "afterthought" like the intro's "forethought", if you will. In my opinion, it has a definite ending with a fade out that works, and works great!

[henwrench]

I'm a big fan of the 'falling apart' ending. Not in a crescendo type of way, more 'the wheels have come off' type of way. I use this myself (too often), mainly because I can't remember what's gonna happen at the end or if I've actually done an 'outro', so what usually happens is I'll fuck a performance up at the end, and being too incompetent/lazy to do it again 'properly', I'll just leave it how nature intended. Invariably, these bits end up being my favourite parts, probably mainly due to the fact that the 'song' has finished. Or something.

                                                         henwrench

[Greeny]

I'm a big fan of the 'falling apart' ending.

Totally agree.

And the ending you did for my song 'Bona Fide But Blue' was an absolute peach of lo-fi deconstructed beauty!

[Nelson]

I've never given endings a lot of thought, usually just happy to make it to the end creatively.
Now you guys got me thinking. I went back through my songs listening to the endings and
wouldn't you know it, a lot of fade outs. I like to think I'm presenting the most natural
feeling conclusion , to the song.   (not sure now, maybe another look's, in order)

"Dusty Road" The outro is actually the chorus and starts at 4:06. I sort of fade out the tambourine and the though the volume of the rhythm guitar goes down I can still hear it at the end. @ about the 4:30 mark I was thinking of maybe fading out the soloing guitar (panned right) and the bass with the tambourine and maybe taking the rhythm guitar (panned left) and vocals to the end.  4:30


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"And so it shall be", I use the 2nd half of the chorus as the outro, slowing it down with only finger picking and vocals.   3:48
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Any more radical suggestions are welcomed.

[T.C. Elliott]

Here is the song I worked on all weekend for Spintunes 8. I'm going to do a final mix and put it up eventually on the songs page, but I'm linking the most recent mix here for the outro.  It's a repeat of the intro progression (x2) with a tagline repeated each time through. A bookend type of ending.  I know it's been done before, but hell if I can think where i done stole it. The more I think of it, the more I think the repeating the intro progression (which is sometimes half a chorus or whatever) is pretty damn common. But I'm only thinking of songs I've written or was written by band mates, atm.

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And here is another "fake ending" song. I learned to play this in a cover band some years ago and loved the ending. But beware, if the audience isn't "into" you the second fake ending just loses them all together.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNfocDNZWY8