Musings on mix tapes

Now that I’ve started musing about music, my children have asked that I make them mixtapes of music that I enjoy [1]. Of course, almost no one uses cassette tapes any more. I certainly won’t be posting music to the Web, since that likely violates copyright [2]. So, in some sense, these are just playlists. But I’m also digging out the music for the kids, and Middle has asked that I burn the songs to CD. So each mix tape will be about seventy minutes.

Note that I tend to take a relatively free-form approach to mix tapes [3]. I identify songs I like or love. I put ’em together in some order. I rarely sequence them carefully. I rarely make considered judgements on what goes on one mixtape vs. another, except that I try not to repeat artists too much on one tape.

I’m not completely sure what the mix tape musings will look like. There’s a saying that Writing about music is like dancing about architecture that has been attributed to Elvis Costello, among others. But I do know some people, like Celeste Miller who could certainly dance well about architecture. And there are a few brilliant music writers, such as Greil Marcus. Now, I’ll never reach Marcus’s level of writing, but I might try saying something about a few of the tracks on each tape, or about the artists, or about the connection I feel to the song, or whatever. Or perhaps I’ll write nothing, and let the music speak for itself.

Whether or not I write something about the individual songs, I do plan to write a short introduction to each mix tape.

Stay tuned, as it were.

[1] Or perhaps I wrote in one of the musings that I should make them mixtapes.

[2] I also won’t post links to YouTube videos with the music; it’s taking enough time to dig up the songs from my CDs, LPs, and hard drives.

[3] Or playlists.

Version 1.0 of 2017-05-16.