Mixtapes vs. playlists
A little musical time capsule
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)Making a cassette mixtape in the 1970s was a labor-intensive effort.
Cueing up a LP or 45 single, dropping the needle and releasing the recorder's "pause" button required a deft touch. If you didn't get it just right, you'd either have too much lead-in groove time before the tune started, or start too late and cut off the first second of the next song.
Mess up, and you have to stop, back up the tape, recue and start the process over again. Oh, and you'd have to carefully match the record volume level of each new tune, or suffer the consequences of a too loud/too soft varying volume mixtape. The horror!
Sometimes in the middle of a mixtape session I'd stop and review what I had so far. That could be scary, especially when I discovered the fourth song of the eight I laid down interrupted the flow. I'd have to go back and start again after the third song. It could easily take seven or eight hours to make a 90-minute tape.
Mix CDs were a little easier to make, but since I never used rerecordable CDs, if I made a mistake I'd have to trash the disc and start over. My early CD mixes freely mixed vinyl and CD music, which added to the complexity of the effort.
No matter the recording medium the art of making great mixtapes was picking and sequencing the right tunes. That's still the same, even for MP3 playlists.
Do you still make mixes?
For yourself or to give away to friends?
Steve Guttenberg is a frequent contributor to magazines and Web sites including Home Entertainment, Playback, and Ultimate AV. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
take a look: http://www.vintagecassette.com/Akai/GXC-570D.
i bought a Casio watch with a countdown timer. a 45 minute cassette tape actually has about 46:30, if you bought good Maxell tape. i set the timer and started recording/mixing. i could finish a complete two sided tape in less than two hours. normally, i would spend about 10 or 15 minutes picking out records before i started recording.
that was huge fun.
The thing I didn't like about making CDs vs. making mix tapes (or mix MDs) was *where* the experience took place: in front of my computer instead of sitting down on the floor in front of the stereo. These days, I just use the built-in Superdrive on my Mac. True, it's much, much more convenient to program an iTunes playlist and click "Burn disc", but there's something, um..."human" missing from the process. Also, because the computer burns the CD at high speed, you don't get the pleasure of listening to the music as it's being recorded.
Every mix CD is a production. I buy ink-jet printable CDs and I create designs for the disc (I recently discovered "hub printable CDs" -- Whoohoo!). Sometimes I even create the CD case artwork. I suppose that makes up for the by-hand effort that went into the mix tape.
I don't make playlists for the sake of it being only a playlist. Every playlist I start is with the CD in mind, even if it doesn't end up on a CD. Making a CD is taking the music and committing it to physical media. You're telling the world "This is the album I created." Making a playlist is just making a list of songs. There's nothing keeping me from changing the list on a day to day basis. While that's find for casual listening, there collection of tracks is not enduring, not indelible.
And you really can't design artwork for a playlist.
A few years ago, those players were used by a lot of Southern Gospel groups in Appalachia because of the ease of making "mix tapes" for playback of soundtracks to sing with.
Did have a friend with a small time video business that tried them out for recording audio feeds but he could never get the copyright stuff correct on his Sony player so he still reminds me of that time to time...
Good story, I got a little off track but I sure used to spend a lot of time in the 80's laboring over mix cassette tapes. My Pioneer system got a workout!
Hahaha! Me too =) My folks bought a complete Pioneer system circa 1990 with CD-Synchro so you program away and then leave the deck to it. Combined with auto-sound leveling on the tape deck and auto-reverse. AND REMOTE! I remember it seemed like pure magic after the previous HiFi which was a manual mongrel system.
But I have such fond memories of sitting on the floor in the dining room (this was in the day when the TV and HiFi were very separate entities) with CDs and Vinyls all over the floor, balancing the recording levels and carefully cueing up tracks etc =)
I was still an avid mix-CD maker up until 2005. I would quite commonly make a mix-CD for friends of new music, or old tunes, or whatever =) I made one last week for a friends birthday (he is the only guy I know with no iPod etc) and he was thrilled. Now, the iPod/iTunes is so ubiquitous that we share playlists, via yousendit or something similar.
I bought TDK tapes, too. And BASF. And Maxell. And Memorex. The most aesthetically pleasing (well, to my eye) were the the blue Memorex high bias tapes, but in in the end I stuck with TDK with the really wide clear tape-viewing-window. I'm sure there were other brands I tried, but I don't recall now. I bought "bricks" of cassettes for the best price. Always Type II (Chrom/high bias) for best quality.
I bought 90 minute tapes because you could put a whole album (vinyl, that is) on one side, plus one or two singles. 120 minute tapes were too thin (I once bought a 160 minute tape that broke).
One thing about mix tapes that probably doesn't apply to playlists is that tapes become time capsules for music. I was hoping to find a tape that actually had my voice on it (bonus points if it was one where I was playing DJ and introducing songs) but unfortunately I couldn't find one--I'm sure my daughter would have loved to hear what I sounded like when I was a kid.
For the boomboxes and car players we bought a box of Sony "walkman" brand tapes which were supposed to be more durable, heat resistant etc. But I remember finally reverting to Maxell tapes that you could buy in the local supermarket.
I don't have that kind of free time anymore. So even if I were to go back to the mix tape I'm not sure I'd get many of them made now. But they were certainly fun while they lasted.
Now I just find out about music in different ways (music review sites and good web radio stations being the primary methods).
1) On a mix tape, I could easily fade out songs that ran too long. For a playlist, I'd have to copy the track, edit the file and then add it to the playlist
2) Mix tapes allowed for varied crossfades, depending on the need. Sure you can crossfade with some mp3 players, etc., but not with the freedom tapes offered
3) Mix tapes had A side and B side. This allowed for one mix tape theme with two completely separate song flows - kinda like two personalities on the same music story.
4) Mix tapes engaged the audience. For one thing, people recognized the hard work in creating a tape and would give it the deserved attention. Second, it was harder to skip songs on a tape so the audience would be captive, listening to the entire mix and appreciating the flow between songs.
5) Despite digital capabilities, back-ups, etc., it almost seems easier to lose or corrupt a playlist file than losing or destroying an audio cassette!
6) It's easier to hand a non-techie a mix tape than it is to copy digital tracks and a playlist and hope they can transfer it to their computer, walkman, etc.
- by amfx22000 August 13, 2009 11:06 AM PDT
- Playlists are better. Mixtapes have the same inherent flaw that vinyl and cassette have: they need to be REALLY good. I'm never in the mood to cue up a vinyl I don't like front-to-back, and fast-forwarding through cassettes can be really annoying. With playlists, you can jump to the best song or two on your friend's ****** playlist. A mixtape from someone with bad taste... would be pure torture.
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