The Art of the Mixtape

Making a Mixtape (or Mix CD) has always been an almost cathartic experience for me, especially when making a Mixtape for another person. It's a form of expression that requires a certain amount of attention, detail, and knowledge of whom the individual or group is that will be given possession of the mix.

Since roughly the age of 13 I've been making mixes for other people. There are a wide variety of mixes to be made. There are the mixes given to friends, mixes for those you might have a crush on, and then there mixes for certain events. Each one has it's own way of assembling the most rockin set of tunes.

The most important and common thing for all styles of mixes is that you need to know what you want the mix to say and what's going to be on it. You need to plan ahead. What I usually do (because I take this pretty seriously) is first get an idea of what songs I want on the mix. I then figure out what the proper order should be, making sure not to go over the amount of space available on the cassette or CDR. Next you need to make sure that the order of the songs flows well. Much like when an artist puts together a track list for an album, there needs to be some sense of cohesion and flow from track to track. With the digital age this has become much easier by being able to play back the end of a song into the beginning of a song to make sure it fits.

When making a mixtape for a friend or for an event, you can pretty much just put together whatever it is you want. When I DJed at WMAR in college in the pre-ipod days I would usually burn a CD of a bunch of tracks that I wanted to play for the show that week. For the sake of the show it helped to move things along, but it also helped to bring a general theme to the atmosphere of the show. It also in some weird personal sense made me feel a little bit closer to whoever was actually listening to the show because I had personally selected each individual song and had some, however insignificant, connection.

Whatever smattering of noise you end up putting together doesn't usually matter, unless you're making it for someone that you're dating or want to date/hook up with/obsess over/go on picnics with. You need to make sure that the songs reflect what you think the persons taste in music may be, and make sure that the songs that you're selecting are not sending some sort of message that you don't intend. Remember music is communicated on multiple levels, both the aesthetic level of the sound and the poetic level of the lyrics.

Now I'm going to go finish making a bunch of mixes for my girlfriend for Valentines Day.

Hooray!