If Breaking All Illusions was a ~20 minute epic...

[ibosmiley]

Why does every Dream Theater song have to be 20+ minutes long and super complex?

One of the songs I've always kind of really liked was Cover My Eyes... just over 3 minutes long, very standard radio type song, and very good.  A good song is a good song whether it has a simple structure or a complex structure... whether it's 2 minutes long or 42 minutes long.

As for BAI... I think it's great as is.  If it's not broken, why try to fix it?

[Banny]

You're talking about revising one of Dream Theater's songs in point form?

[Nick]

This discussion has been epic.

[Jaq]

If BAI was meant to be a 20 minute long song, then it WOULD have been. It's just right as it is.

It is funny though about how Dream Theater has this reputation of being a band that does epic 20 minute long songs when-they really don't. In fact, they've broken 20 minutes on only 4 occasions-ACOS, SDOIT,  Octavarium, and ITPOE if you add both parts together. AMBI comes just short at 19:53 if I added it right, TCOS is 19 minutes. The band has far more tracks in the 10-12 minute range than they do over 15. In fact, because I am feeling nerdish, Dream Theater's plus 15 minute long songs from studio albums are:

1. AMBI 19:53
2. A Nightmare To Remember 16:10
3. The Count of Tuscany 19:16

That's SEVEN occasions when Dream Theater exceeded 15 minutes and two of them were on BCSL.  Which tells us that it was BSCL that was the oddity in terms of long songs; in truth, ADTOE's has fairly typical run times for most Dream Theater albums. 

[The Letter M]

This discussion has been epic.

But it's nowhere NEAR 20 pages...

Back to the topic at hand - epic is so subjective it's not even funny. There are Genesis fans who clamor over "Can Utility And The Coastliners" as being truly epic, when in fact it is under 6 minutes.

Conversely, DT have written many 10+ minute songs that I don't feel are very epic at all ("Take The Time", "Raise The Knife", "Beyond This Life", "Endless Sacrifice", "Honor Thy Father"), so length certainly does NOT equal epic, but epic doesn't have to be long.

I think if a song feels epic to you, that's YOUR definition of epic, and it is only applicable to YOU and YOU alone. If you try to push your definition on others, they will either praise you and agree (similar tastes) or argue and refute (different tastes) - not everyone sees/hears music the same way you do. We're all different people, with different opinions, different ears, and different backgrounds in musical exposure/tastes, which influence us and our understanding of music, so when we feel something is epic, it might be...or it might not. But that's for us to decide, and only for ourselves.

Now, concept albums, on the other hand...

-Marc.

[kirksnosehair]

[Live in Europe] Epics, nothing but fuckin' Epics [/Live in Europe]

[lanemeyer]

One reason I love this album so much is because there are so many songs in the 10-15 minute range. I think that's a perfect length for a DT song... and like others have said, there's no extra 5 minutes of meaningless filler in any of them (I'm looking at you, TMOLS). 

[Jaffa]

 

A lot of people in this thread are reacting in a way that doesn't seem to fit the OP to me.  The OP doesn't say "omg BAI sucks because it's not long enough omg omg make it longer epics need to be 20 minutes or they aren't epic."  The OP is just speculating on a theoretical different version of a song.  Some people here are acting like that's a capital offense.


So, at the OP: interesting idea.  In my opinion, Far From Heaven and Breaking All Illusions should stay separate.  I'd like it if they cut the silence off the end of FFH so that it COULD flow directly into BAI, but I still think they should exist as separate tracks.  That way, you could easily listen to them together with FFH acting as a kind of extended intro for BAI, but you could also listen to BAI by itself in all its individual glory.  Just like Wait For Sleep and Learning to Live, really - I think those two songs go beautifully together, of course, but I also like being able to listen to LTL by itself.

As for expanding Breaking All Illusions itself, I do think it could stand to have a little extra material added.  My one and only problem with the song is that sometimes the transitions between parts don't feel very smooth to me, so I could definitely appreciate it if they added a couple minutes worth of transitional material to make the song more cohesive.  Maybe reprise some of the cooler moments of the song a bit more, because there were a few spots that were insanely cool but didn't really felt like they had enough time to sink in.

That being said, I think Breaking All Illusions is fantastic as it.  So, while I think it could be made better, I'm going with this:

If it's not broken, why try to fix it?

[toro]

To Live Forever is way more epic than ITPOE or anything on BC&SL.

[Jaffa]

To Live Forever is way more epic than *snip* anything on BC&SL.

Agreed.

[hefdaddy42]

To Live Forever is way more epic than ITPOE or anything on BC&SL.

I agree.

[MetropolisxPt1]

It's fine as it is in all honesty. On first listen, it almost felt too long.

this good song but should be left how it is.

[Lowdz]

"grand" does not only mean long.

It also means Large and impressive in size, scope, or extent; magnificent. Rich and sumptuous

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/grand

So grand in stature does not just mean it needs to be long, it also needs to be "magnificent", and BAI is already.

[Jamesman42]

^You just described my penis

[skydivingninja]

BAI is perfect the way it is.  I think 8-12 minutes is the perfect length for a DT song.