Made it Monday: Modern-Day Mixtape Edition with Guest Contributor Jess Besack


A little preamble: I love making mixtapes. As a kid I sat in my room for hours, waiting for that Method Man/Redman joint would come on Power 99 because it was THE song that I needed to go next on my little Maxell 90-minute cassette tape. I couldn’t move forward with the mix until I captured that song, so I waited by the radio until it came on and I could press “record.” Incidentally, this gave me an innate understanding of radio programming (that the most popular songs get played at least every 3 hours), which is information that would play into my adult life in a different way. But I digress.
If you’re mix-obsessed like I am, you can easily get crazily specific when making a mix. I’ve made collections of essential music from obscure Italian producers from the 70s, mixes that I would play for Butch Cassidy’s girlfriend Etta Place if she time-traveled to 2011, and mixes that I would use if I were DJ’ing a ship overtaken by Somali pirates. But when most (normal) people mix, they usually just want to put together a bunch of cool songs they dig. Here are some pointers for how to get started. 

 

  1. PLAN. The most important part of making a mixtape is knowing what kind of vibe you want to set. Do you want it to be something uptempo to put on at a party? Something sexy but not too obvious to put on when a cute guy comes over (for this, when in doubt, do Badu. Every time). Need a sad-sap soundtrack to your week-long descent into depression after said guy says he doesn’t want to see you anymore? It’s important to figure this out before you get started, or else you can end up overwhelmed. 
  2. ASSEMBLE YOUR MATERIALS. Most of us have all of our music stored digitally, making it easy to sort and catalog. Within your music library make a playlist where you’ll throw all the songs you’re considering for your mix. Once you’ve got a good amount of tunes, track through them and weed out the ones that suck. 
  3. THE TWO S’s. SEQUENCE AND SEGUE. The MOST important part of creating a good mix is sequencing, in my opinion. Start off with something attention-getting or dramatic. It doesn’t even have to be music! Try recorded speeches, movie clips, comedy routines…whatever fits. (Audio Hijack is a great tool for grabbing audio from Youtube or elsewhere). Then, make sure all the songs flow nicely into each other. You don’t want to have Gwar coming out of Bon Iver, for example. But you already knew that. (If you want to get fancy and manipulate your segues by hand, you can use Ableton or Garage Band to seg up your audio files).
  4. CAP IT AT AN HOUR.  People have short attention spans. 
  5. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LABEL PROPERLY.  Once you’ve got your playlist in order, select all your files, right-click and select “Get Info.” Here, you can make sure that all the songs are labeled properly, the capitalization is uniform throughout, etc. Add a name to your mix in the Album field. Make sure your track numbers are correct - if they’re not in place it will throw off your whole mix order and you might actually end up with Gwar coming out of Bon Iver, after all. 
  6. BONUS POINTS: ARTWORK. If you’ve whipped up some cover art, you can add it in the “Artwork” tab. Just make sure it’s a square-ish shaped file that isn’t too detailed; it’s going to get squashed down into a little thumbnail anyway.
  7. ZIP AND SEND. Compress all your audio files into a zip file and upload it to the filesharing site of your choice (I like Sendspace but Yousendit, Mediafire and Hulkshare are also great). 
  8. PRESS PLAY. Ta da! It’s Monday. You made it. Now relish in your reward: grab a beer, press “play” and wait for your friends to tell you how amazing you are. 
(Jess Besack works at Sirius XM Satellite Radio where she is Program Director of radio stations for cool dads (www.siriusxm.com/thespectrum and www.siriusxm.com/classiccollegeradio)
She’s been told she’s “funny on Twitter” and can be found @jessbesack.)