Making Tapes

This writing what follows is about my thought trains when I make mixtapes and what I mean is actual mixtapes on tape cassettes containing a mixed variety of music and sounds that are currently in my life and also ones that have been in my life previously and have been perhaps dormant for many years and even decades but then something in my life has sparked the memory trigger of song remembrance and I find the song and add it into the current mixtape compilation.

I even had a thought train memory spark to commence the writing paragraph above which started the typing down. It only happened a few minutes ago but the reason why it made me want to start typing has already gone back into my mind swamp. I been wanting to write something about doing the mixtape recording process for about a couple months now but was wonder wondering about how to start it. Sometimes I just sat there wanting to write but nowt came out and I know I shouldn’t force it as then it isn’t all that natural and I have to wait for the catalyst to occur. So the catalyst must have occurred a little while ago and even though I’ve started writing now about the subject in particular, I realise that I’ve now spent two bastard paragraphs talking about remembering stuff and nothing about the actual recording process and the collection of music. I have realisation that I am writing procrastinator.

Sometimes I use a memory catalyst to write stuff down as a way of avoiding doing something that is more important that I need to be doing like thinking what I should be doing with the rest of my life and trying not to cry about it so I let myself get immersed in the pleasure of sitting there and observing what pieces of music appear to me in my mind’s eye but in my ears. Music appears within my ears but a bit further into my head, like about 4 or 5 cm in from the direction of each ear, then it spreads out and reveals itself in a kind of panoramic scene but mostly when I have my eyes closed at the same time. I never really think about the musicians themselves making the music but more in a kind of way that the sounds are making shapes themselves and they are like colourful vibrating lines and when I see these shapes then in turn they reveal themselves to me more intensely and they start to appear like cone shaped springs. There are other shapes as well but the cone shaped springs are the ones that I consider most noteworthy and I like them the most. They don’t tend to represent a specific sound but can vary with each piece of music that I hear. Sometimes I fit the cone shaped springs to a sound type and sometimes they attach themselves without my help and I can watch them happen as I listen.

So the sounds that I hear in my little Sony Bluetooth earbud things present themselves in this panorama in my head that is similar to that Atari Battlezone tank game from the 1980’s down the amusements in Scarborough only there aren’t tanks and missiles and stuff there before me, there are differing shapes hanging there and fluttering in the space while the sounds they represent are playing. The graphics aren’t really green like they were in Battlezone, they are more like white or a silver grey against a sort of orange or black with fizzy bits in it, like when you close your eyes and that’s the background. Occasionally there is framework scaffold stuff in front of me in the centre of the sound area looking like a big pile of radio transmission aerials and I can be constantly chasing it or running towards it or just standing in front of it all having arrived there.

Now I have to and I really must describe the collecting process that I do when I do the compilations as people might want this information and I could also learn something about myself after writing it down. It’s kind of like this, where I will be doing a phone engagement with YouTube or TikTok and some algorithm internet guesser will say to me ‘Hey listen to this and look at it at the same time but mainly listen’ and it will be some instantly engaging piece of music and I’ll then start thinking ‘Hey this is great what is it I have to listen to it more’ and so I click a favourite button so I can go back to it later or I’ll share it with myself by sending it to me on the messaging thing I use. Then later I can go back to checking out the piece of music at home where I’m doing my mixtape constructions and if when I listen to it the second time and I then think ‘Ah no actually it’s a bit shit isn’t it maybe I was too excited when I heard it first and I need to calm down a bit’. Or conversely I could listen to it again and then think ‘Ah yeah actually it’s a great track and my initial beliefs are further confirmed and I must record it and put it on my new mixtape compilation.’

I engage with thought power and dexterity and find the required music in various forms on YouTube or some website and then I use a piece of software called OBS to record the music in real time. If the music lasts three minutes then I take three minutes to record it using the OBS. I know that I could probably do it quicker somehow but I like actually recording it as it makes me pause and relax a bit while I’m involved so I don’t get carried away and do something silly in a rush. It does some reminding as well of when I was dead young and I used to record stuff onto tapes off the Top40 which was a radio show or just off my own records or other ones which I had borrowed. I like that experience when you make physical items for yourself or other people which you can enjoy for ages and you learn how to do it properly again and again when you do mistakes and it doesn’t work out right so I adjust something like the recording level and make it a bit louder or quieter but overall, all the tracks on the tape should sound the same loudness.

Then I also remember that I get sounds and music from other sources like CD’s that I own or digital files of 1’s and 0’s that I’ve gradually collected since finding out about computers at the turn of the century. I used to like computers in the 1980’s but they don’t count in this context anymore as they do not have the power. Sometimes I can decide to use things that I’ve recorded myself with various devices that I have procured.  I use this music sequencing program called Reaper as it’s pretty mint and you can put loads of different file types in it and it doesn’t say ‘No no I don’t like that file take it away and convert it.’  It likes all the file types that I put into it and then I line all the file types of songs into two tracks of 45 minutes. This is a relevant time because it is one side of a C90 tape so mathematics can work out that two sides of the tape are 45 minutes each or a bit more actually as the tapes don’t stop at dead on 45 minutes, as that would be unkind. They all give you a bit more but it’s uncharted territory as you don’t know exactly when it’ll run out and if you want to be precise you’ll have to time it with a stopwatch.

Then I spend time making all the pieces of music sound about the same with their loudness and I do some mental processing and organising to make the order of the songs somehow appropriately correct. Appropriately correct for me anyway, as I’m massively aware that I will only ever be the only person ever listening to them ever. Unless there’s an odd occasion where I’m making one for a present but this is very rare and almost unheard of. I made one or two for my brother and he said ‘Thanks yeah it’s really good’ but he might be lying I don’t know for sure.

The next stage is a little collection of procedures that need to be done properly as they need to be correct in order for the finished recorded tape product to sound reasonably nectar. This bit is different from the bits before as they were down to personal preference like putting all the sounds into a personal preference order. Some things in the making process need to be done right. I worked out how to do them by trying to do them and finding out that they were wrong at first and then I made adjustments until they ended up going down a path of correct.

I could play all of the sounds straight from the Reaper program but I find that I like it better by making a render of the two complete tracks for side one and side two and then playing them using a media player set at 90 percent of total loudness and also I put the computer headphone socket volume to the same else I have found that the volume what comes out of the computer and into the tape deck recorder is too loud or hot as some people say and the tape deck recorder doesn’t like it too much and it ends up sounding like fucking hell that’s too loud and distorted.

Writing this bit next is a bit boring I know but it is important so I need to get it right and I don’t have the luxury of free flow thought so much as when I’m describing the other stuff from earlier. I get a tape and move the reels around with my finger so that the actual tape is just coming into view in the bit in the cassette shell where you can see the tape. You know, the bit that the machine touches when you play it. Then I put the tape into the machine so that the full side is to the left as it records from left to right so the full side of tape gets smaller as it plays and the other side gets more full until the 45 minutes are done and it’s finished.  I press the play and record buttons to get the tape into the play/pause mode so that when I play the sound file in the computer media player I can hear it coming out of my speakers but the tape isn’t going round and recording yet no. Oh yeah make sure that the tab holes in the top of the tape have the tabs in them or you wont be able to record anything, you can put tape over them if you want if there’s no tabs in it.

There’s a recording level dial which flickers some lights when it hears sounds and I have to make sure that it only goes into the red danger zone only a little bit now and then. A little bit is fine but if the lights are always in the danger zone then it’ll probably sounds like rubbish. I don’t actually know what it’ll sound like if you do it like that as I’ve never done it like that. Anyway, when it all sounds at the right level and stuff then I press the button to make it start recording then press the play button on the media file. Oh yeah I also try and remember to turn off the internet and notifications and suchlike as if they make a noise when you’re doing the recording then that noise will come out on the tape as well and you’ll hear it when you play the tape back. If that’s what you want then yeah go ahead and leave them on but personally I don’t like stupid notification beeps in my tunes.

If you leave the tape still recording until it gets to the end of the side when your music file has finished playing so that you record some silence quietness when the music is finished else if the tape is one with tunes on it from before then you’ll probably hear old music for a bit when your tunes finish playing so do some silence recording to get rid of it then it’ll be nice.

After the recording is done for both sides then I go for a wander with a Walkman and Bluetooth transmitter which sends the sounds into my nectar Sony Bluetooth earbuds to give it a test and listen to if it’s all recorded nice. Normally it’s all worked out good and I can undergo satisfaction with my latest mixtape project and I can then start thinking about making a new one as the onslaught of music into my head never ceases and I am always hearing it coming at me from all of the directions.

However sometimes I am dissatisfied with the result and I have to go and do it again. The reasons for the dissatisfaction might be that I have recorded all the sounds too loudly and it’s come out a bit distorted or another reason that has definitely happened is that one piece of music doesn’t seem to fit right amongst the other songs on the tape and I have to go back to the computer and take it out and move the songs around a bit and replace it with something else. One example I can think of and I convulse a little with shame when I think about it is that one time I put the song called 30 Seconds Over Tokyo by Pere Ubu amongst some other songs that were mainly Japanese pop and punk songs but it just sounded totally out of place and I was embarrassed and had to change it quickly because it really destroyed the flow of the sounds on the tape. I quite like the song 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and maybe I was trying to fit it in with the others with the Japanese reference but it wasn’t right for this time and I realised my mistake and corrected it with humility.

In conclusion to this writing experience, people sometimes ask me why don’t you just listen to tunes on your phone it’s so convenient? I respond yeah well I can do that as well if I want but I hardly ever want to because I really like this Intangible nectarness experience of going through a process to create something that I like and I have a finished product so leave me alone while I listen to it, thanks.