Hidden Tracks

Actually, I've seen it done both ways and both ways worked perfectly! I think it's just a question of personal choice. One thing, though, a friend of mine did it where you leave a few seconds of 'dead' air, then in comes the hidden track. The only thing was, he waited a few too many seconds (like 15 or 20 seconds!). If I hadn't had it in a carousel, I probably would have changed discs before the hidden track actually played. So, that's one thing to watch for! It's probably easier just to add another track, IMHO, plus, that way, if someone wanted to skip through to the hidden track there would be a marker for it and they wouldn't have to fast forward trying to find the beginning of the track. Hope that makes sense!

that is what i want to do but my question is how do u do that? I have seen CD's that when u put them in a CD Player it says 10 songs then after the tenth song all of a sudden this other song pops up as number 11. How do u do that???

I would prefer to keep it on the same track, and leave a BIG space between it. Like 5 minutes or so. It's a hidden track, right? If people remove the disc before finding the song, too bad for them. Otherwise just make it an 11th song and put it on the tracklist.

I would prefer to keep it on the same track, and leave a BIG space between it. Like 5 minutes or so. It's a hidden track, right? If people remove the disc before finding the song, too bad for them. Otherwise just make it an 11th song and put it on the tracklist.

I hate to disagree, Arjen, but, what's the point of putting a song on a CD that most people won't hear? If there was a five minute gap between the end of the last listed song and the beginning of the hidden one, how many people are going to sit there and listen to five minutes of nothing when they could be moving onto something else? Again, IMHO, I think that just adding an eleventh track and not listing it on the song list adds up to a hidden track, it will give the same amount of time between the tenth and eleventh as it does between the third and fourth, it's trackable as far as wanting to skip forward to that particular song, and, if only ten songs are listed, what a pleasant surprise it is to find that eleventh one! Anyway, that's just my humble opinion.

that is what i want to do but my question is how do u do that? I have seen CD's that when u put them in a CD Player it says 10 songs then after the tenth song all of a sudden this other song pops up as number 11. How do u do that???

I'm going out tonight and will see a few people who actually run a studio. I will ask them how to add a trackable hidden track that won't show up as number eleven when you pop it into the CD player, and I'll post it tomorrow! :D

Electra: it really is about taste. I myself wouldn't give a rats arse about how many people would hear it. A hidden track should be hidden or else it is really more of a bonus track. Which is also cool, but something different. Then again, it kinda depends on what kind of track it is and how it fits in with the album. If it was really quite a weird track (for example the hidden track on OLP's 'Spiritual Machines') then I'd think my way would work better. Having it directly after the last song would really sound akward. But if the song is in the same style then you might want to go your way to keep the flow going.

And by the way, someone who never disagrees with anyone is a person without character or soul. Feel free to disagree with anything and everything I say any time you like. :D

Here's something I found, Leear, that might answer a few questions. When I find more I'll post. Never got around to discussing it this evening!! Sorry! We were busy jamming and doing Christmassy things!

Methods

On unindexed media such as vinyl records, hidden tracks are generally additional tracks left off of the liner notes. On indexed media such as compact discs, there are additional methods of hiding tracks, such as:

* using an ordinary indexed track omitted from the song listing. There can also be a few short tracks of a few seconds in length in between the last named song and the hidden song; hidden songs are often listed as 99, the last possible cd index;
* placing after another track (usually the last track on the album), following a long period of silence. For example, on Green Day's 1994 album Dookie, the last official track is followed by several minutes of silence, and then followed by a track known as All By Myself;
* placing in the pregap of the first indexed track, so that the cd must first be cued to the track, and then manually rewound; these are usually referred to as "Track 0". For example, on the 1996 compilation album Songs In The Key Of X: Music From And Inspired By The X-Files, there are two hidden tracks; to hear them you have to rewind the first track nine minutes. The downside of this method is that the CD player will not play these tracks without manual intervention;
* using part of the data track portion of an Enhanced CD. If it is a compressed form such as MP3 or aacPlus, then more audio content can be potentially stored than if the track was a regular audio track. The downsides of this method is that regular CD players cannot play these tracks, the sound quality is lower because it is compressed in a lossy format (MP3), and the content is often locked to a particular operating system;
* using several tracks with no silence in-between to produce an uninterrupted song. An example is Frenzal Rhomb's 1997 album Not So Tough Now, although the majority (but not all) of the dozens of tracks making up the secret are listed on the liner notes with names which highlight their secret nature.

Titles

As these tracks are left off the song list, they do not usually have formal song titles. When mentioned in music reviews, these tracks are usually referred to as "Track 0", "Untitled Track" or "Hidden Track". At other times, the name is inferred by external communication from the artist; for example, the untitled track on Alanis Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill is referred to as "Your House" when she performs live.

Sorry, I can't help with the technical aspect of the question.
It does, however, remind me of an old Monty Python vinyl album that had two seperate grooves on one side of the record. I listened to it multiple times before, by pure chance, putting the needle into the second groove and finding the third side of the record! Too cool.