My recent post on rap music brought a few points to light for me. One; other people have opinions that are just as valid as mine, and instead of hoping they’ll throw in with a comment or two, I should perhaps do as good reporters do and seek them out in order to utilize them as part of my entries, particularly in topics where I have little valid foundation for my own opinions, be it because of my dangly bits or my ruddy Norse-Irish complexion. Two; I was starting down a path of semi-academic writing that honestly isn’t that healthy for a blogger. Maybe it’s all the Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations that I’ve been watching lately, or maybe writing more frequently has relaxed academia’s iron grip on the squishy grey Jell-O pile that calls itself my brain. Either way, I’ve come to realize that I want this blog to be about personal expression, not just the ideas that come stumbling out of that expression. What good are ideas when you can’t hear the text in your head or feel the identity of the person expressing them? So with that all in mind, I’ll be trying from here on in to give my writing a much-needed facelift. I’m a person, the same as you. Well, except you probably aren’t as tall as me, and statistically speaking the odds are against you having a beard, but once you boil all that away we’re just people.
Speaking of boiling things down, when you boil every pop song written in, say, the past millennium down to the nitty-gritty, each one is a love song. Whether it’s love of a memory, of yourself, a physical sensation, or – my personal favorite – something as simultaneously ephemeral and concrete as the open road, the act of songwriting is in and of itself a declaration of love and passion. The emotions expressed represent every facet of love – hope, lust, apprehension, sorrow, and even good old high school angst. Over the years, as I’ve grown as a musician, an appreciator of music, and a rabid Nick Hornby fan, I have taken this fact to heart and, in the traditions of Shaolin monks and hipsters with unnecessarily large headphones, I have honed my abilities in the arcane art of making mixtapes.
“But wait,” you might say, “what’s so hard about mixtapes?” Honestly, nothing. Anyone can simply take however many tracks they like, put them on a CD or a playlist, and you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. At all. Music snobbery aside, that makes plenty of people happy and leaves them feeling satisfied about their musical tastes. It’s like making a sandwich – place ingredients A and B between bread of choice, pop open a beer, and enjoy. But, much like sandwich-making, there’s a whole level of artistry that you can aspire to and enjoy on your own time. You can stop eating baloney and yellow mustard and learn how to combine the choicest, freshest ingredients… Alright, I’m not going any farther with this sandwich metaphor, as it’s making me hungry. But my point still stands: although anyone can make a basic mixtape, there’s artistry to be had in putting one together well. 
Before honing our skills – or at least giving you a peek into the craziness of my process – we should first look at some of the preconceptions of mixtapes. Rather, one in particular comes to mind – the idea that there is no such thing as a mixtape without meaning. This isn’t so much false as it is overly general. Without a meaning, a mixtape is just an arbitrary collection of songs, and if that’s what you’re after then just find a radio station that you like, or use those nifty new iTunes functions like Genius or iTunes DJ that can generate a playlist for you that’s only somewhat likely to wind up half-full of train wrecks [train wreck (n.) A DJ term for when the transition between two songs is jarring or inappropriate, such as going from Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky" to Reel Big Fish's cover of "Take On Me"]. In the case of Genius, of course, I may be exaggerating – I’ve started using it lately in lieu of Pandora, actually, and it’s usually rather fluid as far as the song choices – the scary thing, of course, being that it’s adaptive software and learns from you as you use it more… I really should just get around to naming my iTunes library “Skynet.” But I digress. I’ll get back to the point after this here YouTube interlude, which I promise will be explained.
This is the result of unhoned mixtapery. Was there meaning? Hell yes there was. Was there a theme to the mix? Considering the song titles, you’d have to be blind to miss it. Would anyone say any of those songs flowed well from one to the next? Er… well, no, not really. Princeton gets an A for effort, and probably a B overall because Kate got the picture thanks to fiat and plot, but why settle for a B? I’m not claiming any mixtape is perfect, because the very issue of music for an occasion is horribly subjective, but there’s so much more a person can do to create an effective soundscape. Princeton’s tape is also one that doesn’t need to actually be listened to. Every song there is horribly well-known and – dare I use the hipster buzzword? – cliché. I mean, it could be worse, he could have found himself in this situation:
What I’m trying to say is that there are rules to a well-made mixtape, just as there are probably rules to a well-made blog post that I probably don’t follow well – and I would be remiss in my duties as a rabid scholar of pop culture if I didn’t use the words of the great Nick Hornby to point out some of the rules of mixtapes. I mean, I could try and write my own, but if I use someone else’s, then it’s just like using someone else’s song to describe how I’m feeling. Like with a mixtape. See what I’m getting at? Neither do I.
To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with “Got to Get You Off My Mind”, but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and…oh, there are loads of rules.
Nick, or rather in this case his narrator, Rob, is right. A good tape works because of the amount of thought put into it. Now, I’m not going to say that his rules are some Commandments that must be followed, because I’ve broken most of those and I have no regrets about it. The important thing to realize here is that he’s talking about how the mix needs to have cohesion, some ephemeral theme that runs through the tracks. Don’t be Princeton, though, and just do a bunch of songs that “remind you of someone.” Or if you’re making a mix for a road trip, for example, be wary of just throwing on every song you have with “road” in the title, unless you really, really liked The Wiz. I hated that movie, if you were wondering.
Let me throw out a little anecdote about my own mix-making idiosyncrasies. Every year, I have a ritual – the first week of fall where it rains twice, I begin working on that year’s “Rain Mix,” and usually that entails picking over the carcass of the past year’s mix. I should point out that these are rarely songs about rain; those got weeded out after the first year or two, after I was bloody well sick of John Lennon telling me that when the rain fell everyone ran to hide their head. Instead, there’s a very specific memory I have that I try and emulate with every year’s passing – I try and find new ways to say something burned into my soul. Specificity, in a mix, is a double-edged sword, however. You have to find the perfect focus, a balance of saying exactly what you mean and not getting bogged down in the details. If this were a mix for a girl who had, say, light blue eyes, and I found them haunting beautiful, would I use The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes”? Probably. I might use R.E.M.’s cover if it fit the flow better. But that’s all I would do to touch on that. How didactic would an entire hour-long CD about someone’s eyes be? Nevermind the esoteric panorama of artists I have with songs about eyes – a mix that spans the Alexandrov Ensemble (better known as the Red Army Choir) busting their Russkie chops on “Dark Eyes” to Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” would be a wonderful tribute to globalization and multiculturalism, but I would wager it would be absolute shit to listen to.
Right back at you, cowboy.
I’ll admit, I’m not Nick Hornby. I’m a college DJ and sound engineer, which means I could almost say I’m a professional at this sort of thing, but I’m not getting paid for it yet. Even if I were, I don’t know if I could really give you a step-by-step procedure for how to make a perfect mixtape. But I can give you five pieces of advice that might help you start to see how it can be done.
- Have something specific you want to say. Yes, girls, when a guy gives you a mix, he’s trying to say something, and the odds are it’s “I like you.” Some guys break that pattern, but we’re not to be trusted, as we’ll probably find a way to say “I like you” in the mix while the mix still manages to say something completely different. But still, you can say anything with a mix, convey any emotion. Whatever it is, have it in mind when you sit down.
- Don’t worry about how long it is. The only occasions where the actual length of a tape matter are when you want something for a road trip or when you’re making a playlist to cover up however loud you are during sex. In both cases, I speak from experience and suggest erring on the long side.
- Play around with it. If you’re working with your average CD, you have an hour and twenty minutes, maximum. Pick an hour and a half’s worth of tracks. Futz with the order, swap them out for each other. Can’t decide between two songs by the same artist? Put them both on and keep fiddling around. It’s like Tetris – if you’re good, you can get everything to fit perfect and snug. If not, then it’s more of the Red Army Choir for you!
- Let random chance have its say. If I’m stuck on track ideas, I put my whole library on shuffle and start flipping through songs like an epileptic changing TV channels. Eventually something will pop up, and I’ll smack myself for not having actually thought of it. And sometimes, your computer is smarter than you are. I’ve paired tracks together because iTunes just played them that way and I found myself muttering something along the lines of “That was good, that should have been mine.” If you get the Hornby reference there, you get a cookie.
- Listen to the damned thing! When you think it’s finished, listen to it from the top. Every track. I don’t care how many times you heard them while putting it together. Find an hour somewhere, make a cup of tea, put your headphones on, and listen to your creation. If you aren’t happy with it, you aren’t done. And guys, if the mix is for a girl, you may want to do this a good half-dozen times.
So that’s that. My challenge to you, dear reader, is to just sit down this weekend and make a mixtape. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, post it here. I promise I won’t tell you that you should have gotten out of bed earlier.
Until next week, music fans.
- Z
