Digitizing "Gapless" Albums

Our discussion about the different listening experiences one can have with "A Day in the Life" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band depending on what format it is played on led me to think about other aspects of digitizing albums such as Sgt. Pepper.  Namely, those albums that were written in such a way that each side was meant to be listened to as one continuous piece of music.  “Gapless” albums - that is, those where the end of one track is meant to immediately segue into the next track with no pause between them - provide a number of challenges for digitization.  I want to focus on two.  One has to do with playback and the difficulties in getting them to be truly gapless, and the other has to do with demarcating where one track ends and the next begins. 

So first a bit of background on gapless albums and why they were A Problem in the early days of CDs and computer audio players (with a focus on iTunes). 

With analogue formats such as vinyl or cassette tapes, the audio is continuous until you physically get up and lift the needle or press stop on your cassette player.  With CDs, however, the audio is divided into separate digital files that the player reading the disc has to retrieve, access its metadata, decode the first block of data, then send to a buffer before moving on to the next block (Wikipedia is not exactly guaranteed reliable but its article on gapless playback, which is where I got that breakdown, is worth checking out).  This process sometimes had the effect of a moment's pause or a click between tracks as the computer or CD player did its thing, particularly in older models. This wasn't a huge problem for most albums, where each song is self-contained, but for albums where the boundaries between songs are a bit more blurred, having a dead space of a second or more between tracks could be extremely jarring.  Imagine listening to “Brain Damage” on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but before it can transition into “Eclipse” there is a gap of nothingness as the CD gathers the information needed to read the next track.  I can tell you right now it’s remarkably frustrating. 

On the computer side of things, some audio formats such as FLAC and other lossless codec provided a way to ensure gapless playback, but not all players supported them - including iTunes.  In fact, it wasn't until 2006 that iTunes released a version (7.0) that offered gapless/seamless playback.  Getting audio programs to play sequential tracks in such a way that it authentically replicates the continuous sound of an LP or a live concert is surprisingly difficult.  This article on BitPerfect’s struggle with gapless playback is an unintentionally hilarious look at what needs to go into such an endeavour and the problems that can still arise. 

So that’s gapless playback.  Annoying, but getting to be less of a problem.  The other issue that arises with gapless albums is determining where to break up what was originally a continuous block of sound into mp3s or other digital audio files for use on CDs and audio players.  Let’s look at Jesus Christ Superstar, because any excuse to bring in rock operas is a good one.  [edited to add: and if two blog posts can bring in rock opera back-to-back, all the better!]

JC Superstar was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and originally released as a concept album in 1970 before it was made into a Broadway musical (and movie).  Tracks 5 and 6 on Side 2 are the reprise of "Everything's Alright" (with a track length of 0:34) and "I Don't Know How to Love Him" (with a track length of 3:36).  The two songs overlap, with the last word of "Everything's Alright" being sung at the same time a flute starts the intro to "I Don't Know How to Love Him".  On the original LP, if you managed to drop the needle exactly at the beginning of "I Don't Know How to Love Him", they would have defined it as the moment the vocal part starts, with the flute intro being considered the last few seconds of "Everything's Alright".  When the album was remastered and re-released on CD and as a digital download in 2012, they flipped it.  The flute intro is now part of "I Don't Know How to Love Him" (now with a track length of 3:41), but it has the effect of cutting out the last word from the previous track (now only 0:29).  

A very blurry photo of my parents' LP giving the track lengths for Side 2.

An easier-to-read listing of tracks and lengths given in the liner notes of my parents' LP.

And finally the 2012 Remastered Edition with the two tracks discussed highlighted.

So now if you wanted to listen to the remastered version of “Everything's Alright" on its own, it is glaringly incomplete.  And if you want to buy "I Don't Know How to Love Him" as a single (which, according to the iTunes popularity meter, a lot of people do), you are going to have the character of Mary Magdalene sing the word "tonight" completely out of context at the beginning of the song before going into why she doesn't know how to love Jesus.  It was an interesting choice to make, particularly since Yvonne Elliman released “I Don't Know How to Love Him" as a single in 1970 with a runtime of 3:36 - that is, without the flute intro.

On the upside, at least iTunes will now play the two songs back to back with no gap between them. 

(There’s also an interesting modification at the end of “Gethsemane (I only want to say)” and beginning of “The Arrest” that makes the re-mastered version of “The Arrest” 5 seconds shorter, but I won’t go into it here.)

So why the change?  Why did the folks at Decca alter what constituted the content of each song when digitizing JC Superstar?  I’m not sure.  From a financial standpoint, it may have been a way to encourage listeners to buy the entire album to ensure they got the original continuity as opposed to just picking and choosing a couple songs for $1.29 each.  Beyond that, it seems an odd thing to give relevance to, so much so that an effort was made to consciously change it.