Selfless Acts of Mixing
Awesome -- social media has evolved to include songs. Maybe you got a Spotify account. Now your music collection is in some shared space-cloud, co-mingling with the intangible collections of a thousand other subscribers. Now you can explore new music and reconnect with old favorites. Stream on! Bathe in the glory of your own personal playlists, developed by "intuitive software" that caters to your preferences with each successive keystroke! It’s all for you! Click ‘Like’!
However, having these social media apps tell your friends online What You’re Listening To Right Now is presumptuous on some level, and this degree of voyeurism may have an adverse affect. Like so many technological advances, we should ask: just because we can do something, does it mean that we should? Does it improve your quality of life to know that right now, three hundred miles away, a friend is listening to “With or Without You” by U2? It’s tough to say, but you probably don’t go out of your way to announce such activities.
Maybe the fact that we don’t go out of our way is the problem. We’re taking so much for granted that social media is training us to do the same thing with our friends. Convenience breeds undervaluing, and I fear we’ve lost the purposeful side of sharing music with one another. Where’s the joy? If your internet service is down, where’s your collection?
Slow down a minute, and read this again: ‘... right now, three hundred miles away, a friend is listening to “With or Without You” by U2’.
What if you had a recording of this late-80’s anthemic chart-topper performed live by a high school marching band in Clearwater, Florida? What if this same friend went to Clearwater High?
It’s unlikely you have this recording -- but not impossible. Maybe you caught it on your iPhone waiting for the 3rd quarter to start, sitting in the bleachers at a homecoming game -- Go Tornados! Wouldn’t your friend get a good laugh out of a cover version with trombones and triangle? Bono and The Edge are waiting in the cloud whenever your friend wants, but this... Isn’t this worth sharing? Intentionally?
There used to be a way to do it, low-budget. It was called a mixtape. You could grab anything that played through your stereo speakers if you had a cassette deck hooked up to it. Between 1980 and 1995, a gift I always appreciated was a brick of gold-foil-wrapped Maxell XLII 90s. Being polite, I certainly wouldn’t turn down a 4-pack of TDK SA90s, or even the odd Sony HF-S90 as a stocking stuffer. These were the canvasses, and my records and CDs were the paints. Over the years, I’ve made hundreds of custom mixes; gifted like photographs with a soundtrack.
Making a mix for somebody else means you are taking the time to think about what they would like, but haven’t heard yet. Perhaps it’s a collection of stuff you know for a fact they’ve heard before, because it’s from that summer you took a road trip and got a flat tire in Brownwood, Texas and all you could get was the one radio station that played the same eleven Smash Hits over and over again. Search your memory banks. This is real life we’re talking about here. What does your relationship OFFLINE consist of?
When you’re ready to build, here are some suggestions:
Be unpredictable. Use a strong opener to grab attention, but don’t show all your cards right away. Use dynamics, range and variety. For those special friends, drop a “song-bomb” like some bad 80’s keyboard power rock anthem with dumb lyrics about the ultimate whatever... or something by an actress who was famous enough to record a disco album (that’s a true measure of fame). Why not a theme song to your friends’ favorite TV show from 8 years ago? Or a Playstation game intro. Free associate first: drop 8 hours of material into a playlist or stack it on your coffee table in front of your stereo -- whatever your workspace is going to be. Don't edit, think of anything that applies to your listener. Then trim the fat, pick the best of the bunch. Decide which track sounds better after that gloomy folk song you chose... will it be Dmitri Shostakovich or Carly Rae Jepsen?
Lastly, the title is imperative. What’s an ice cream sundae without the cherry on top? Don’t fall short with a title like: “mix for Jennifer”. That’s about as personal as a coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond. Try something like “My Jeneration” or “Pure Jenergy” or even something random like “Dirty Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Hip-Hop”. Whatever the format, hand-write the information on the packaging. The goal is to make something you can give in person, not ‘link to’.
Sure, you can cheat: check their online profiles and 'likes' -- but don’t expect to pinch the same nerve. Consider the fact that most people won't list their guilty pleasures, like that awful karaoke thing they insisted on doing for their birthday.
Personalize, let someone know you care, and do things the hard way for a change.
And you give yourself away...
And you give yourself away.
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