There is a certain art to making a great mix tape or CD. What
songs you choose, and how you choose them, will largely affect how
much your efforts will be appreciated. A compilation of songs
recorded on a tape or burned onto a CD can be a thoughtful gift for
someone you appreciate.
Steps
- Consider your intended audience. Is this compilation for
yourself? Your friends? A significant other? Make sure to consider
what music your audience will appreciate. There's not much point in
making your grandmother a CD of the best death metal tracks from
2001, but she may enjoy listening to a compilation of rare
recordings of her favorite jazz artists that she listened to when
she was young.
- Consider whether you want the mix to convey a certain emotion
or message. Pick music that you like and appreciate. How much you
enjoy making the mix will be apparent in the final package. It's a
good start to pick a group of songs that you've been recently
enjoying and continue from there.
- Focus on a genre and a theme. Putting widely different tracks
in a compilation can be distracting for the listener. Also, do
research on the music genre; for example, if you want to make a CD
for someone that doesn't enjoy heavy metal, find out which genre
they like.
- Be flexible. Collect a set of tracks as a rough draft for the
CD with the expectation you may decide not to include some of
them.
- Play around with the arrangement of the tracks. Think of the
mix tape as a prolonged listening experience. You don't want the
listener to get bored or skip songs. The first few tracks should
grab the listene
