Mix Tapes

To my elders,

Well, I say mix tapes. But I suppose most people say "playlist" these days. Possibly because they're not technically "tapes." Not of the "Cassette Tape" variety anyhow.

Historically, I have not been one to make tapes or playlists in the traditional sense. I have a habit of making mixes by the album. And not shuffling the songs of an album. Shuffling music by the album. The entire album. I think that generally, music should be listened to in the order it was intended. But I admit that some songs are better than others, and that those songs that just get stuck in your head, that you love so much you play them all the time, that you skip back to them, or skip to them and play the album from them as a starting point, those songs are worth separating out. And then there is the whole time-limit aspect. Mixing by album is incredibly long. Like, hours and hours. And that just don't fly on road trips. (Get it? Flying? But road trips require a car? :s)

It all started a couple months back. It was the end of the semester. I was ridiculously bogged down with end of term projects and E and I had plans to drive to our parents' place. Which required road music, you see. And so while I could stop myself from watching tv or surfing the web, I could not stop myself from reshuffling the music of the album list I was working on. So I dumped all the best songs into a new playlist and went with it. And then spend close to 2 hours and the next 3 weeks perfecting the order, deleting songs that simply did not fit anywhere, and somehow still ended up with 2 Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin songs next to each other. Though they sound different enough that E didn't even realize they were the same band for like a week. And I made a dance list. The track list of which can be found in my first post, here. Ain't my first post cute? Maybe?

Well I ended up making 3 mixes for that road trip. The Yellow Mix, the Blue Mix and the Green Mix. And I left them with E for her listening pleasure. And she has basically been listening to them constantly. I like to think the ridiculous amount of time I put into them has at least something to do with it. tehe. Not to say that I don't listen to the playlists just as often. It may become the soundtrack for my summer. So now I am in the process of making playlist 4, aka Road Trip 3 (because the dance music mix is its own thing), aka The Orange Mix. (Yes, the colours do refer to the colour of the cds I've burned the mixes to. I'm obvious like that.)

My secret? Transitions. I go over playlists multiple times, listening to the first and last 20 seconds of each song and the song before and after it, to mape sure it flows well. Because flow is key. You can't change the tempo too quickly, and you can't have a depressing song or an acoustic song next to one that uses a synthesizer, nor one that is lyric driven next to one that is heavy on the guitar. These things matter. Some songs will never fit with a mix because they just don't have the right feel to them. They don't gel. Not that they're not great songs, but for another mix. And you basically top out at 3 songs per artist. Any more than that and spacing them out appropriately is difficult, to say the least. And that's on a 20 song mix. And my personal favourite touch, is the cap it with a funny last song. So far? Charlie McDonnell. On all three. No, there are no proper instruments in the entire video. It was a Challenge Charlie. Well, one mix also has an extra secret song, better known as "Dujour Around the World." Yes, that is Seth Green and Breckin Meyers. I miss the 90s sometimes. Well, almost.

-K

p.s. you can thank E and the uber cool website Spoonflower the the awesome cassette tapes at the top there. Buy the fabric here.