Beatles" A Day In the Life"-Longest Fade Out?

[ralph124c]

It always seemed to me that the track went on and on-even after the music stopped. Was this the longest fade out? What was the mike picking up during the fade out?

[WordMan]

Saw a lecture on it - they did a thing where they set the levels really low when they got all the folks to hit the same chord on the piano, and then, as the chord fades, they bring up the levels to still pick up the fading chords as they decay.

A Day in the Life

Final chord
Following the final orchestral crescendo, the song ends with one of the most famous final chords in music history.[16][22] Lennon, McCartney, Starr, and Evans shared three different pianos, with Martin on the harmonium, and all played an E-major chord simultaneously. The final chord was made to ring out for over forty seconds by increasing the recording sound level as the vibration faded out. Towards the end of the chord the recording level was so high that listeners can hear the sounds of the studio, including rustling papers and a squeaking chair.[23]
The piano chord was a replacement for a failed vocal experiment: on the evening following the orchestra recording session, the four Beatles had recorded an ending of their voices humming the chord, but after multiple overdubs they wanted something with more impact.[24] This final E chord represents a VI to the song’s tonic G major, although Pedler argues that the preceding chord changes (from F (“them all”) to Em (“Now they know”) Em7 (“takes to fill”) C (“love to turn you”) and B (“on”)) followed by the chromatic ascent, shift our sense of the tonic from G to E; creating a different feeling to the usual emotional uplift associated with a VI modulation.[jargon][25]

[GESancMan]

Dream Theater’s “Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence” is a 42 minute track on the album of the same name. The final note takes a full two minutes to fade out.

[Enlightening_Meditation]

@ralph124c

Was this the longest fade out?

I think that The Beatles had a longer fade out in the coda of ‘Hey Jude’. Many other artists have recorded longer fade outs. Also, I’m not convinced that ‘A Day in the Life’ has a proper fade out as it’s really a fade in on the sustained final chord.

There is one caveat about this song’s ending that I should mention…

At least one of the vinyl releases of the Sgt Pepper album has an endless loop in the last groove after the ending of ‘A Day in the Life’. The repetition is the sound of some voices and commotion. So, if you count that last groove as part of ‘A Day in the Life’, then a listener can make a very lengthy fade out using the volume knob on the sound system attached to the turntable.

@ralph124c

What was the mike picking up during the fade out?

One can hear ambient noises in the room as the final chord sustains: an air conditioner or vent, papers shuffled, and the squeak of a piano sustain pedal or maybe a piano stool.

[smoke]

Any idea if the vocal ending take exists anywhere? I’d never heard of that before.