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The number that decides everything
A photograph needs three to four seconds on screen. Less than three and the room cannot take it in. More than four and the slideshow starts to drag, particularly on a single portrait.
That gives you a simple conversion, and it is the whole arithmetic of a funeral slideshow. 2:00 holds 30 to 40 photographs. 2:30 holds 38 to 50. 3:00 holds 45 to 60. 3:30 holds 53 to 70. 4:00 holds 60 to 80. 4:30 holds 68 to 90. 5:00 holds 75 to 100. 6:00 holds 90 to 120.
Two adjustments to make in practice. Group photographs need five or six seconds rather than three, because people are looking for faces rather than at one. Any slide carrying text needs the same, because people are reading. So if your slideshow has a title card and a handful of group shots, take five or ten off the count.
Songs, with their length
These are the titles that come up most often for funeral and memorial slideshows, with the running time of the common studio recording and what it holds.
What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong. 2:18, holds 34 to 46 photographs.
In My Life, The Beatles. 2:27, holds 37 to 49 photographs.
Here Comes the Sun, The Beatles. 3:07, holds 47 to 62 photographs.
River Flows in You, Yiruma. 3:15, holds 49 to 65 photographs.
We’ll Meet Again, Vera Lynn. 3:22, holds 50 to 67 photographs.
Lean on Me, Bill Withers. 3:53, holds 58 to 78 photographs.
Fields of Gold, Eva Cassidy. 4:43, holds 71 to 94 photographs.
Wind Beneath My Wings, Bette Midler. 4:46, holds 72 to 95 photographs.
You Raise Me Up, Josh Groban. 4:47, holds 72 to 96 photographs.
Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel. 4:54, holds 74 to 98 photographs.
Nuvole Bianche, Ludovico Einaudi. 5:58, holds 90 to 119 photographs.
Check the length on your own file before you count. A remaster, a live recording or a later reissue can run a minute longer than the version above. The number on your file is the one that counts.
Choosing, when nothing feels right
The list above is a starting point, not a recommendation. The songs that work at a service are rarely the ones that appear on lists.
Their music beats appropriate music. A track they played in the kitchen for thirty years will do more than a hymn nobody associated with them. Funeral directors will tell you the services that land are the ones where the music was clearly theirs.
Fast is allowed. There is an assumption that the music must be slow and solemn. It does not have to be. If the person was funny, or loud, or never sat still, a song that moves is more honest than one that does not.
One song is usually enough. For a slideshow inside a service, one song and one arc. Two only if you are running longer, and change the photographs where the songs change so the join reads as deliberate.
Read the lyrics again. A song can carry a line that lands very differently in a room in mourning than it does on a car radio.
When the song and the photo count disagree
This happens often. You have ninety photographs you cannot bear to cut, and a song that holds sixty.
Cut to the song. The least popular option and usually the right one. Ninety photographs at two seconds each is a slideshow nobody can follow. Sixty photographs the room can actually see is a better tribute than ninety it cannot.
Or find a longer recording of the same song. Live versions and extended arrangements frequently run a minute or two longer than the studio cut, and the association with the melody is unchanged.
What to avoid is speeding the photographs up to fit. Below three seconds an image stops registering, and a room watching a fast slideshow feels hurried at exactly the moment it should not.
When the words are too much
Some families find the right song has lyrics nobody can sit through. An instrumental version keeps the melody and the association without the words.
This is also the practical choice if the slideshow will loop at a reception where people are talking, since instrumental music sits underneath conversation rather than competing with it.
Piano arrangements of well known songs are widely available, and a licensed instrumental recording has the added advantage of avoiding the automated copyright systems that flag commercial originals.
The song written for them
There is an option most families do not know exists.
Tailor Tune, of which Tailor Chapters is part, writes original songs from what you tell us about someone. Their name, what they did, what they were like, the things only the family knows. Because the recording is made for you, no rights holder can flag it, and it exists nowhere else.
It is not the right answer for everyone. A song someone actually listened to carries thirty years of association that a new one cannot. But when the family wants something that is theirs alone, or plans to share the video widely, it removes the copyright question entirely rather than working around it.
Tailor Chapters is part of Tailor Tune, which holds a 4.97 out of 5 rating across 61 customer reviews.
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What you’ll need
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Your own photos — JPG, PNG or HEIC
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A song you love — MP3, WAV or M4A
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That’s it — we handle the editing
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