What makes Six Degrees one song and not SFAM ?

[atmyne]

Mainly because chuck norris demanded it!

[Infinite Cactus]

I think the biggest issue with classifying it as a song is the fact that some of the sections, would work better on their own. The song flow is sometimes spaced in a way that feels like a suite.

[Infinite Cactus]

Rather the issue that some have.

[majo]

who cares?
both are masterpieces.

[Aniland]

It doesn't matter that 6DOIT was made in one chunk and were set next to one another

You're right.  Those things don't matter.  But what does matter is that SDOIT was written and is considered by the band to be one song.  That is all that matters and that ends any speculation.  It isn't a suite.  It is a song.  There is no grey area there whatsoever.

Similarly, A Mind Beside Itself was written as three separate songs comprising a suite, and the band considers it a suite.  Again, that ends it.

Nah. All that means is that the band intended it to be one song. That doesn't mean that it is one song. If Petrucci said that "The Count of Tuscany" was about catching AIDs on a trip to Venezuela, it wouldn't mean that the song is about that. It would mean that that's what Petrucci intended for it to be about. But to say that people who don't accept that are objectively wrong is just silly.

[hefdaddy42]

Start a thread about it.

Oh wait.

[ZirconBlue]

...and the audience gets the last word.   

Um...no.  That's never true.

Sure it is.  For one thing, the audience is likely to still be around after the artist is long gone.  100 years from now, if DTs music is still being discussed, music professors will have put this work in some category, maybe one that hasn't even been defined yet, and discuss it in those terms.  And they probably won't give a whole lot of weight to what DT called it.  Sometimes artists are lucky enough to choose their own labels, but often they are applied retroactively to past artists and works.  How many bands from the 90s are classified today as "grunge" that never used that label for themselves?  Six Degrees doesn't fit into most people's current definitions of a "song", I suspect that will continue to be true in the future.

[Perpetual Change]

Yeah. Bob Dylan's still remembered as a protest singer and civil rights leader. No one's going to cares those are titles he's been rejecting for the past 45 years because he was at one time both of those things. A spade's a spade.

[MajorMatt]

It doesn't matter that 6DOIT was made in one chunk and were set next to one another

You're right.  Those things don't matter.  But what does matter is that SDOIT was written and is considered by the band to be one song.  That is all that matters and that ends any speculation.  It isn't a suite.  It is a song.  There is no grey area there whatsoever.

Similarly, A Mind Beside Itself was written as three separate songs comprising a suite, and the band considers it a suite.  Again, that ends it.

Nah. All that means is that the band intended it to be one song. That doesn't mean that it is one song. If Petrucci said that "The Count of Tuscany" was about catching AIDs on a trip to Venezuela, it wouldn't mean that the song is about that. It would mean that that's what Petrucci intended for it to be about. But to say that people who don't accept that are objectively wrong is just silly.

I sort of get what you are trying to say, but, I think your argument is invalid. If JP writes a song about 'catching AIDs on a trip to Venezuela' then thats what it is about, it cannot be argued - it is fact. Similarly, in a more realistic example, Mike Portnoy writes The Glass Prison, claiming it to be about Alcoholism, then that's what it's about. Noone can come along and say otherwise, to claim TGP is about anything other than what it is about would be absurd.

I'm with bosk on this one, the band wrote it as one song, it was decided very late in the game that it should be split into multiple tracks for convenience only. If the band considers it to be one song, such that they even release it as one song on a live release - then it is one song - Fact.

[robwebster]

It's not a song. It's not a suite. It's not a concept album.

And yet it's also, somehow, all three.

I don't particularly have issue with people referring to Six Degrees as a single song. It is. What does bother me, though, is when people "correct" you when you refer to, say, Solitary Shell as a song.

It is a song. It was released as its own single. It has its own unique chorus, and a coherent structure in of itself. They play it live on its own. They even indexed it separately so that listeners can choose to consume it in their own way. Solitary Shell is a statement unto itself. Its own musical journey. It's absolutely fair to refer to it as a song.

But, frankly, we're trying to apply specific terminology to ambiguous concepts. This will never end well. They're all just things. "Statements of sound," if we want to be politically correct. And there's no reason they have to fit under only one umbrella.

You can call them what you like. Losing Time is a "Gerald." Six Degrees is a "slide." Geralds and slides, by the way, are somehow simultaneously both completely distinct from each other, and exactly the same.

The band said it was all to be seen as one song, but they also indexed the movements so we can choose to consume it whatever way we like, play ATCR/Losing Time live as a single unit, and released The Test That Stumped Them All as an individual song on their best of CD. The fans are way more anal about the terminology than the band ever have been or ever will be.

Six Degrees is a song if you listen to it all in a row. Solitary Shell is a song when they play it live. It's just a matter of context.



(Incidentally, I'd say "suite" is the probably the definition that most faithfully represents both sides of the argument. But hey, we've already established that it's a Gerald. Or was it a parsnip?)

[Progmetty]

Mainly because the band says so.

Just this.. just this.

[robwebster]

Mainly because the band says so.

Just this.. just this.

Not with any real conviction or insistence, they don't.

I think the fans have stolen that old quote and taken it to heart. Not that that's not to be expected. Fans, as a general rule, see their worlds through a dirty magnifying glass. Some bits are exaggerated, others are obscured entirely.

Incidentally, the only member who would've been even vaguely insistent about the terminology left last year.

[Perpetual Change]

Yay, and intelligent well-respected poster has basically just agreed with me in some kind of way. I'm happy. As happy as I've been since the same poster agreed with me on The Incident.  

I especially agree with you about the anal thing. The "problem" with the terminology, as I was trying to say earlier, is people acting like it's so clear anyway and ridiculing people who ask questions about it (because it obviously isn't. If it was clearly defined, these questions wouldn't keep coming up as often as they do).

[bosk1]

You can just take your filthy parsnips somewhere else, mister.

[Perpetual Change]

[Lynxo]

The fans are way more anal about the terminology than the band ever have been or ever will be.

The most relevant point of the thread, IMO. I really don't care about it - as Rob said it's all about context.

I will call it crap-music if I play it while doing my toilet business and I wouldn't be wrong.

[Mebert78]

I'm admitting to not reading through this thread before responding.  But I personally don't view SDOIT as one song.  Kill me if you want.  Each section just sounds too different and separate, and the fact the the band broke it up into separate tracks on the CD therefore makes me view them as separate songs.  The same goes for PT's The Incident and FW's A Pleasant Shade.  A Change of Seasons, however, is a full song because it's all one track and the music never stops or breaks from start to finish.

[RandalGraves]

What makes Six Degrees one song and not SFAM?

The fact that Six Degrees is one song and SFAM isn't.

[Progmetty]

This is going surprisingly much better than it did the last time we had this thread

[Progmetty]

To me SDOIT Disc 2 contains 8 musically individual songs that link together at the same topic, call it suite or concept album but don't call it one song imo.

[Perpetual Change]

This is going surprisingly much better than it did the last time we had this thread

Because last time I had to carry the torch for the SDOIT "suiters." This time, it looks like someone most people actually like is doing it instead 

[Progmetty]

I carried the torch in this once and they totally grilled me
I remember last time this happened Blob was still around so it must have been a while.

[ariich]

To me SDOIT Disc 2 contains 8 musically individual songs that link together at the same topic, call it suite or concept album but don't call it one song imo.

What so the band are wrong about how they classify their own piece of music?

That's ridiculous. The band wrote it as a song, therefore it's a song. People can consider it to be whatever they want (personally I think it makes an amazing parsnip) but in terms of answering the OP, it is considered one song because that is what the band consider it to be.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

Why is this thread still up?

[bosk1]

band wrote it as a song, therefore it's a song. People can consider it to be whatever they want (personally I think it makes an amazing parsnip) but in terms of answering the OP, it is considered one song because that is what the band consider it to be.

Again, this.  All the "but *I* think," "but *I* feel," "but *I* consider" is fine.  You can feel how you want to feel, and that's all well and good.  But it ultimately doesn't change what a song or album is.

[bosk1]

Why is this thread still up?

Perhaps it needs another shot.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

It won't die

[bosk1]

[Perpetual Change]

band wrote it as a song, therefore it's a song. People can consider it to be whatever they want (personally I think it makes an amazing parsnip) but in terms of answering the OP, it is considered one song because that is what the band consider it to be.

Again, this.  All the "but *I* think," "but *I* feel," "but *I* consider" is fine.  You can feel how you want to feel, and that's all well and good.  But it ultimately doesn't change what a song or album is.

But what people aren't realizing is mostly all of these definitions are overlapping anyway, so there really is no need to make a big deal about it.

[bosk1]

I don't think anyone is making a big deal out of it.  Someone posted a question.  It was answered.  There was also some erroneous information posted that needed some correcting.  I don't see anyone in the thread making a big deal out of it.

[Perpetual Change]

The question wasn't "What do the band consider ______ to be." It was more along the lines of (if I'm getting it right) "Why do the band categorize two structurally similar works differently?" It's a valid question. I'm saying the answer is because the definitions are muddled, the categories overlap, and the band probably weren't thinking about it on that deep of a level anyway.  

[bosk1]

No, the question is:  "What makes Six Degrees one song and not SFAM ?"  Look up; it's right there in the thread title.

And they aren't really structurally similar.  SFAM tells a story.  SDOIT is a collection of unrelated stories to make a bigger point about our (society's) response to mental illnesses.  Musically, SFAM has an overture that, as an overture is generally supposed to do, forshadows many of the musical motifs that will follow.  But the musical motifs do not really repeat from song to song.  SDOIT also has an overture, but then has musical motifs that do repeat from movement to movement. 

And lastly, I don't think the definitions are muddled.  It's more that DT pushed the boundaries and wrote the individual movements of SDOIT in such a way that they can stand alone, apart from the entire song (much like the movements of The Whirlwind), which stands in contrast to other multi-movement songs where the individual movements do not really work so well as standalone pieces.  Even ACOS, which the band broke up and played separate movements from during the FII tour, didn't feel like separate "songs" when played separately.  They felt more like...interludes or transitions, for lack of a better term, and it is a bit more obvious that these aren't complete, separate songs in and of themselves.  The somewhat unique structure of SDOIT and its movements pushes the boundaries, blurs the lines, or whatever like description you want to use.

[Perpetual Change]

Scenes has a ton of repeating motifs that repeat at least a couple of times But I agree about the lyrical content-- it is different. And the way it's presented outside of the music itself is also very different.

If you don't think the definitions are muddled, I'd be curious to hear what you actually think constitutes a suite. I mean, here's an example of something that's just like SDOIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_at_an_Exhibition

The composer wrote it for an artist friend of his who had recently died. There's an overture of the main theme, separate movements (which are each based on a different painting of his) and interludes in between movements which refrain the main melodies while serving as transitions. At the end there's a big finale which is somewhat based on the main themes. Replaces "movements based on paintings of the artist" with "chapters from some bargain-priced book on case studies" and you have Six Degrees.

And, classical music if full of that type of thing. So, when I read your post which was basically like, "Well, I can see why you would think it's a suite, but the band have said it's a song, so it's definitely not a suite, and we shouldn't even speculate about this any further" I couldn't help but point out that there are damn good reasons to consider Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence is a suite, none have anything to do with one offhand comment made by one band member about it being a "song" not a suite. Especially since the band consider other works of theirs, like AMBI, "suites"-- and that, like SDOIT and The Whirlwind, is made up of seperate movements that do have extramusical elements and do work on their own.

So, even if we're not going to consider that the band could possibly classify their own music wrongly, it's still worth asking: what do you actually consider a suite to be?

 

[bosk1]

It doesn't matter what *I* consider a suite to be for purposes of this discussion.

[Perpetual Change]

It doesn't matter what *I* consider a suite to be for purposes of this discussion.

Yes it does, because you said Dream Theater were "pushing the boundaries of traditional musical concepts." Are you going to explain what those traditional music concepts are, and how they DT expanded on them? Dream Theater never said that's what they were doing with that work, so how do you know? Personally, I don't think there's anything revolutionary about Six Degrees at all. It's pretty standard suite material; see the example above.

EDIT: I mean, what's the big revolutionary idea behind SDOIT, then? They wrote a suite, but had the balls to call it "one long song?" Even though a suite is a more specific way to refer to a song in this context? And people are "confused" because they just don't understand how innovative DT were being by calling it "a song" instead of what it appeared to be?