media

[solipsistnation]

I'd definitely need a working tape deck, too. Man, I have a lot of cassettes...

One of them is the "Your Enemy The Filter" compilation, which featured a MUCH older version of Betrayal, a song anyhow and I wrote in 1994. (Mostly him, and he did a great job of translating my sort of scat-like "Hey, we should do something like this: noo nee noo nee noo" lead line into MIDI). I hope. Unless it's lost, which would be very sad. The version of "Betrayal" on that tape was recorded through a Mackie 1202-- my first decent mixer, replacing a rack-mounted Roland line mixer that doubled as a white noise generator-- in a sweltering attic on Dover Street.

I used to do EVERYTHING on cassettes. I lived on tape, had a spiffy walkman that went everywhere with me, had lengthy elaborate mixtapes I made for various purposes. I picked out ideal walking music and made a mix, I sorted out various producers and made a mix, I had a sleepy mix and a programming mix and a huge series of roommates' CDs on tape on the off chance we moved to different places and I couldn't borrow them any more, which of course we did. the_muted_horn's collection of Sisters of Mercy singles got a lot of play. Girlfriends made tapes, I made tapes for girlfriends, and I totally embraced home taping and, obviously, contributed to the death of the recording industry and the total dissolusion of all of my favorite bands.

Then, while working for UltraNet, I was assigned a job doing development for a CD internet-tool installer. This included use of a decent PowerMac with a CD burner-- it was a huge external Yamaha unit, 4x burning speed, and cost something like $800. That was it, though. I saw the future and started making mix CDs. It was another year or two before I could get my hands on my own burner, which cost me $400 and only burned at double speed. It was mine, though, and I made many, many CDs. Of course, I was driving places by then, but I still had mixes for moods and people and specific bands and so on.

A year or two later, I discovered that my tape deck had broken, and I didn't replace it. By then I was using Deck II to record audio straight to my Mac (a totally bitchin' PowerMac 8600/300 with lots of fun fast SCSI disks and a voodoo3 video card and 384MB RAM) and had stopped making tapes at all. Everything was CDs, and I'd even bought CDs of most of the albums I had on tape.

Making mixes digitally is a very different sort of process than making them on tape, though. The thing I miss the most is having to listen through each song as it recorded. (I never used high-speed dubbing. Goodness no! I must have high fidelity on my second and third-generation cassette copies!) Making mixes now is almost too easy-- make a playlist, drag in the songs, and burn. It's hard to tell how the mix flows that way, and hard to keep track of how well each song fits. More than once I've listened to a mix and wondered why I'd dropped certain songs in the middle of an otherwise smooth-flowing set.

I've been thinking about the podcast thing, too. I don't think I'll do a half-hour giant .mp3 file thing, and I certainly won't record myself announcing. Considering that these are constructed in audio editors, doing the whole DJ thing seems awfully contrived. I'll make sure I label everything, though, and tag them correctly. I figure I could post a song or 2 a day and have enough random stuff to post to last at least a few months without having to hit the same compilation or artist twice.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on mixes and formats, CDs and tapes, mp3s and blogging...

Comments

[usagijer.livejournal.com]

(Mostly him, and he did a great job of translating my sort of scat-like "Hey, we should do something like this: noo nee noo nee noo" lead line into MIDI).

... and Solipsist Nation, as the voice of GIR

[krzzl.livejournal.com]

I have a tape deck that I can give you, along with some other stereo equipment. I'm not sure what condition it's in, since it was purchased used at a flea market or something, but you're free to check it out. I have to look in the box, but my uncle bought me a component stereo system a few years ago with a 2-tape deck, a single CD player, a switcher(?) and speakers. Unfortunately, I never got around to setting it up, so I've been thinking about asking you if you wanted it or trying to sell it or something. Since it was a gift that I hauled all the way from Denver when I brought my old car over, I'd prefer to send it to a good home. Thanks for the reminder.

[gambl0r.livejournal.com]

Doing a podcast is a awesome idea. If you don't announce the artist and song names in the audio, you should definitely put them in the show notes in the feed, so you can see them on your iPod without having to check a website or the tags of the mp3 file on your computer.

Just a thought!

[brelson.livejournal.com]

I also find myself bemoaning the way that a digitally assembled compilation CD of WAVs and MP3s doesn't involve the creator being forced to listen all the way through, and can often lead to disjointed and weird track sequences as a result.

It takes a massive effort of will to sit and listen to the chosen files in order before burning the CD, and I can hardly ever be bothered.

One reason for this is that the person who the CD will go to is usually going to just rip the tracks to individual MP3 files, meaning that the compilation only exists as a structured series of tracks while in transit. So at both ends of the process there's a kind of fragmentation which means that the chances one gets to put some thought into programming an appealing sequence of songs are becoming less and less.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

This is why I like to burn mix CDs as one long track. I typically put together a gigantic .WAV file using the track editor in CoolEdit Pro to get the timing right between tracks (or even the actual mix if I'm doing honest-to-god transitions).

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Do you then split it into tracks, or just burn one giant track?

See, I think there are good things about being able to track around in a mix, especially if I'm, say, walking home and have 10 minutes to hear a song I like.

And actually, that's something missing from tapes-- the incentive to listen through a whole album. Nothing forces you to listen through even the last few tracks of an album than the knowledge that you'll kill your batteries if you fast-forward or rewind and then you'll be stuck on the train with no music. So you just play it and stop it and end up listening to EVERYTHING. I did notice that iTunes keeps track of how far you've listened in a podcast and starts there the next time you play it-- that's a nice feature.

But on CDs, I find single huge tracks really annoying. There was a Skinny Puppy live album where they decided that you should listen to it all the way through, dammit! And since I didn't really get into as much of that album as I liked, I never listened to it at all.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

ONE BIG TRACK! I like inconveniencing people. I know that most people will rip my CD and skip around, and I don't want them to do that.

[stophittinyrslf.livejournal.com]

see, i can't imagine putting together a cd without listening to how it flows first. and i'm like, the third most impatient person on the planet.

but, see, having the files stored on a computer makes it easier to listen to it before finalizing it... i can't imagine finding a song on a tape, listening to it, digging around for the tape with the next song i wanted to hear on it, finding that song, listening to it, etc... i would have forgotten what the end of the first song sounded like before i got the second one playing.

so... yeah. i don't think it's a bad way to do mixes, and in fact, is probably a better way. if you're patient. at all. at least as patient as me. which isn't very patient.

... on another relevant note, i prefer when podcast people say something about what they're playing. not after every song, but at the beginning or the end or in nice intervals. it beats having to try and find the playlist for a podcast that maybe you got from a friend of a friend of a friend who found it on some random blog that's gone now.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree about announcing tracks, for sure.

But I think I'd rather just put up a bunch of single songs and let people grab what they want and skip what they don't and do what they want with them...

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

My favorite podcasts are single-track podcasts with a brief (less than 1 minute) explanation of some of the history behind the song at the beginning of the track.

www.vinylpodcast.com for instance

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey, that reminds me - I have an MP3 kicking around of the first 30 seconds or so of a Reason remix of "Betrayal". No idea where the hell I got it. You wouldn't happen to have the rest of it kicking around someplace, would you? The original is one of my favorite songs, and I was liking what I was hearing of the Reason one before it suddenly faded out. :)

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Indeed I do.

Here you go.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Yay! One thing that's gone right today!

Thanks.