Total running time of Lightfoot entire song catalogue

[JohnStinson]

Has anyone have the exact hours and minutes.?? I heard once that the Beatles released songs was 10 hours and 35 minutes of music. Lightfoot had over 200 release songs i think at an average of 3 minutes would be 600 minutes or about 10 hours as well. Wondering what the exact number is???

[charlene]

Somebody get out the calculator!
whatever it is it's not enuf!

[geodeticman.5]

Just to enter a closer degree of magnitude - Lightfoot is over 300 songs recorded... at John's average of 3 minutes - we are closer to 900 minutes +/- variarion in EXACT song count - which I believe Sir John did considerable research on for Stonewall/4LANE, and the Lightfoot song average time.

I think one easier answer would be - many of us have Lightfoot entire catalogues on hard drive, so that we may burn a custom compilation at will. But mine is shy an album or two. So my time total is way short in my one mega-Light (tm marcus registradus) file ! Wish I could help more completely, John - but I am quite confident of the 300+ songs John reported at behest of the Vistory studio's personnel.

[geodeticman.5]

P.S. - I just remembered 'jj' - reported he has the entire Lightfoot catalogue on his iPOD, and he said, in the Lightfoot lyrics game, that he was 'well over ten hours of music' - we should ask him huh ?

[johnfowles]

I am still working on my list of the total number of songs recorded by Gord to include anthems and compelling bootlegs my last appromation was I think 306 but quite a number are nearer 2 minutes than 3.My latest efforts involve creating progressive spreadsheets using Pocket Excel on one of my HP wonder machines,the Jornada 820 because they will open in my desktop's full sized Excel enabling them to be saved as a text file.I will now be adding sutable minutes and seconds columns to rapidly produce accurate total running times
For more information on the Jornada 820 please look at my Yahoo Group at:-
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/JORNADA820 and search for good used examples for about $50.00 on Ebay

[JohnStinson]

The total for all recordings of GL would also be interesting. I was originally just thinking about the more easily calculated "released" songs from GL's albums. There's 20 ...isn't there.

Ground Hog day yesterday in Toronto. Saw SHADOWS. 6 more weeks of SONG FOR A WINTERS NIGHT.

[jj]

JF has a rigourous appraoch in process so let's see if he comes up with a total in the next week or (and) I'll post mine...btw, geosteveo, i do not have an ipod....itunes on a g5, yes

i used to scoff at listening to music on a computer but when i added some Soundstick and woofer with usb connection, i had to take back what i said, pretty warm and full sound

and now i even listen occasionally to a youtube performance on my wee laptop speakers, so i am a total hypocrite

....how about this one to keep someone busy, what's the total time of all GL covers ever recorded (including youtube efforts)? lol

[jj]

Originally Posted by johnfowles

I will now be adding sutable minutes and seconds columns to rapidly produce accurate total running times

so how about some guesses for total run time of the 20 standard Gord albums (+18 rarities found on Songbook) before the figure is announced?

should it be like the Price is Right where winner is the closest to the figure without going over? lol

JohnF said rapidly....is a beyond a week considered rapid? if he is doing this all using pocket Excel i can understand the delay, challenge and one hell of a headache!

[JohnStinson]

I haven't added it up yet.

20 released albums plus Song Book rareites.

11:46

11 hours 46 minutes.

thats my guess.

john

[jj]

i am not going to comment on how good that guess might be but could you please include seconds also....we don't want to have to decide this by way of a shootout, lol

btw, nobody may duplicate John's or any other's guesses...i'm joking about the seconds

[johnfowles]

John your thread subject is
Total running time of Lightfoot entire song catalogue
which is on a par with my ongoing attempt to define precisely what that catalogue comprises.
You have now reduced your ambition to:-
"The total for all recordings of GL would also be interesting. I was originally just thinking about the more easily calculated "released" songs from GL's albums. There's 20 ...isn't there"
Yes well John there are certainly various levels of complexity in this project and the one I started earler viz
So just how many songs has Gordon Written and/or Recorded???
at:-
url=http://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?]t=18830&highlight=recorded[click here[/url]
I have found that this is actually quite difficult to definitively quantify
I am going to assume that the object of this exercise is to determine if you could accomodate the entire basic catalogues of Gordtunes on your ipod or mp3 player,or say a number of standard 700MB blank CD-R
But to keep things really simple I can certainly concentrate as you now suggest on the total time of what Gord usually refers to as his 20 so called "original albums"
which in reality whether he likes it or not must be 21 since the 18 unreleased "rarities" on the Songbook Boxset are in my opinion definitely the 21st.I have therefore now completed my spreadsheet for just those 21. plus a stray on Gord's Gold 2
Note that for the TRT of each album I took the easy way out and simply recorded the indicated "CD" time as displayed in a boom box type CD player, except for the first 4 United Artist albums,
where the relevant CDs I had readily to hand were the Bear Family double album on a single CD pair:-
Lightfoot!/TWIF and DSMMN/BHOE
I have now completed my Pocket Excel spreadsheet as promised, and then opened it in Excel 2000 to amend the formula in one field (because Pocket Excel does not have a "rounddown" function). I then saved the spreadsheet firstly as a text file, which proved hopeless as the columns become corrupted or non existant, then as a web page and at first I mistakenly thought that I had discovered that on the resulting HTML web page the formulae are all preserved hence the web page is in fact a fully functional spreadsheet in its own right. A most useful feature that I would like to have utilised in other projects online
When I found that this was purely the misleading way the filename is displayed after saving as a web page at the top,of an Excel program screen ,I refused to be beaten and a quick google revealed a number of programs (some free or shareware) that promise to do just that
Whatever my basic table is now viewable at:-
[SIZE=2]http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/song_lists/basic_time.htm]click here
and having got the basic spreadsheet format sucessfully setup I will attempt to finish the the job I started as long ago as April 2008. BRB I don't think!!
I will be successively adding other albums etc to build up my complete list comparing as I go to the existing song list pages by Wayne, Valerie,Spike and also Mende Joveski's list plus supplements
the basic total as you will see is 13 hours 39 minutes 21 seconds (or 49161 seconds) so that 11 hours guess was a tad off Mr Stinson!!
Here is a tip
There is far too much to fit as full CD Player playable audio files on a standard 80 minute blank CD-R, or even an 8.5GB double layer DVD+/-R come to that, but compressed to mp3 it might be possible to fit onto a few CD-Rs as data disks or depending on what model/capacity you have onto an Ipod or any mp3m player etc,, or indeed your hard drive
The total size of such an mp3 set will of course depend on the sampling bitrate as file size is directly proportional to the bitrate
For example to get "high quality" mp3s as I have defined/discussed at:-
http"//www.johnfowles.org.uk/mp3_quality/
I recommended using a highish bitrate of 192KBPS (KiloBits Per Second) as a compromise between perceived sound quality and file size
(a wav file as in effect used on CDs is very much higher at 1411KBPS).
Now for any given bitrate the file size obeys the following easy formula, (where 1 byte =8 bits and 1 MB=1024 KB just to confuse the issue!!)
File size in Megabytes=
time in seconds x bitrate in KBPS= kilobits/8 = file size in KiloBytes/1024= file size in Megabytes
hence for our basic list of 49161 seconds the space required at 192KBPS=
49161x192/8/1024=1152.21 MB
and since there are 1024 MB in 1 Gigabyte
then if you have a 4GB Ipod you could load up very much more than these basic albums.
Woohoo!!

[charlene]

ok - the blue on blue can't be read..

the edited version of the answer: -
John begins with:
"But to keep things really simple"
lol

then John says:

"I can certainly concentrate as you now suggest on the total time of what Gord usually refers to as his 20 so called "original albums"
which in reality whether he likes it or not must be 21 since the 18 unreleased "rarities" on the Songbook Boxset are in my opinion definitely the 21st. Plus a stray from GG.

I have therefore now completed my spreadsheet for just those 21. plus a stray on Gord's Gold 2"the basic total as you will see is 13 hours 39 minutes 21 seconds (or 49161 seconds)" (819 minutes)

John Stinson guessed 11 hrs. 46 minutes. for 20 albums plus 18 rareities is 706 minutes.

That calculation without benefit of EXEL spreadsheet is 113minutes or 1hr.and 53min. shy of Sir John's calculation. John Stinson did not add in the STRAY song that Sir John did.. Not a bad guess!
discuss amongst yourselves..

[JohnStinson]

13:39:21 Gordon Lightfoot

Thats it then.

Now when I am in the bar and the conversation comes up about the 10:31:00 of the Beatles...I can declare my hand and announce this rare bit of trivia.

Thanks corfid (char!)
John

[johnfowles]

I did not actually say that John's guess was a bad one
I have no idea why this forum all of its own volition decided to display impeccable URLs in unclickable and unreadable blue
instead of the correct yellow/orange clickable hyperlinks
It has happenned to mre before and is most distressing, So sorry folks you will gave to copy them and manually paste into your browser 's addrses bar
I'll try again with the vital one
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/song_lists/basic_time.htm
I was trying to correct/convert them when you replied

[jj]

great stuff, JohnF - defining catalogue is the key

from a Composition perspective - need to subtract the dups and non-GL

from Recording perspective - need to include most of GG1 and GG2 for starters since they are different recordings and not dups of pre-released tracks

adding them would really support JohnS guess also

JohnF - your table link doesn't work for me - what is the running time for the Composition angle? (ie. the 222 Gord songs as defined above, no dups)

hail to your pocket pal, does it come with a protector?
cheers
J

[charlene]

always practice safe calculations..

[johnfowles]

Since the forum is intent in playing silly b's here is the link using the cheaters method
on the tool bar
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfo...basic_time.htm

[jj]

Originally Posted by charlene

always practice safe calculations..

lol, no precautions required...pocket Excel is 'soft'ware


ok, JF...thx for the link..i wish there was a version of ODR (fave LP) that had 37 tunes

maybe a typo but there are 18 SB rarities

forget the mins rec, i can't quite tie into your song totals

one thing, i overlooked a few non-Gord songs in my count in the #Words thread...i missed Auctioneer, Ring dem Bells for starters

GL "standard LP" song total must be around 220 then, no?

if this summary table is tied to a detail table by Song, do you have a link to this for divulging to we, the masses?

wwho is Spike? again, nice work, unprecedented i believe