The Mixtape
How does packaging change the content? The meaning?
Who is the author of these songs? This compilation?
How does the form or medium affect the message?
Is context important to sound?
What do Cindy Lauper and an answering machine message have in common?
The advent of the affordable, high quality cassette tape and recordable tape deck gave casual (and serious) music fans in the 80’s the authority to become archivists, music producers, music critics, and the authors who created the best song compilation for the “Summer of 1983”, a.k.a. “The Post-Break-up Mix”. Since then, music has been digitized and distributed on CD-ROMs and through online file-sharing venues, which allowed us to download the audio file onto our computers. The mixtape as we knew it died out and we began to organize and store our music on software programs like iTunes. But many continued the tradition of re-arranging and repackaging our favourite music in playlists and music mash-ups through digital formats, labeled “Death Metal Mania” and “Work-Out Playlists” to be listened to on iPods. Musicians use samples of music from other genres, and some DJs use found audio exclusively. When we take these audio clips, recordings and files out of their original context, whether they are from a band’s professionally-produced album on vinyl, or a digital MP3 on a peer-sharing site, and re-package them with other audio on an entirely different format, what happens? What is lost? What is gained? How does the presence of one audio file change the other?
Let’s look at the mixtape in its original format first, as the form tells us more than the content could. In the 80’s and 90’s, the audiocassette mixtape was inexpensive, small and easy to distribute. It also took hours to create and was hard to duplicate. This meant that the “author” of the mix could personalize the tape for a specific audience, and give it away as a gift. Process becomes important and aesthetics of the mixtape’s curation emerge, as illustrated in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity:
"To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention […] and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch[…] and you can't have two tracks by the same artist, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs, and, oh, there are loads of rules."[1]
Elements of timing are essential, as the author does not want minutes of blank space on either side of the tape, or a song being cut off because there was no more space left on the tape. There are decisions about transitions, juxtapositions and affect to make. While this process has many similar characteristics to high art, how is making a mixtape like writing a letter?
Like composing a letter by placing a series of random words together to create a new meaning, (as William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin explain: “Writers don’t own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody”[2]), the mixtape author selects audio files to be placed sequentially. These audio selections come from many different sources. This is where context gets interesting. Audio can be taken from radio, vinyl, LPs, other cassettes, 8-tracks, voice and phonograph recordings (though the latter may be rare on the “Metal Mania Mix”) and are re-recorded onto the magnetic tape of the cassette. Because the tape does not have the capability to record the provenance, artist, song or album name, the only way we can understand the recording is from the re-contextualization made by the author. In effect, the audio is snatched from it’s home, naked[3]. The author may or may not title the cassette; they may or may not write down the origin of the data. Often how this information is produced or not produced becomes meaningful to the new cassette recording. Writing “I love you Jeannette Mix #24” on the tape has a completely different effect than if the list of every song and artist were written on the tape jacket with new original artwork. The new product has become a collage of audio clips cut from their original context and repackaged to create a new meaning.
William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin re-introduced Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist Cut-up Method to audiences by cutting up sections of a page and reassembling them in a random order. What emerged from Gysin’s piece “Minutes to Go” were random sections of text that emerged “as quite coherent and meaningful prose”[4]. The purpose was to bring new and fresh juxtapositions and combinations of words without the control of the author’s intent by this random process. While the typical mixtape does not fully embrace this random nature, the juxtaposition of songs and audio clips that would not usually be associated together often produce new meanings, new genres of music and new appreciations for sound.
Digitization of these audio clips into digital forms brings a whole new level of repackaging and recontextualization to the mix. Songs can be organized and played at random using “Shuffle” or “Genius” options on iTunes, where a computer, not a human makes the selections. As Lev Manovitch notes in Language of New Media, older audio forms (old media) are transcoded and re-used to create new media, which lends to variability and open interactivity[5]. Playlists can be shared at much greater speeds online, files can be downloaded (legally, illegally), ripped and burned into different forms. (Note the use of terminology: rip, burn, etc). Websites and software like SoundCloud allow users to blend audio to create new songs and then quickly share them. You can comment (text) on audio, you can embed it or link to it, play with distortion and auto-tune it[6]. Each time it is modified, context changes. Does this mean that by participating in making mixtapes and playlists, we are all re-creating a Dadaist poem? Maybe not. Maybe our media and societal practices include the cut-up method in everyday activities.
Works Cited/Consulted
Burroughs, William S. “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin”.
---, and Brion Gysin. The Third Mind.
burroughs/index.html>.
Gallagher, David F. “For the Mix Tape, A Digital Upgrade and Notoriety”. The New York
Times. Technology, January 30, 2003.
fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DC1F39F933A05752C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=
&pagewanted=all>.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. “The Bride Stripped Bare: Nude Media and the Dematerialization
of Tony Curtis”. .
Hornby, Nick. High Fidelity. New York, New York: Riverhead Essential Editions,
Berkeley Publishing Group, 2005
Keller, Joel. “PCs killed the mix-tape star”. Salon.com. Tech & Biz, January 22, 2004.
Lethem, Jonathan. “The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism”. Harper’s Magazine,
Manovich, Lev. “Principles of New Media”, “What New Media is Not”. The Language of
New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. 49-74.
Paul, James. “Last night a mix tape saved my life”. The Guardian. Culture, Music,
[1] Horby, Nick. High Fidelity. New York, New York: Riverhead Essential Editions, Berkeley Publishing Group, 2005, pg 89.
[2] Burroughs, William and Brion Gysin. “The Cut-up Self-Explained”. The Third Mind. New York: Seaver Books, 1978. 34. http://www.ubu.com/historical/burroughs/index.html.
[3] Goldsmith, Kenneth. “The Bride Stripped Bare: Nude Media and the Dematerialization of Tony Curtis”.
[4] Burroughs, William and Brion Gysin. “The Cut-up Self-Explained”. The Third Mind. New York: Seaver Books, 1978. 34. http://www.ubu.com/historical/burroughs/index.html.
[5] Manovich, Lev. “Principles of New Media”. Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. 49-74.
[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=civOdWxd4Kc
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