CDs: The 1st Half vs. the 2nd Half?

[General Zod]

Cherion said something in the Soilwork thread that made me think. It occurs to me, that 99% of the time I prefer the 1st half of a CD to the 2nd half. I've never been certain why. I think there are four likely answers...

1. The first half is the stronger half. Bands put their strongest songs towards the front, in order to grab the listener's attention.
2. Familiarity. I find I listen to the 1st half of a CD more frequently. Whether it's because I'm in the car, at the gym, at work or listening before bed, I rarely have time to make it through an entire CD. Consequently, I'm just more familiar with and have a greater appreciation for the 1st half of a disc.
3. The style grows tiresome. The music most bands write lacks diversity. Consequently, the songs begin to run together as the disc goes on.
4. Attention Deficit Disorder. Like most Americans, I have the attention span of house fly and all but 10/10 discs have any chance of holding my attention.

So the question is, assuming you also find that the 1st half of a CD is typically the stronger half... what is the most likely reason?

 

[Palabra de Dios]

Oh yeah, this is definitely something that I agree on...and I think it's more of the familiarity factor. The reason I say that, is that something I've noticed about some albums is that I will go back and really listen to them and find that some of the best songs are toward the end, where I have normally "shut off" during passive listens. Biggest cases in point: Soilwork's Natural Born Chaos (Soilworker's Song of the Damned), Elvening's Heathenreel ("Seasonspeech"), and probably the biggest crime of all: pushing away BG's Night of the Opera after not giving "And Then There Was Silence" much of a chance until a little before I saw them live. Once I gave ATTWS its due course, it's become one of my favorite BG songs.

 

[Met-Al]

I think I'm going to be in the minority on this one. I'm the kind of guy who likes to listen to an album from start to finish. In fact, I find that when I listen to an album for the first time, there are a few songs in the second half that really grab me and convince me to go back to that album in the near future. I'm usually the guy who wants a band to play the obscure eighth track on one of their albums when I see them live.


Stay metal. Never rust.
Albert

 

[eppst1]

I'm with Al on this one, I'm a full disc listener and rarely skip tracks. Actually, I can think of 2 that I regularly skip, the 35675 minutes of noise at the start of Onslaught's In Search of Sanity, and the Mercyful Fate re-do of Return of the Vampire with Lars Ulrich's awful, AWFUL drumming.

 

[The Invisible Guest]

I'm a full disc listener as well, but a lot of the activities I do, like .. driving to work, going to lunch, going for walks, working out, etc. all last 40 minutes or under. When listening to a disc that will generally get you thru 1/2 to 3/4 of the disc.

What I do on occasion now is start my listening in the middle of the disc instead of the front so I can expose myself more to that back end of the disc material. Still though when you look at my ITunes # of plays you can clearly see how the beginning tracks have much higher amounts of plays than the back end stuff.



Britt

 

[St Enigma]

I grew up in the days when albums were still considered works of art as a whole and we always listened them from start to finish. Actually skippig tracks really wasn't a convenient option in the days of C-cassettes and turntables which may have had some influence in building the habit,

Back then the bands usually placed the single track(s) first in the beginning of teh A-side and saved the best and/or most epic song(s) last and placed them in the end of the B-side. I still can't tell if the trend has chanced to the opposite as a whole with CDs, many bands seem honor the tradition.

Alas, due my past skipping tracks still feels like practicing heresy to me


.

 

[euleria]

How different would an album sound if you put it on "shuffle" and heard the tracks in random sequence? Some albums wouldn't work this way, obviously (2112, Six Degrees..., Pleasant Shade of Grey), but (for me) those sorts of albums don't suffer the sort of sonic fatigue that GZ describes.

 

[Purveyor Of Evil]

Full disc.

 

[General Zod]

Just to clarify something... I wasn't talking about skipping tracks. I never do that, unless like eppst1 suggested, the artist has a track of just pure noise. Regardless, the thread was not intended to be about listening to the entire disc in a single sitting or not. The question was about consistent quality throughout, and whether you notice a difference between the 1st half and 2nd half of a disc.

 

[Cheiron]

I'll go with 'it depends.'

Some albums definitely start off strong and then have their weaker songs towards the end. But most of the time, I think its that I'm digging what they are doing for about 20-30 minutes, but after that I need some diversity and it just isn't there. Similar to how some bands when they come up on the radio, Pandora, or the like, I enjoy them, but if I listen to an entire album I'm bored. There's only so much double bass I can take before my ears start to tune it out. Sonic fatigue is a big factor in some music for me.

I don't have attention deficit disorder, I just find most people/music to be boring.

 

[Heavenly Call]

On a first listen, I will try to hear about 60-90 seconds of each song. Then I almost ALWAYS hit random play when I'm in the car so I feel like I get a good feel for my CDs overall that way.

 

[metalprof]

1. The first half is the stronger half. Bands put their strongest songs towards the front, in order to grab the listener's attention.
2. Familiarity. I find I listen to the 1st half of a CD more frequently. Whether it's because I'm in the car, at the gym, at work or listening before bed, I rarely have time to make it through an entire CD. Consequently, I'm just more familiar with and have a greater appreciation for the 1st half of a disc.

I've noticed the same thing, and I'll attribute it to a combination of both of these things, along with an extension of 1 - which is that there's a lot more music on CDs than there used to be on LPs, and so the quality is hard to keep up. If you asked the same question 15-20 years ago about Side 1 vs Side 2 of an LP or cassette, you might get different answers. But since a 65-75 minute CD holds almost twice as much music as many older LPs, bands don't have to be as selective anymore about what to include vs. what not to include. Or, they now write more, which likely also leads to a dilution of quality. So, if the CDs are frontloaded with the better songs, the first half will be better than the second half, and the difference not as noticeable as it would have been in a Side 1 vs Side 2 debate.

Ken

 

[The Invisible Guest]

No, I don't think one side of a disc is inherently better than another. I just think most people get more familiar with the first half of a disc than the second half because of time constraints., ADD, whatever.



Britt

 

[Prismatic Sphere]

Nah, I can think of some superior second halves right away~

Brave New World
Disconnected
Caress Of Steel
Twilight In Olympus(though it's close)
Powerslave
Transcendence
Operation: MINDCRIME
Black Sabbath s/t(definitely a matter of taste on this one)

Just to name a few. But I generally listen to the whole album and like those above, are at least as good, if not better on the 2nd side.

 

[No Username]

Cherion said something in the Soilwork thread that made me think. It occurs to me, that 99% of the time I prefer the 1st half of a CD to the 2nd half. I've never been certain why. I think there are four likely answers...

1. The first half is the stronger half. Bands put their strongest songs towards the front, in order to grab the listener's attention.
2. Familiarity. I find I listen to the 1st half of a CD more frequently. Whether it's because I'm in the car, at the gym, at work or listening before bed, I rarely have time to make it through an entire CD. Consequently, I'm just more familiar with and have a greater appreciation for the 1st half of a disc.
3. The style grows tiresome. The music most bands write lacks diversity. Consequently, the songs begin to run together as the disc goes on.
4. Attention Deficit Disorder. Like most Americans, I have the attention span of house fly and all but 10/10 discs have any chance of holding my attention.

So the question is, assuming you also find that the 1st half of a CD is typically the stronger half... what is the most likely reason?

I had the same problem when all we had was vinyl...When Elvis Costello released "Blood and Chocolate" on cd, I went "WTF" because they changed the order of the songs--mixing in side 2 (that I never really listened to) with side 1.

Nowadays, if I get a minute into a song and don't like it I just hit "next" on my player...that gets me thru an entire album.

 

[MysticX9]

No, I'd say in most cases the quality of the 2nd half is at least consistent with the 1st...

 

[Diabolik]

I think I'm going to be in the minority on this one. I'm the kind of guy who likes to listen to an album from start to finish. In fact, I find that when I listen to an album for the first time, there are a few songs in the second half that really grab me and convince me to go back to that album in the near future. I'm usually the guy who wants a band to play the obscure eighth track on one of their albums when I see them live.


Stay metal. Never rust.
Albert

I have to agree with you. I do the same thing. I think also a new trend is that since there are more downloaders now they are not listening to the whole disc as it was intended too. Some songs work better in the stucture they are placed on the disc. I think also what ends up happening is that people gravitate to the more catchier songs first and forget the ones that need to grow on you. For some reason bands do seem to always put the more 'listener freindly" songs early on in the disc.

I too am one of the types who rather see some of the obscure tracks played live. For example.....Edguy. They have such a great back catalog but seem to play the same songs every night. I would love to hear "Spooks in the Attic" and other songs live.

 

[Jasonic]

I think a lot of newer albums are more front-loaded in terms of quality for reasons already mentioned.

Back in the day though, with LPs and cassettes, the album was broken into SIDE A and B, or SIDE 1 and 2, if you will.

In that regard, a full length was almost looked at as 2 mini-lps, since the first track of SIDE 2 was usually a solid kick off track.

As someone said above, even though I do load the full length of any CDs I rip to my IPOD, I do listen to it on shuffle, as due to time contraints, there are a lot of tracks I would never hear otherwise, if I only listened to every album from beginning to end. On shuffle, any track on the album has somewhat of an equal chance of being played.

Though whenever I get a new full length, I do definitely listen to it for a month or so on disc in full, before putting it on my IPOD.

There is no doubt that going as far back as the CD format, the whole concept of where a song is placed on the album was changed. Even moreso now in the digital age.

 

[FatesFan]

No, I don't think one side of a disc is inherently better than another. I just think most people get more familiar with the first half of a disc than the second half because of time constraints., ADD, whatever.



Britt

This.

I am guilty of hearing a song that clicks with me on myspace and then buying the cd and then firing up that track ( lets say for argument sake it's track 6) and then listening to the balance of the cd. Then I rinse and repeat like 20 times and before you know it, I have never really given tracks 1-5 a shot yet in my mind I do feel that the cd in question is better on the back half. It's just a familiarity thing.

 

[Rezz]

I've always been more familiar with the first half of CD's, mostly due to time constraints. I'll start a CD, make it half-way through, stop for whatever reason, and when I go back to it I start over from the beginning. I don't really pay attention to song titles so I have to be REALLY familiar with a disc before I know the names enough to pick favorites by name. Recently I refurbished my old 2nd-Gen iPod, loaded it with favorite discs and left it in my car, perpetually on shuffle. It's absolutely amazing to me how many songs play that I don't know, usually because they are near the end of a disc I liked enough to include on the iPod but rarely (if ever) listened to all the way through.