A live fade out as it was done either onstage by the musicians and/or by the sound man (not later during the mixing of the album).
Genesis did it. (I saw this only after I posted my last one).
Drive-By Truckers do it very well. They play a song called Grand Canyon, and at the end, lay down their guitars (with heavy distortion sustain) one by one, till nobody but The Easy B is left on drums.
It works. Go see them. You won’t be disappointed.
That’s it! It’s been driving me crazy (after all these days).
A friend’s band (shout out to the now-long-gone Sadhana in Milwaukee) would do an amazing acoustic set. And mess with the audience in many subtle ways, including doing an occasional fadeout.
They’d keep up vigorous strumming and picking, but had mastered muting the strings just a little, then more, til they were just miming and mouthing the lyrics. The second time, I realized that the drummer had to look like he was banging away while making less and less noise.
Not sure if it counts as a “fade out”, but I love the long guitar outro by Neal Schon in “Who’s Crying Now”. Runs about 90 seconds of a 5-minute record.
Starting here:
The song “Silver Rider” by the band **Low **ends with an epic, layered, harmony vocal “aah” outro. Sends chills down my spine.
I doubt I would have ever heard of this band or this song if it hadn’t been used in an episode of the TV series “Rectify”. Which I highly recommend checking out, by the way…
The final movement of Holst’s, “The Planets,”–‘Neptune, the Mystic’–has a loooooong, nifty fade-out: a chorus of women are off-stage singing “ahhs” as the orchestra is silent and this goes on for minutes, slowly getting fainter, until it’s done. I saw the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra perform this and it was coooool–the conductor just stood there for the duration with his head down and hands at his sides, the orchestra tried to remain motionless, the house lights faded out with the chorus. All dark (mostly). The gong roll in, “Mars, the Bringer of War,” gave me an earache, but it was worth it.
^ cool.
I’d consider the “Prince Rupert’s Lament” section in King Crimson’s “The Battle of Glass Tears” one, big fade out, despite there being - in the middle of it - a surge in Fripp’s guitar in the mix (almost like a last gasp, of sorts) to reinforce the main guitar line.
Almost three minutes long, makes for a nice war-like effigy, evoking a grim, sodden trudge onwards, under leaden skies, or a surveying of smoking carnage…
Starts exactly at 8:32
Good headphones at a good volume recommended.
Heard this again recently and figured worth zombie’ing the thread.
One fine, long fade-out from Immolation.
Warm, fun - just meditate on the eyes and hope you summoned the power correctly.
Starting at 14:41.
Hello Goodbye, by some English band.