Five Rules for the Modern Mixtape
“Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.“ - Rob Gordon in the 2000 film “High Fidelity,” based on the novel by Nick Hornby.
There are few things as obsessively romantic as making a mixtape. The word “mixtape” itself is antiquated. By the time I saw “High Fidelity” as a high school student in 2004, tapes had been replaced with CDs. The craft was still essentially the same: you arranged songs in a certain order within the data confines of the disc. There were few things that inspired me as much as a stack of blank CDs and a pack of colorful Sharpie markers. I made mixtapes for everything. I made mixtapes for spring break featuring The Police and Ben E. King, breakup mixtapes for friends who needed to vacillate between the sadness of Ani DiFranco and the rage of Alanis Morrissette, and mixtapes for the boys I wanted to impress that included the edgiest and most obscure rock songs I could find on LimeWire.
When everything went digital and people started streaming all their music I thought the whole culture had died. I mourned the community of the record store where you could browse the stacks and chat with the employees about their recommendations. I longed for the days receiving a decorated disc from a friend and poring over the handwritten notes on the accompanying paper sleeve. When the analog died, I thought the art form had died with it.
Maybe it doesn’t have to die. For years, I resisted Spotify out of spite. I didn’t believe that people listening to the service were really listening. It seemed more like a convenient way to have an algorithm pick your background music than for music lovers to exchange their current infatuations. Now, I’m starting to see the possibilities. If you want to make a real mixtape in the digital era, you have to follow some rules.
Rule 1: Make it an Hour
Part of the appeal of making a digital mixtape on a service like Spotify is being able to endlessly add and edit songs. Looking back on the days of tangible tapes and CDs, it was the limitations of the technology that made the art form great. You usually couldn’t fit more than an hour of music on something physical, and that forced you to think carefully. You had to be selective and make some tough choices over what to cut. No second of the mixtape could be wasted.
An hour is also the perfect amount of time to spend listening to someone’s mixtape. It is long enough to take you on a journey, but not too long to keep you from holding the whole experience in your head at once. Remember, a mixtape is kind of like a love letter. What you say needs to count. If you just vomit out every conceivable thought or emotion you have, then you are going to lose your audience and your point.
Rule 2: The Order is intentional
Don’t shuffle. I know we live in an era where we let computers pick songs from our iTunes library or a Pandora station at random. We have become used to an arbitrary order, but the order of the songs on a playlist is everything.
“You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.” Rob Gordon in the 2000 film “High Fidelity,” based on the novel by Nick Hornby.
One song should relate to the other. They are having a conversation and putting the songs together indiscriminately would be like cutting out bits of dialogue in a scene and scrambling them across a table. Your mixtape should take the listener on an emotional journey. Think about songs that have similar tempos or keys. Even if you don’t know anything about music theory you can listen to a song, think about how it makes you feel, and then ask yourself what kind of feeling you want to have next. Pick the song that seems like the natural next step in that conversation.
Rule 3: Pick a Feeling, Not a Theme
This is where people really screw things up. How many times have you seen a bachelor/bachelorette weekend playlist that consists of bunch of songs with name of the destination or types of alcohol in the song titles? When you pick songs based on their subject material you are not curating an experience. Remember that a mixtape should take you on a conceivable emotional journey that a listener can have in the span of an hour.
If you want to make a playlist for someone for their birthday, have a specific moment of their day in mind. Imagine what they might want to listen to on their commute to work that morning, which is totally different than what they might want to listen to while getting ready to go out with their friends later that night. Pick an emotion and let it breathe.
Rule 4: Make it for One Person
Even if your playlist is public, you should make it with one specific person in mind. Typically this person is someone you like. Sometimes you may tell them that you made the playlist for them, sometimes it can be a secret. In your head though, you should always know who it is. Your playlist is a letter to someone. Thinking of that person is what makes the art form real.
If you try to make a playlist to impress a bunch of people, you’ll end up appealing to no one. Some of my best playlists have been the ones I made for myself. In high school I’d play the CDs in my car and be surprised when friends asked for copies.
Rule 5: No Edits
You can edit a playlist in Spotify, but you shouldn’t. Every time you edit, you’re basically replacing your old mixtape with a new one. Instead, let your playlist be frozen in time as a reflection of that specific moment. Changing it is like changing the moment. If time passes and you look back on your playlist with embarrassment, just let it be. We can’t change what we wore to prom or who we first kissed. Make peace with your old playlists and move on. Then, make a new one.
Photo by Brian Kostiuk on Unsplash
