How to make a mixtape pt. 4: flow

Most attributes of a mixtape are relatively well-defined: every officially released song now has a genre associated with it, it's easy to track band members from project to project, reviewers typically reference historical influences, and, in the odd case where none of these helps add to a mixtape, online music matching services abound. Even with all that, though, the essential component of a mixtape, flow, is the hardest to quantify and formalize.

Loosely defined, a mixtape flows to the extent that each song seems to fit with the previous one. The best mixtapes rely on flow to introduce the listener to musical concepts or themes that they might not like in a different context, which means that flow is crucial to any mixtape that takes any risks whatsoever - which, of course, is exactly what mixtapes ought to do. The question, of course, is how to achieve this feeling that the songs all fit.

Before starting to make mixtapes, it may help to replay some of your favorite albums and note how they cohere as albums. In some cases this will be obvious - prog albums like The Decemberists' "The Hazards Of Love" and Fatboy Slim's "From The Gutter To The Stars" feature songs that literally flow into one another - in other cases it will be less so - "Icky Thump" by The White Stripes is all over the map - and in still other cases it won't seem to happen at all - Kanye West's "Late Registration," for example, uses skits between most of its songs. Generally, though, listening to the beginnings and endings of songs will help to coalesce this somewhat nebulous concept.

There are, of course, a few tricks that I've learned that make this process easier. The first step is always to have in mind the intended artistic direction of the mixtape. If your tape is following the High Fidelity start strong/denoue/crescendo paradigm, for instance, you should know which of those steps you're on and choose appropriately. For tapes that proceed through transitions (in genre, sound, theme, or whatever), the next song should in general contribute to that progression. By being familiar with the flow of your favorite albums, you'll know how your songs fit into these various album archetypes; by identifying one such archetype, you'll be able to narrow down which songs are capable of fitting and thereby make the trial-and-error process much smoother.

And make no mistake: almost every fit you'll find will result from a process of trial and error. Initially this will probably just take the form of plugging in random songs to see if they flow, but over time you should start to establish song-searching heuristics. I've already outlined a few of mine above, but those are by no means exhaustive. When I have trouble finding the next track in an otherwise solid mix, I sometimes cheat and go back to the original album of the track I'm stuck on: if it's a good album, the next track will flow and I'll be able to use something about that next track to inform my search. Along slightly different lines, when I find a song that almost feels right but doesn't quite fit, I try to find out which part doesn't fit by finding similar songs in my music library: if a song doesn't quite feel right, I'll look for something similar but with a slightly different tempo, then something a little more or less melodic, then something with a stronger or more suppressed rhythm, and so on and so forth. Another trick that sometimes generates really strange results is to look for one song that starts with the same note or chord that the previous song ends with - this one is especially fun to implement using editing software, as you can merge the two tracks into one longer song.

When all of these methods fail, it's tempting to just give up and say it can't be done - don't fall into this trap! There are plenty of ways to simulate or avoid flow altogether, some of which I've hinted at in this article. I'll devote my next help post to this topic, as it deserves the attention. In the meantime, remember that it's always okay to start a mix over from scratch or to put one on indefinite hold until inspiration strikes. Or, to quote Darren Aronofksy, "You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks - insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife - she's forced to share a bed with this genius - convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density - weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams 'Eureka' and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery."