Technology
If you’re of a certain age—i.e. you were into music before the advent of MP3s and CD burners—you probably spent an unhealthy amount of time making mix tapes. This involved carefully selecting which songs from which records should go in what order so you could listen in the car and later, in your Walkman.
Making a mix tape was a labour of love because it everything had to be done in real time. There was none of this dragging-and-dropping stuff and instant syncing of devices. Making a 60 minute mix tape actually took MORE than 60 minutes because there was all that time spent cuing up records and then re-sleeving them.
One of the biggest debates mix tape aficionados had was which tape manufacture and which tape formulation was best. One of my buddies swore by Maxell’s Gold UDXL II, but I always found them to be muddy sounding. Me? Nothing but TDK’s SA series.
If any of this sounds remotely familiar, you MUST check out Tapedeck.org, a great photographic archive of blank cassette tapes. As someone who almost never taped over a mix tape once it was done—and I think I still have most of them in the basement somewhere—I got lost in this site for about an hour. Brilliant.
Send to a friend
Filed Under: Technology
add a comment
1 Comments
-
Ah, memories. Loved the TDK SA series, first the 90s then the 100s. I used those for years until I moved to CD-Rs due to price (when a box of CD-Rs were cheaper and easier to find than a box of tapes). It broke my heat in 99 when my truck was stolen and I lost about 95% of my mix tapes.
You are right, it takes hours to make a mixtape. I would play the first 30 sec and last 30 sec of a song to ensure flow and balance of my mixes. One of the things my friends in university loved about my mixtapes, I would take their list of songs and mix it up to create a complete package, not just a random collection of songs. And those lessons learned I then applied to make CDs and playlists. Though with the playlists its far easier to alter if I don’t like something or song order (like an eraser on a pencil), I never re-record over a mixtape. Once it’s done, it’s done.
Mixtapes can be an art form, just like an album, if made correctly. Even playlists for today’s standards, just not “90s music,” “dance music,” “love songs,” etc. In fact, a few of my playlists are based on and modified from mixtapes I made over 10 years ago.
Cheers.
Leave a Comment
Disclaimer: Comments submitted to this sites posts are moderated and will be posted to the website once they are deemed to be suitable.
- Send me your sounds
-
Send us your songs! We could feature it in our podcast or website. 
