this post has been edited on march 8, 2005 09:38

how do you make a mixtape? i think i do ok with these things in general. no, better than ok. i make pretty good mixes for people. do you find that your mixes are lame? no one likes them but you? you don't even like them after a week? well, i have a few rules for you.

1. know your audience
it may seem like this rule is almost directly lifted from high fidelity. you'll notice a few rules seem to be lifted from high fidelity, but just because high fidelity discussed these things in open does not mean that the author of high fldelity invented mix tapes. anyways:

... I've started to make a tape... in my head... for Laura. Full of stuff she likes. Full of stuff that make her happy. For the first time I can sort of see how that is done.

the last part is important. full of stuff _she_ likes. you aren't making the mix for yourself.

--side note: i always thought that instead of stevie wonder, this scene should end with an art garfunkel song. i mean, the movie ends with marvin gaye, which is completely the right call. but seriously, if she likes art garfunkel AND marvin gaye, as we all know at this point, there needs to be an art garfunkel song in the movie somewhere. end side note --

anyways, you're making the disc for two reasons:
1. entirely for someone else (preferred)
2. because you are too impatient to listen to a goddamn album straight through

now don't get me wrong, i'm as gulity of number 2 as anyone else. but you have to remember this - you will have that mix on in your car at some point with other people in your car too, unless you are very careful. so just make sure your mixes aren't painful. for the general good. of course, if you are making the tape for someone else, its a different ball game. as john cusack says, "you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel". the music is transcending its original purpose, in a way.

i hope you can all see the difference between "using songs to express yourself to someone else" and "don't wanna listen to a full album because either the album sucks or you're impatient".

anyways, this is the point. you need to know who you're making the mix for. if you're making it for someone else, pay attention to the songs. don't put american woman on a mix to any girl you like. ever. stuff like that.

if you're making the mix for your car / yourself... i mean unless you're a complete self-involved asshole, at least make it listenable for other people. please. we're all begging you. that was the point of this post. make sure to put at least two songs on the mix for people who frequent your car. AT LEAST two songs. and if you insist on making a completely selfish mix (i'll admit it, i've done this a few times), please please please hide it from everyone else. because the point of the personal mix is that you like music that other people don't like. i mean, we live in a society. unless you want to go to the work of explaining why each song is 'amazing omg the best song ever'...

2. band:song ratio
so i proposed the one song per band rule. it received good reviews, and its a rule i've tried to follow for a while. except that isn't true. i was talking to geoff the other day, and he told me about a cd i made for him full of covers / acoustic stuff that he did not have access too, basically. i think i just invented a third reason to make mix tapes. anyways, the point is the cd had multiple songs by soundgarden, bush, and the deftones on it. this was the key though - there was a pattern. i opened with soundgarden covering the beatles. i had multiple songs in a row by each band too. kind of like a documentary format, instead of trying to be cutesy with it. i think this is the best way to handle multiple bands on a single mix - don't be cutesy with it. come up with a pattern, a symmetry, something - but don't just throw songs on the cd all willy-nilly without thinking about the order. in fact, this needs to be its own section

3. track ordering

You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.

think of it like a baseball line up. track one needs to be fast and it has to be a proven song that can get on base - it shouldn't hit it out of the park, just get things going. two should be like one, only a little weaker. three and four is where you put your big guns - no long ballads yet, but the strongest songs on your mix belong in the 3/4 slots. 5 should be like a number 5 hitter - the guy who strikes out enough to make you nervous, but hits enough homers to not be a giant drop off from 3/4. the point is, your target audience should feel 'meh' about 5 at the worst, and 5 should blow them away enough times that its ultimately worth it.

now, unlike baseball, you aren't putting anyone in your lineup for defense or because you have nothing better, so don't throw the song equivalent of adam kennedy in at track 8. in fact, i'm a strong proponent of a 13 track cd having its best songs these slots (in order) 8, 4, 1. track 13 is not your worse song - anything you feel nervous about should be buried in between 4 and 8.. but let's be honest, don't put anything you don't have full confidence in on the cd.

this is, by far, the most important aspect of the mix. it seperates the good ones from the great ones.

4. hints
time to open up the vault and share some of my favorite moves. this stuff is all pretty important to me, so parse at your leisure but please don't make fun. i put some work into this.

• white stipes - fell in love with a girl. joss stone - fell in love with a boy. i don't think i need to tell you what order these songs go in and where they belong on your mix. i dare you - read the lyrics. if you don't feel that way about the person you are giving the mix to, don't make them a mix. unless, of course, its a documentary mix.
• always have a mix around with 4 by aphex twin as a track 1.
• do not underestimate the power of ending on fake plastic trees
• above all - open up your music library. bring back the albums you have just because of the one or two tracks - those tracks have meaning again, even if the rest of the cd sucks
• one more song recommendation - spacehog. in the meantime.

that's all i got. comments are open.