Sunday, March 30, 2008

Muxing Things Up a Bit

Credit goes to Mechberg, friend to children everywhere, for bringing Muxtape.com to my attention. Just the cassette imagery of the site is enough to give me nostalgia pangs for the good old days of making mixes on tapes!

For me, making mixes in college was frequently a procrastination technique, something to do when I really should have been doing something else. It was also often a chance to re-discover music I loved but hadn’t listened to in a while. That much still holds true, and the first song on my muxtape is from one of my all-time favorite albums, but I probably hadn’t listened to that song in years.

Also, making mixes back in the days of cassette tapes had complications that CD mix-making doesn’t have, like wanting to fill up each side of the tape as much as possible, without leaving too much dead space at the end, and while maintaining the flow and momentum of the songs. Oh, the agonizing decisions about what to include and what had to be cut! Looking back, I think these limitations somehow actually made the process more fun, since I had to think that much more about what I was doing. It certainly made the process more time-consuming, which was a definite plus. I feel sorry for college kids these days with nothing to do but drag the songs onto an iTunes playlist and hit Burn Disc. It takes no time at all! No thought! Where’s the art, the craft?!

Anyway, here's a little something I threw together. 12 songs isn't a whole lot to work with, but I had fun with it anyway. If you make one yourself, post the link for me to check out.

http://carolyn.muxtape.com/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

GBV, Crowded House, and Catherine Wheel. Well done, well done. Have you heard the latest Crowded House (came out last year)? Really good, but somber effort, after the death of one of the band members.

I wish we could create and save multiple "tapes" on this. It's a barebones site for now, so I suppose they'll add features as they go...