Big Rock Ending

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Big endings. Lots of spitting, swearing, death... eye contact and thumping.
—Roger Taylor on how Queen ended their songs live

There are many ways to end a song. Perhaps you just play the final note and end it there. Perhaps your guitarist or saxophonist holds a note and the song fades out as that note plays. Or maybe your band just keeps playing and the song slowly fades out as they continue their rhythm. A Big Rock Ending is for when none of these options will do. Instead, the band drops the tempo and starts jamming out in a flurry of musical awesomeness, usually ending with a final note or riff to let everyone know it is over. Frequent features of the Big Rock Ending include the guitarist or saxophonist or keyboardist going absolutely nuts and improvising wildly, the drummer doing a roll on the cymbals and/or the toms, and if it's a metal song (especially Power Metal), the singer might also scream at a high pitch until the end.

There are a few essential components of the Big Rock Ending that make it what it is; if these components aren't present, the ending of a song likely isn't a Big Rock Ending:

  • The most important aspect of a Big Rock Ending is that the tempo goes away, and the band plays while ignoring tempo entirely. There's no beat or rhythm to Big Rock Ending at all. If the song has a steady beat until the end, it doesn't have a Big Rock Ending. A good guide is to see if you can tap your foot to the beat of the song until the song ends. If you reach a point where you can't tap your foot to the beat of the song, you may have a Big Rock Ending.
  • The band plays something other than what they've been playing previously; faster or slower versions of previous riffs and beats don't count. That something is usually an inconsistent beat with little seeming rhythm or reason to it, though one or two band members may hold a note while the others play.
  • Usually, the song ends with the band members playing a final note or two to let everyone know the Big Rock Ending has ended, but this isn't essential.

The Rock Band video game series is the Trope Namer and has a special way of handling Big Rock Endings. When a Big Rock Ending comes up, players can play whatever they like and earn points, but they need to hit those notes at the end to actually get points. While most songs that have Big Rock Endings in Rock Band do actually have a Big Rock Ending, there are a few important distinctions to make.

  • Not every song that has a Big Rock Ending rendered in Rock Band has a Big Rock Ending. Take Smashing Pumpkins' "Cherub Rock", for example. The game charts it as a Big Rock Ending, yet because the tempo doesn't change and the drum beat and guitar riff are consistent, it isn't an actual Big Rock Ending. Some songs also have Big Rock Endings added on when put in Rock Band, either because they are live versions or because the original songs ended with a fade-out while the band was still playing, so Harmonix added a Big Rock Ending, rather than having the song abruptly end.
  • Just because a song doesn't have a Big Rock Ending in Rock Band doesn't mean it doesn't actually have a Big Rock Ending. Take Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" as an example; it has all of the components of a Big Rock Ending yet isn't charted as such.

The take-away message is that whether or not a song has a Big Rock Ending in Rock Band doesn't necessarily mean it does/doesn't actually have a Big Rock Ending.

Often the Grand Finale of a song. Frequently lead into by a Last Chorus Slow-Down and sometimes accompanied (especially in metal songs) by a Metal Scream. Not to be confused with Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.

It's not uncommon for a band to add a Big Rock Ending to a song that didn't have one originally while they are playing that song live, especially when it's the last song they play during a show, so only add songs to the list that include a Big Rock Ending when they were first recorded. The one exception to this rule is if the song was only performed by the band during live performances.

Examples of Big Rock Ending include:

Played Straight

Alternative Rock / Grunge

Funk

Jazz

Metal

Progressive Rock / Post Rock

Rock and Roll

Other Media

Subversions/Double Subversion

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