Flow, that nebulous concept that turns a bunch of songs by different people into a cohesive mixtape, really is vital to the success of a tape (or even, if you're a professional producer, an album). When each song seems like a natural fit, the listener won't stop to question their presence on the tape. Even better, the listener won't have to work to figure out what's going on, thus allowing more time for the important things: enjoying the mix and discovering new music. But achieving flow is no mean feat, even for the experienced mixer. Luckily, there are a few ways to fake flow or even avoid it altogether.
1. Use songs that start with a percussion-only intro.
For whatever reason, drum solos seem to have the same musical effect as a palate cleanser has on taste. There does have to be some measure of similarity between songs - it likely won't work, for example, to go from a down-tempo singer-songwriter kind of thing to a hardcore death-metal drum onslaught - but in general it's easier to bridge a gap between tracks with percussion than with notes.
2. Use an instrumental track.
Again, the reason why this works is not entirely clear, but songs without lyrics seem to work well enough as curveballs that they can be used in a pinch as transition tracks. The same rule applies, though: don't go too crazy.
3. Use a spoken-word track with no music at all.
Whereas the first two are merely tricks, this is pretty much out-and-out cheating. Even better, the words themselves don't seem to matter at all, so you can really let your imagination run wild with this one. These can be skits (like rap albums tend to feature), poems, quotes from movies or TV shows, lines from speeches - basically anything works. It seems like these would have to relate in some way to the preceding or forthcoming track, but I promise you that isn't the case. Listeners will be able to tell, of course, when they do, so maybe there are some bonus points to be had, but a connection really not necessary.
4. Call one group of songs "Side A" and the other "Side B."
Despite the fact that this distinction has been obsolete for at least 10-15 years, enough people still understand it that it won't cause mass confusion. Even for those who don't, this should still work - the idea is to create a divide in the reader's mind so that the (hopefully relative) lack of flow between two tracks isn't a distraction. Ideally, this would only happen when you actually planned for it to, but sometimes there isn't another obvious way out. The only caveat here pertains to side length, because if Side A has 8 tracks and Side B only has 2, it's going to look pretty suspicious. It doesn't have to be 50-50, but the relative lengths shouldn't be too far off.
There are almost certainly other ways to address flow problems, but these are the four best that I've found and they should work in most situations. If not, though, there's no rush - 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."
Showing posts with label help. Show all posts
Showing posts with label help. Show all posts
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
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."
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."
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
How to make a mixtape pt. 3: motivation
Once you obtain all the technological resources, background knowledge, and skills needed to make a mixtape (and I guess also some music to make it with), the relevant question becomes why. After all, iTunes can put together mixtapes from music you already have and services like Pandora can find you new music by making, in a sense, a neverending mixtape. So why bother putting a mixtape together at all? In this post I'll outline a few sources of inspiration that I've found helpful when making mixtapes. Do bear in mind that these aren't necessarily separate - mixing and matching inspiration types is, of course, acceptable.
Perhaps the most common motivation for compiling a mixtape is to then use it as a means of communicating a message. Looking at the list of requests at Tiny Mix Tapes will reveal that such messages can be rather varied, though the stereotypical cases involve relationships - which is not to say that there's anything wrong with making a "let's hook up" mixtape. But you shouldn't worry about picking a subject too esoteric or obscure, except insofar as the subject actually inhibits your ability to find music to match it. It's often difficult to complete a decent mixtape before a message's expiration date, so to speak, so be prepared either to put a lot of effort into a mix of this sort or to complete it once the message no longer needs sending. I myself have not made many of these, but once I get one I like enough to post I'll reference it here.
For those of us who use music to enhance or change our moods, mixtapes can provide a reliable way to do this. Since artists tend to aim for a certain level of variety in their albums - in tempo, subject matter, instrumentation, and so on - it's usually a challenge to find an entire CD that fits a given mood (TV compilation albums notwithstanding). If you can identify a vibe or emotion that you often find difficult to express, it can be emotionally rewarding to construct a mixtape that crystallizes that vibe or emotion. My "A City Through Bleary Eyes" mix attempts something like this, where the vibe or emotion is the subdued one I get walking or driving through an urban area late at night. The difficulties in making a mix like this include translation (your reaction to late night city travel may not be at all like mine) and its inherent contextual limitations (if I'm feeling energetic, I just won't be able to listen to this mix), but it has a reusability that message mixtapes usually lack.
Probably my most common inspiration for a mixtape is to explore a topic or artistic attribute. My instrument- and topic-themed tapes all fall into this category, which is notable for the deceptive ease with which one can construct them. Since there is such a ridiculously large number of songs available, it will be trivially easy to find 10-15 songs that fit a theme in this way. (Hint: if you are having trouble, just use Google.) The trick here is making sure that the songs all come together to make a coherent album - this concept, which I call flow, will be the topic of my next "how-to" post. It is, at least in my experience, always necessary to make some painful sacrifices with respect to the theme so as to maintain the flow, but perhaps you'll have better luck.
Finally, my favorite source of inspiration: individual songs. Mixtapes, so the story goes, originated as a means by which to spread little-known music, so perhaps it's natural to use them specifically as music-sharing tools. Some of the mixtapes I've created around a song include "Any Kind Of Truth," in which I wanted to find a way to use Death Cab's "Bixby Canyon Bridge" as a closer, and this untitled mix, which I based around Joan Osborne's "Spider Web." When making song-based mixtapes, I try to pick out what makes that song interesting and play off of it - in the first case, it was the haunting sound and vaguely nihilistic lyrics; in the second, it was the way that the song combines elements of folk, rock, and alternative music. I find that the most difficult part of song-inspired mixes is framing the song correctly: one of the things you learn making mixtapes is that any song can be used in a myriad of ways, which makes it easy to lose track of where you originally thought the mixtape was going. One of the things that helps me to avoid this is to pick an opening track that heavily emphasizes one aspect of the song you'd like to highlight. In the case of the untitled mix I just referenced, for example, the first track is strictly folk, which forced me to work back towards "Spider Web" with a series of increasingly musically diverse folk or folk-inspired songs.
No matter which kind of motivation moves you to start a mixtape, patience is a must. If you run into a problem, 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."
Perhaps the most common motivation for compiling a mixtape is to then use it as a means of communicating a message. Looking at the list of requests at Tiny Mix Tapes will reveal that such messages can be rather varied, though the stereotypical cases involve relationships - which is not to say that there's anything wrong with making a "let's hook up" mixtape. But you shouldn't worry about picking a subject too esoteric or obscure, except insofar as the subject actually inhibits your ability to find music to match it. It's often difficult to complete a decent mixtape before a message's expiration date, so to speak, so be prepared either to put a lot of effort into a mix of this sort or to complete it once the message no longer needs sending. I myself have not made many of these, but once I get one I like enough to post I'll reference it here.
For those of us who use music to enhance or change our moods, mixtapes can provide a reliable way to do this. Since artists tend to aim for a certain level of variety in their albums - in tempo, subject matter, instrumentation, and so on - it's usually a challenge to find an entire CD that fits a given mood (TV compilation albums notwithstanding). If you can identify a vibe or emotion that you often find difficult to express, it can be emotionally rewarding to construct a mixtape that crystallizes that vibe or emotion. My "A City Through Bleary Eyes" mix attempts something like this, where the vibe or emotion is the subdued one I get walking or driving through an urban area late at night. The difficulties in making a mix like this include translation (your reaction to late night city travel may not be at all like mine) and its inherent contextual limitations (if I'm feeling energetic, I just won't be able to listen to this mix), but it has a reusability that message mixtapes usually lack.
Probably my most common inspiration for a mixtape is to explore a topic or artistic attribute. My instrument- and topic-themed tapes all fall into this category, which is notable for the deceptive ease with which one can construct them. Since there is such a ridiculously large number of songs available, it will be trivially easy to find 10-15 songs that fit a theme in this way. (Hint: if you are having trouble, just use Google.) The trick here is making sure that the songs all come together to make a coherent album - this concept, which I call flow, will be the topic of my next "how-to" post. It is, at least in my experience, always necessary to make some painful sacrifices with respect to the theme so as to maintain the flow, but perhaps you'll have better luck.
Finally, my favorite source of inspiration: individual songs. Mixtapes, so the story goes, originated as a means by which to spread little-known music, so perhaps it's natural to use them specifically as music-sharing tools. Some of the mixtapes I've created around a song include "Any Kind Of Truth," in which I wanted to find a way to use Death Cab's "Bixby Canyon Bridge" as a closer, and this untitled mix, which I based around Joan Osborne's "Spider Web." When making song-based mixtapes, I try to pick out what makes that song interesting and play off of it - in the first case, it was the haunting sound and vaguely nihilistic lyrics; in the second, it was the way that the song combines elements of folk, rock, and alternative music. I find that the most difficult part of song-inspired mixes is framing the song correctly: one of the things you learn making mixtapes is that any song can be used in a myriad of ways, which makes it easy to lose track of where you originally thought the mixtape was going. One of the things that helps me to avoid this is to pick an opening track that heavily emphasizes one aspect of the song you'd like to highlight. In the case of the untitled mix I just referenced, for example, the first track is strictly folk, which forced me to work back towards "Spider Web" with a series of increasingly musically diverse folk or folk-inspired songs.
No matter which kind of motivation moves you to start a mixtape, patience is a must. If you run into a problem, 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."
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
How to make a mixtape pt. 2: freeware
As the word "mixtape" suggests, this form of art was originally executed with cassette tapes, which required at least two tape decks and (if I may be frank) a ridiculously high level of patience. Thankfully, today's technology makes this method wholly obsolete and almost entirely useless: even if you were to put up with the hassles of making a true mixtape, very few people would be able to listen to it. Still, the best or easiest ways to make modern mixtapes are not obvious or (in many cases) well-known. This post will examine some of the tools I've used while making mixtapes in CD form with my computer.
An important first step to making mixtapes is having a consistent, easily accessible, and searchable music library. By that I mean a collection of digital songs organized both in their disk location (e.g., C:\My Music) and in a piece of software that allows for searching and sorting. So long as you use only one program to obtain digital music, you won't have to worry about organizing the songs on-disk: that'll happen automatically. Two good programs that will do this are iTunes and Winamp. The first has the benefit of an attached music store and compatibility with other Apple products, whereas the second has a much smoother interface - either will suffice, though. (If you have an mp3 player, it may come with its own software that does these things. That should be fine, but make sure that it features the ability to create and maintain playlists.)
Not all music or other audio content can easily be bought, either on a CD (which can then be ripped) or directly as a digital file. Dialogue from movies or TV, live performances, streaming media, and audio from other sources can be hard - if not impossible - to find as a simple digital audio file. If your computer can play the audio in question, though, programs like Audacity will enable you to record the desired audio from your soundcard when you play it and then export it into a convenient file format (like a standard mp3). Such programs will also allow for more advanced editing, such as combining tracks and using the common sound mixing features (fade in/out, tempo speed up/down, echo, etc.). Besides making non-music audio clips available for your mixtape, these programs will also help if you have an audio file in an unusual format that your CD burning software doesn't understand.
As for trasnferring the mix onto a physical medium, the same software you used to rip music and store your library - iTunes or Winamp, if you took my advice - should also have the ability to burn CDs. In fact, it should have the specific ability to burn playlists, so if you compiled your mixtape as a playlist (hint hint), two or three clicks will suffice to turn it into a physical object. Unless you're in a big old rush, choose a middling speed to write to the CD - it won't hurt you any to wait for a few minutes longer and it'll go a long way towards ensuring that the resulting mix CD actually plays correctly. (Burning a CD typically takes up a significant chunk of a computer's processing power, so choosing a lower speed will give you a larger margin of error and therefore more ability to safely use other programs while the CD is being processed.)
If making a physical mix is either impossible (say, due to hardware constraints) or just inconvenient, one can also transmit mixtapes in a purely digital fashion. For purists, sound editing programs like Audacity will enable you to export the entire mix as one audio file, thus better emulating the original mixtape experience and facilitating file transfer (as a general principle, it's easier to transfer one file than many): just string one song after another, leaving room for 1- to 2-second pauses between songs as appropriate, and export the whole thing as a single file. If you'd rather keep the tracks separate, data compression programs like Winzip or WinRAR will place all the songs in a single folder-like file such that the recipient can simply open the resulting file and then listen to the individual tracks at their leisure. While most email providers won't allow large attachments, most IM programs allow file transfers of any size (GTalk and AIM certainly do) and the internet has no shortage of filehosting websites (just Google for some). Finally, if you're lucky or dedicated enough to have access to your own server, freeware programs like mixwidget and opentape will enable you to share your mixtape with anyone online - but if you're savvy enough to run your own server I think you can figure those out on your own.
And as always, 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."
An important first step to making mixtapes is having a consistent, easily accessible, and searchable music library. By that I mean a collection of digital songs organized both in their disk location (e.g., C:\My Music) and in a piece of software that allows for searching and sorting. So long as you use only one program to obtain digital music, you won't have to worry about organizing the songs on-disk: that'll happen automatically. Two good programs that will do this are iTunes and Winamp. The first has the benefit of an attached music store and compatibility with other Apple products, whereas the second has a much smoother interface - either will suffice, though. (If you have an mp3 player, it may come with its own software that does these things. That should be fine, but make sure that it features the ability to create and maintain playlists.)
Not all music or other audio content can easily be bought, either on a CD (which can then be ripped) or directly as a digital file. Dialogue from movies or TV, live performances, streaming media, and audio from other sources can be hard - if not impossible - to find as a simple digital audio file. If your computer can play the audio in question, though, programs like Audacity will enable you to record the desired audio from your soundcard when you play it and then export it into a convenient file format (like a standard mp3). Such programs will also allow for more advanced editing, such as combining tracks and using the common sound mixing features (fade in/out, tempo speed up/down, echo, etc.). Besides making non-music audio clips available for your mixtape, these programs will also help if you have an audio file in an unusual format that your CD burning software doesn't understand.
As for trasnferring the mix onto a physical medium, the same software you used to rip music and store your library - iTunes or Winamp, if you took my advice - should also have the ability to burn CDs. In fact, it should have the specific ability to burn playlists, so if you compiled your mixtape as a playlist (hint hint), two or three clicks will suffice to turn it into a physical object. Unless you're in a big old rush, choose a middling speed to write to the CD - it won't hurt you any to wait for a few minutes longer and it'll go a long way towards ensuring that the resulting mix CD actually plays correctly. (Burning a CD typically takes up a significant chunk of a computer's processing power, so choosing a lower speed will give you a larger margin of error and therefore more ability to safely use other programs while the CD is being processed.)
If making a physical mix is either impossible (say, due to hardware constraints) or just inconvenient, one can also transmit mixtapes in a purely digital fashion. For purists, sound editing programs like Audacity will enable you to export the entire mix as one audio file, thus better emulating the original mixtape experience and facilitating file transfer (as a general principle, it's easier to transfer one file than many): just string one song after another, leaving room for 1- to 2-second pauses between songs as appropriate, and export the whole thing as a single file. If you'd rather keep the tracks separate, data compression programs like Winzip or WinRAR will place all the songs in a single folder-like file such that the recipient can simply open the resulting file and then listen to the individual tracks at their leisure. While most email providers won't allow large attachments, most IM programs allow file transfers of any size (GTalk and AIM certainly do) and the internet has no shortage of filehosting websites (just Google for some). Finally, if you're lucky or dedicated enough to have access to your own server, freeware programs like mixwidget and opentape will enable you to share your mixtape with anyone online - but if you're savvy enough to run your own server I think you can figure those out on your own.
And as always, 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."
Monday, April 13, 2009
How to make a mixtape pt. 1: what is this mixtape deal about, anyway?
I have nothing clever to say here, so I'll just be direct: a mixtape is a compilation of songs that the compiler thinks go well together. That's a bit vague, but only because mixtapes come from a wide range of artistic motivations: to address a lyrical theme, to explore an instrument or other musical element, to honor a genre or artist, to serve as a soundtrack for an event or for another work of art, and so on. The extent to which the mixtape succeeds, in some sense, will therefore depend on the extent to which the songs go well together in a way that matches the artistic motivation: to construct an exceedingly simple example, a mixtape designed to show the versatility of the accordion can suffer from both a general lack of cohesion and from a lack of versatile accordion-playing.
Traditionally, mixtapes are used to create buzz for little-known bands, to send messages ("let's get back together," e.g.), to serve one's own personal ends (athletes sometimes have pregame mixtapes), and/or just as gifts. While the most common piece of advice is to tailor the tape to one's audience (see here, here, here, here...), that piece of advice can in some cases be more of a hindrance than a help. In this series of posts (conveniently tagged as "help") I'll share as much as I can of my mixtape-making expertise, and I'll end every post witht he same concluding paragraph, because it's worth repeating.
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."
Traditionally, mixtapes are used to create buzz for little-known bands, to send messages ("let's get back together," e.g.), to serve one's own personal ends (athletes sometimes have pregame mixtapes), and/or just as gifts. While the most common piece of advice is to tailor the tape to one's audience (see here, here, here, here...), that piece of advice can in some cases be more of a hindrance than a help. In this series of posts (conveniently tagged as "help") I'll share as much as I can of my mixtape-making expertise, and I'll end every post witht he same concluding paragraph, because it's worth repeating.
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."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
