Friday, December 2, 2011

Mixtapes: A Great Way To Compile Your Favorite Music

By Ralph O'malley


Mixtapes that are also known as mixed tapes are really songs that have been compiled and recorded in a specific order on traditional auto cassette tapes. In fact, a mixed tape is usually created to help reflect a particular kind of musical taste that the maker of such a tape wants to show to the world.

This means that you can compile the songs to include your favorite tunes or you can create something that has a certain concept and it could even be to reflect a certain theme or even a particular mood.

Mixtapes, according to Geoffrey Obrien, who is an essayist, are a widely practiced American art form. Enthusiastic creators of such tapes also are of the belief that these are artistic, especially if they have been carefully selected and also ordered in a particular manner. When such a tape is properly mixed together it can create a musical experience that is greater than the sum of all its individual tunes.

Once the era of Beatles passed, the era of the pop music albums started in which each album was created in the same manner and with different songs sung by different artists being included in the album.

However, this era too passed by as digital audio which was more affordable offered a more exciting mix of music that was stored on compact discs as well as in MP3 formats. Even despite these later inventions, the term mixed tape continues to refer to audio cassettes. That is not to say that this term excludes the CD, MP3 and the minidisc; it is just that the concept is very closely related to the audio tape and so most people continue to associate it with the audio cassette.

The earliest mixtapes were nothing but bootleg eight track tapes that could be bought and sold at flea markets and also in truck stops. These were originally introduced in the latter parts of the sixties and they continued through the eighties. Some of the more famous such tapes had names such as Top Pops 1977 and Country Chart Toppers as well as Super 73.




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