RADIO EDITS: PROBLEM OR OPPORTUNITY?

Now I'm beginning to get some radio play the issue of radio edits arises. If you don't edit tracks yourself radio stations fade them out anyway after 2-3 minutes. I don't believe in waffle but it's hard to conceive of some great music working under that constraint, much of Sibelius, John Coltrane or Sufjan Stevens would lose its most profound effects. But hold on; Bach, Brian Wilson and Duke Ellington did much of their best work in short form.

That got me thinking that maybe my custom of allowing pieces to develop and expand (often up to 12 minutes) then pruning them down to 3-6 minutes is a little undisciplined and flabby. This coincides with me planning a CD summarising my work over the past 9 months; if I include mainly 5 minute tracks that means I'll need to exclude more pieces than I'd like.

So I've begun making radio edits. In some cases it's not just a matter of editing out parts of existing mixes, it becomes necessary to re-arrange parts. It will take some time to judge whether the results are better pieces but at least there's more chance of radio play!