Today I wanted to take a few minutes to drop science on the lost art of mixed tape creation! If you follow this closely, you will be making the most tubular tapes in no time!
You will need to snag the following items:
- Radio
- Cassette Recorder
- Blank Cassette Tape (your choice of length, I preferred 60 mins)
- Something to write playlist with
- Smoke’s Poutinerie Poutine
First scarf down your Poutine! If you can find a cassette recorder with a built-in radio, you are golden, but in most cases two pieces of equipment will be required.
There are several ways to get the tunes you want onto the cassette. You could sit in front of the radio for hours, no, days…waiting for just the right tunes…or you could make shit happen. To get a tune you haven’t heard in a while, you can phone the radio station and make a request. My fave way to do it in the past, was to wait until New Year’s Day, when everyone listened to Casey Kasem count down the top 100 songs of the year.
The 411 on making a totally bangin’ mixed tape:
- Position the microphone of your cassette recorder next to your radio’s speaker
- Put a pencil into the lead tape sprocket and advance the tape so that the recording tape (brown coloured part) is halfway across the front of the tape in front of the little felt rectangle
- Place tape into the recorder
- With three fingers press “play”, “record” and “pause” all at the same time. Your recorder is now set. Lame recording devices will not allow you to do this move so you will have to press “play” and “record” at the beginning of each tune
- Listen to the radio and be ready to release the pause button to engage recording. Always be prepared to bail early, in case the DJ starts talking before the tune is complete
- When you are done, press pause between each recording. When you have completed one side of the tape you can flip it over and continue, no duh
- Once the tape is complete remove it from the recorder and break the tabs on the top of the cassette, one for each side, to prevent your tunes from being accidentally erased
- Write the tunage info on the case sleeve and a creative title for actual cassette. Bettys love this stuff