Difference between revisions of "Mix tape"

Revision as of 10:30, 9 November 2010

Sometimes I go to yard sales to buy cassettes compiled by people who are complete strangers to me. You see something that has 'Marty's Mix' scrawled on it in ballpoint pen. You take it home and you don't know if it's going to be US post-punk hardcore or Kenny Rogers. Whatever it is, though, I know I'm getting a slice of someone's life. Cassettes are the only format that can give you that.

- Thurston Moore of band Sonic Youth (Quoted by Pete Paphides)

A Mix Tape is an amateur-created audio cassette music compilation, compiled of different songs from different albums (usually taken from other tapes, from LPs or the radio). While sometimes mix tapes contained songs from various albums by the same artist, most mix tapes were also collections of songs by different artists. Most mix tapes were inherently personal, either kept for oneself, or given to a friend or lover. However, as we shall discuss, mix tapes had special meaning in hip hop culture, in which they were inherently public media forms.

Beginning in the late 1960s, with the emergence of the Philips compact in 1963 and the emergence of Japanese-made cassette players and recorders in the mid to late 1960s, mix tapers began to challenge the notion of the single-artist album by taking on the role of the creator (Millard 315-6). As scholar Rob Drew notes, “Rather than conforming to artistic intention and industry practice, mixers treated the album as an open work and took the selection and ordering of songs into their own hands” (535). The mix tape thereby enabled people “to make their own personal soundtracks and compilation. “ (535)

As we shall see, the mix tape as it is defined here would disappear in the 1990s with the emergence of the compact disk, and later the digital playlist. While these musical forms have inherited tropes of the original mix tape form, there are fundamental differences between the experience of creating, listening to, and receiving an original cassette mix tape versus these new "versions".

Technological History

The Compact Cassette

Recording Equipment

Copyright

Types

A) Personal B) Mix tape in hip hop culture

Mix Tape As Cultural Artifact

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References

Paphides, Pete. "Thinking inside the (plastic) box: Still cherished by mix-tape romantics, the cassette isn't ready to die, says Pete Paphides". The Times. London (UK): Dec 18, 2009. p. 8

Millard, Andrew. America On Record: A history of recorded sound. Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press,2005.

Drew, Rob. "Mixed Blessings: The Commercial Mix and the Future of Music Aggregation". Popular Music and Society; Oct 2005; 28, 4; Research Library pg. 533