Albums

[colortwelve]

So for about a month now, I've been making fairly steady progress on an album with my long-term collaborator/vocalist guy, and I've started wondering, in a word, how exactly to put the tracks I've been working on together.

Coming from a background where I used to listen mostly to progressive rock and metal, I've come to regard a good album not as a collection of tracks, but as a whole piece of music. My issue is that I haven't quite been able to wrap my head around what it is that can really make an album musically coherent, like Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet, for example.

What I've also started noticing, however, is that even in DJing, there's a certain skill in selecting which tracks to mix together and where, and in segueing effectively if one decides to switch genres or tempos in the middle of a set. And since I know that a few of you guys are actual DJs, I was wondering if you had any advice for me.

How would I take this collection of unrelated tracks I have, which are scattered across at least 4 very different genres, and bundle it together into an album that doesn't sound disjointed and makes sense?

[meletric]

Try pairing songs up based on which ones transition into each other the best. Then take those pairings and group them together based on which other pairings they transition into until you have a first draft of your track list.

You could also try categorizing the songs into their respective styles. Take those styles and arrange them into an order that you feel helps to connect the album. Maybe you want a song from style 2 to start the album, so the album might start with the songs of style 2. Then maybe you decide style 2 can segue into style 3, and so on until you have a style segue mapped out.

Don't feel like you need to have a finalized track list right away. Create your first draft of it and leave it alone for a little bit. Come back a day or two later and look over it to see if there's anything you want to change. This process might go on for a while before you have a solid final draft (It took several weeks before I was satisfied with my last album's track list.) Also, don't be afraid to exclude tracks if they don't fit in with the others well enough. If they don't contribute the the album as a whole then you can still release them separately.

A great way to connect each song is to have a general idea or theme for the album from the start. For example, while working on the "Plastic Beach" album, Damon Albarn told each of his collaborators to try and include something to do with plastic in their lyrics. Also, in the album "Between the Heart and Synapse" by The Receiving End of Sirens, there is a recurring musical phrase that appears in every song. And the end of each song develops into the intro to the next, creating a seamless transition from song to song. Trying to force either of those things into your album at this point probably wouldn't work very well, but I think they're cool ideas to keep in mind for future reference

Oh man, that was a lot of words. Hopefully it all makes sense. Let me know if I should try to reword any of it
Hope that helps!

[colortwelve]

a lot of words

Why yes, that was quite the wall of text - and quite helpful. And considering that I already have a title, I think I have a few ideas on how to tie everything together while still staying true to the work I've done so far.

Many thanks, my good man!

[Whitetail]

Generally your album should follow a progression of sorts, the songs should build up and let down in conjunction with each other according to the mood your portraying. Tool's album Lateralus demonstrates this pretty well, but you have to do a bit of reorganizing to make it work (the album being based off the fibonacci sequence they actually have everything out of order of the actual progression and it only truly flows if you reorganize everything right).

Linkin Park pulls it off fairly well in Reanimation too if you'd like another (less work on your part haha) example.

Also short arty transition tracks can help with the mood too, just don't let them be /too/ obstructive - it shouldn't be a chore to listen to parts of your album if you're going to listen to it the full way through (*glares at Tool* - 4 minutes of atonal electric spark noises isn't exactly the most pleasing musically even if you're approaching it with it with an open mind).

[colortwelve]

Well, in the case of 'Viginti Tres,' that would count as half joke on the band's part, half component of the 10,000 Days super-mashup-thingy that people have done... (Also, your post is currently helping to bog me down in more Tool intrigue... I'm reordering Lateralus right now to check it out )

But I have considered cutting one track down into more of an interlude - perhaps a slightly longer one - as it starts quietly and builds into a glitchy beat pattern...

So many ideas. I thank you and the other guy for your advice, because this album may now turn out much more terrifying than it was intended to be at the outset.