Muxtape is bringing the concept of the old mixtape cassette to the Internet.
I grew up making mixtapes. My parents got me a white suitcase children's record player when I was young. I listened the The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour all the time. I started making mixtapes on my dad's stereo equipment and eventually on my own. When I was seven or eight years old, for Christmas my parents got me an Emerson stereo receiver that was an all-in-one AM/FM radio, turntable and cassette recorder with separate speakers. It had a sliding plastic cover on the turntable. I loved it.
I used the few records I had and songs off the radio for my first mixtapes. Radio mixtapes required some serious patience. I'd sit in front of the stereo for hours, sliding the dial back and forth between my favorite radio stations, with my finger on the pause button, to get the song I wanted. Back then, there was no second cassette deck to dub to. You had to get it just right. For a good mixtape, you wanted the whole song, without missing the beginning or catching the radio station's bumper, some DJ talking over the music or a bit of the fadeout of the previous song.
It was common to start recording a song I didn't want and then stop, rewind, play back to the right spot, pause, then engage the record button, while still paused, and wait for that song on the radio to transition to the next song. When I'd get the song I wanted right on the money, it was glorious! I'd rock out to the song, hoping that the DJ wouldn't screw it up at the end.
I vividly remember my discovery of the idea of multitrack recording. I was listening to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" on earbud headphones on my dad's Sony Walkman in the backseat of the car heading home from my grandparents' house.
"Wait a minute... Michael Jackson is singing with different voices of himself at the same time! How did he do that?!"
My dad told me it was done with multitrack recorders in the studio. What a concept! Then he told me that the old Akai reel-to-reel he had at home could do that. Oh my God!
Then I got turned on to remixing. I don't recall my first exposure to the concept, but this was the early 80's when the Synclavier was taking over the airwaves. I remember hearing a radio remix of "Thriller" where the bridge of the song was extended out another 32 bars or more and the chorus was repeated. I was blown away! I could do that too!
I started my first entrepreneurial ventures to earn money to pay for the records I wanted to buy. I sold baseball cards and Garbage Pail Kids at school. I had to have not only the album version of my favorite songs, but also the 12" for the remixes. Then I could make my own remixes from those.
My early remixes included Jan Hammer's "Miami Vice" theme song, Harold Faltermeyer's "Axel F" from Beverly Hills Cop, Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus," Newcleus's "Jam On It," Paul Hardcastle's "19," the Kartoon Krew's hip hop version of the "Inspector Gadget" theme song, old TV show themes from TV Toons, the "Knight Rider" theme song... and so many other classics from the 80s. My first remixes were mostly cut-up, extended versions of the songs, and they all ended up on my mixtapes.
My cousin Alex got a portable cassette recorder with a built-in microphone. That let us record a full 45 minutes (remember, this is before we had auto-reverse) of a radio broadcast while we were at school and then listen back for the good stuff and transfer from one of the stereo's speakers to the mic of the portable recorder. It didn't sound good, but we used what we had. We'd stay up late at night listening to Miami's first hip hop station play tracks we couldn't find anywhere else (before Miami Bass had a name).
A whole new world opened up when we both got dual-cassette boomboxes that could copy from one tape to the other. We were amazed by a radio [Hot 107?] megamix of the License To Ill album by the Beastie Boys. I can't even imagine how many hours I spent making megamixes of that record.
Over time, my mixtapes started to develop themes and stories. I'd name them and design cases, J-cards and stickers for them. I made mixtapes for and about the girls I liked. That was a big deal. Making a mixtape for a girl and then giving it to her was as big as things got for me back then. It was more than special.
In high school, I started listening to darker and stranger music. This music made its way onto my mixtapes of the day.
In the 90s, I made mixtapes with Ben Riede, my college roommate, who I later ended up making music with as Hypha under the PFU Productions label. Our first mixtapes were a clash of our different musical tastes. I was big on industrial music, and he was into prog and metal. We would make mixtapes mainly from a 5-disc CD changer onto cassette. We took turns choosing songs and cranked out some bizarre mixes.
By our fourth "PFU tape," Ben and I added a 4-track machine to our recording arsenal. The Tascam 234 allowed us to blend songs together and flip parts backwards. It was no longer simply song after song. We created long continuous pieces of pure craziness. There was little attempt made to match the tempo between songs. Total trainwreck-style. Sound sources came from all over the place: CD, tape, vinyl, TV, video, mic, speakerphone, voicemail and eventually DAT field recordings and a Kurzweil K2000 sampler. The PFU tapes are still some of the most insane recordings I've ever heard.
A few years ago, CD-burning and iTunes playlists took on the role of the mixtape. There's something a bit more magical for me in the old cassette mixtapes though.
A few companies are now offering computer-based tools for creating "mp3 mixtapes." A couple weeks ago, I started uploading mp3 files to Muxtape, but I kept encountering slow speeds and errors. I was using Safari on the Mac. It seemed a bit better with Firefox. I picked from the limited selection of songs I have on my laptop instead of my full iTunes library. Muxtape currently allows you to have only one muxtape per account, so I may change it up every once in a while.
The first version of my Califaudio muxtape has songs by NIN, Newcleus, New Order, Wendy Carlos, The Tuss, TJ Milian [that's me], Laurie Johnson, Masami Kawahara, Otto Von Schirach/Venetian Snares, Electric Waffles, John Frusciante and Joy Division. If you own the copyright to one of the songs I used and want me to remove it, just let me know. It's an eclectic mix.
Here it is: The Califaudio Muxtape.
http://califaudio.muxtape.com/
44.1 kHz 16-bit
96 kHz 24-bit
