The Wee Democracy

the art of mixing

so i like making mix cd's. alot. there was that one episode of friends where ross couldn't tell mona that he loved her so he made her a mix tape. i've heard that it's a pre-relationshippy thing, but fuck that, i just like doing it. i fancy myself to be fairly good at it, so i take the opportunity as often as i can to force my tastes upon unsuspecting others.

i've made a few lately. one for my pal romina, though i haven't sent that one to her. i'm making one for my friend cady, though it's not done yet.

it's a tedious process. you make a preliminary lineup, usually 7 or 8 songs you know you want on it, usually that have a similar feel to them, i try to arrange the first and last songs of the cd, so i have a skeletal narrative to the musical tones

i just made all that vocabulary up, but you bought it, didn't you? hehe.

ok, so once i've got the first 7 or 8, i think, ok, what would fit in good between these songs? what follows 'dead flowers' best? how do you introduce brian eno's soft ambient tunes to be most effective?

and THEN it gets very difficult. you've got to weed out the songs that break the flow of the music. the ones that just don't fit. it's like that sesame street song "one of these things is not like the other." you've got a responsibility to find that thing, goddammit!!

by this time, you've got a solid 12 or 13 songs on the lineup, and usually, i want to aim for a little over an hour of playing time. so my goal is usually 15 or 16 songs and about 65 minutes running time. so there's 3 or 4 more songs you're trying to finagle in there, both to fit the tone and the stream of the lineup.

occasionally, you can toss in another song from the same artist. my sister doest his masterfully. she used like, 6 bright eyes songs on her last mix cd and they all fit in perfectly. sometimes, i toss in two from the same artist if the artist is relatively new to my repertoire. iron and wine and josh ritter are good examples.

so, let's say you've got a solid 15 songs now, and you're close to your running time. DON'T RUSH TO BURN! say you're fairly confident in your song list and order. wait. wait like a good two or three days, listen to it over a couple of times, change and tweak as you see fit.

it's a difficult process but it's sure fun.

oh, and then there's the making of the jewel case, but....you can't teach that.



feeling: hot, stressed
thinking of: ANY of the girls from the OC or bold and the beautiful.
song of the day: the wind - cat stevens
i let my music take me where my heart wants to go