The Once Ubiquitous Mix Tape

My “recording studio” for the mix tape project.

I am often quick to point out that one of the best things about typewriters is the typewriter community itself.  I say this for a number of reasons.  One of which is that typewriter folks tend to have a number of shared interests.  This often leads to a lot of great conversations, and when you’re lucky — great experiences.  So it went yet again for me recently.

A lot of people are into music, this certainly isn’t restricted to typewriter people in any way.  The ways in which many typewriter folks choose to experience their music is where things begin to get more interesting.  Beyond the interest in listening to music via vinyl LP’s, a number of typewriter fans are also into alternative analog formats, such as cassette tapes.

If you happen to be older like me, then chances are that you have some experience with mix tapes.  You might have created them, received them from others, or maybe both.  A while back I promised one of my fellow type pals a mix tape.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into as it turns out.  It is safe to say that it has been more than 25 years since I last recorded a mix tape.  Over that period of time I had forgotten just how time consuming the creation of a mix tape could be.  Before I could even get to the point of working on the mix tape, I had a few other hurdles to clear.

First off, one of my cassette decks had developed a problem.  I ended up taking the deck to my local 2-channel hifi repair specialist.  (Just as with my local typewriter repair shops, I feel incredibly fortunate to have local access to such a place.)  After getting the cassette deck back home, I discovered that my CD player had stopped working.  Fortunately I was able to fix this issue on my own.  I was finally ready to begin recording.  Then the real challenge began as it was time to pick out what music to record and how to arrange it all on the cassette tape.  This was a challenge back in the day when I was already in the habit of making mix tapes (though it was always a fun challenge). It was definitely a challenge all these years later.

After sifting through all of my albums, CD’s, and cassette tapes, I finally came up with an idea for a theme.  I won’t go into great detail here as I haven’t even sent my mix tape off to its intended recipient yet.  This still left me with a huge number of potential recordings to choose from.  (Between my LP’s, CD’s, and cassette’s I have well over four thousand recordings.)  That might not seem like a lot compared to all of the music that is available via streaming sources these days, but it made for more than enough of a challenge for me to contend with.

After finally coming up with a way to further narrow down the recordings that I would use, I began to plot out how each song might flow into the next.  Then I had to figure out if that flow would fit on each side of the cassette tape.  Without a doubt, the end result was not the best mix tape that I have created by any means. To expect otherwise would not have been fair to myself.  But this didn’t matter as the point was simply to create a mix tape knowing that one of my type pals actually appreciates such a thing.

Though it ended up being more work than I had imagined (much more work considering the equipment problems that had to be dealt with) , it ended up being a great experience.  An experience that was ultimately brought on by my association with typewriters, and the typewriter community as a whole.  I already had plenty of reasons to be thankful for my involvement with typewriters.  It seems that I am continuing to find even more reasons to add to the list.  And while the once ubiquitous mix tape is no longer, they can still be enjoyable to create.  Playing around with cassette tapes and cassette decks is not unlike writing using typewriters. In either case, it’s all about slowing down and enjoying the process.

AFTERTHOUGHTS: My thanks to the RRTM for providing the inspiration behind this mix tape project.

17 thoughts on “The Once Ubiquitous Mix Tape”

  1. Wow, I haven’t done that in decades. Memories…

    When CDs came out, then things got touchy. They don’t go over to magnetic tape easily. Who knew? I have since discovered a digital to analog gadget is required to make the conversion.

    1. The big problem was that by the time CD’s came to dominant the market, most people simply got rid of their other formats (LP’s, cassettes, etc.). I was by far the last person among my peer group to purchase a CD player. By the late 80’s when I bought the turntable seen in the included image, all of my friends and everyone that I knew had already given up on vinyl. I literally couldn’t even give my old turntable away — no one wanted it. It wasn’t until after then that I finally bought my first CD player seen in the image. Though I eventually ended up amassing a lot of CD’s, I never stopped buying and enjoying LP’s. I hung on to my old cassettes as well and continued to make tapes for use in my vehicles (which still featured cassette playback). Old habits…

  2. Haha! I apologize for putting you through so much work – I never think about how difficult tape can be just because I have only recently switched my main field recording to digital. I’ve been a tape user for so long that it’s just second nature to me to think of tape as the “easy” path to mix compilations. 😀
    Can’t wait for the “Texas Mix”!

  3. I probably have a thousand or so cassettes. I just recently picked up one of Vanilla Ice’s albums on cassette, as well as a still-sealed cassette of Steppenwolf’s debut. Not actively collecting tapes, but if I see something good, I’ll grab it. I think I listen to cassettes more than records these days.

    1. Vanilla Ice and Steppenwolf, now that’s some musical diversity! I don’t own nearly as many cassettes as you do and the majority of those are cassettes that I recorded myself. But I do have a few pre-recorded gems that I picked up at various shows “back in the day” which weren’t available in any other format.

  4. Sounds like an interesting project! Pun intended… 🙂

    I note the typewritten label on the cassette. Nice crossover touch.

    I would be interested in reading a blog post about every sound box on that photo. Why this make and model or simply, just what one needs to do the same nowadays. One of my brothers has a really good HiFi sound system but I never did. Was okay with a boom box. Might start looking for good second hand equipment.

    1. Good catch. I love using typewriters to write with, but am okay using whatever other tools for the job that I deem to be a good fit. It’s hard to beat software and a good printer for producing a multi-fold J-card — since I currently have access to those things, why not? But I also figured that in this particular case a typewriter should at least be involved in some small way, thus the hand-typed cassette labels.

      As far as the hifi goes, a 2-channel system has been a part of my life ever since I was in high school. It was one of the first things I started saving for when I started working as a kid and since then I’ve owned a variety of gear over the years. While the system that I owned back in high school is long gone, I’ve owned everything seen in the photo since the 1980’s (with the exception of the tape deck at the bottom of the stack). In the photo from top to bottom is a Linn Basik turntable, a NAD 7250PE receiver, a Philips CD960 CD player, a Sony TC-FX6C tape deck, and a Nakamichi LX-5 tape deck. Though not seen in the image, I also still have the speakers that I bought back in the 80’s. They were made in Philadelphia by a company named Fried. Not that long ago such gear was dirt cheap, but as with so many other things, prices for vintage hifi gear in has increased quite a bit since then though there are still plenty of bargains to be found.

      As with typewriters, I own multiple systems for music playback. These days you can buy equipment that allows you to stream music throughout your home, but I still enjoy the old approach — much as with typewriters. I’ll save more detailed hifi conversation for future mail correspondence if you’re still interested (as if my letters aren’t long enough already).

  5. The move to CO ended my cassette era. But your “mixtape” sent to me in Alaska was still present in my shop in Ft. Worth. “American Beauty” on one side and “Hot Tuna” on the other. It got a lot of use in Alaska and still survived another another 28 years!

    1. That’s a pretty decent length of service for a shop tape.

      Speaking of tapes, I can still remember watching the VHS tape that you filmed while up on Kodiak Island during one of your summers there. All so that you could bring it back to Texas with you and share it with everyone. I had never seen so many bugs flying around and didn’t quite realize that is what they were until one of them actually landed on the lens of your video camera.

  6. I’ve always mastered mine on reel to reel and rerecored the reel to reel to cassette. Now I usually go directly to CD. Dual turntables and a mixer are a big asset for making mix tapes.

    1. Heh, Lucas Dul sent me a mixtape that he had made from master reel-to-reels. The differing tape lengths were a problem, apparently. There were songs chopped in half, eight-track style. Sounded great, though 😀

  7. Thanks for the comment Bill. There are so many different ways to skin the proverbial cat, lol. In the end, the best solution is the solution that a person most enjoys. As long as there is actual listening involved at the very end of the chain, it’s all good.

    One of the things that I enjoy about my old Sony cassette deck is that it displays tape progress (be it during recording or playback) in minutes and seconds, making it very convenient for such projects. Not as convenient as making a mixCD or playlist mind you, but then I get back to how much I enjoy each process.

  8. Oh the memories. I remember sitting by the radio each week with a cassette at “the ready” listening to American Top 40. I would record all of my favorite songs that way, so most had Casey Kasem talking over the first few seconds. To this day, I can still hear my own recorded version in my head when the song comes on the radio.

    1. Great story, I can relate. Back in the mid to late 1990’s I recorded every episode of the TV show Northern Exposure as it appeared on the A&E Network, complete with all of the commercials that were running at the time. It would be interesting to go back and watch those old VHS tapes, not only for the content but even for some of the commercials — a history lesson of sorts.

      While I lugged the tapes all the way from Texas to Oregon in our move, I have no idea what happened to them after that, but I think that they might have been given away in a yard sale years ago. (Jeez, I don’t even know if I still have a working VCR at this point.) This is a shame as those recordings contained all of the original music as it appeared on the show originally — the very thing that has prevented Northern Exposure from being syndicated all these years later. I don’t even know if the DVD’s that were released of this series at one point in time included all of the original music for that matter.

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