The lost art of making a compilation

cornbb

Since the death of the cassette, the making of home-made compilations seems to have dwindled a lot. Which is kind of surprising, seeing as the dominance of mp3s should make the whole process even easier. Maybe the same factor that is causing the decrease of interest in albums/LPs as opposed to singles is also responsible for the demise of compilations.

Anyway, while I wouldn't piss on most commercial compilations (Now Thats What I Call Music etc) if they were on fire, I have a soft spot for homemade mix tapes/CDs, whether they are intended to melt a girl's heart, see you through a long road trip, play at your best friend's funeral, or whatever. Compiling a good CD is challenging - picking the right tracks, ones which conform to a common theme, and putting them in the right order takes care and attention. Sleeve notes and/or artwork are optional but nice.

So here's the idea. Pick a theme. This is very important - think time, place, mood and people/person. Then pick roughly enough tracks to fill your imaginary compilation CD and stick them together in some sort of meaningful order.

To get the ball rolling, my theme is "For Sore Ears Just Before Dawn, Sunday Morning" and the tracks are:

1 - Boards of Canada - Corsair
2 - Yo La Tengo - Sea Urchins
3 - The Smashing Pumpkins - For Martha
4 - Aphex Twin - Blue Calx
5 - REM - Daysleeper
6 - JS Bach - Goldberg Variations (Aria)
7 - The Orb - Pomme Fritz
8 - Simon & Garfunkel - April Come She Will
9 - Pink Floyd - Us and Them
10 - Christy Moore - Black is the Colour
11 - Tool - Reflection
12 - Godspeed You! Black Emporor - Storm

walrusgumble

greta thread, reminds me of the main charater in high fieldity. you are right, its hard to pick out a decent compliation. i am gonna give it ago, but i wont apologise if my collection is not as broad and selective as someone else as its my tunes.

setlist: getting ready for a great night out with the mates, when you are full of optimism that the night is gonna be great, during the night and after the nightclub

1. rock n' roll star (oasis) - sing it loud and proud, with a tint of swagger, let's be havin' ya, "you're not down with how i am, look at you now, your' all in my hands tonnnniiiiittttttteee..."

2. Slade - Cum feel the noise

3. Eletric 6 - danger danger, high voltage

4. Rolling Stones- either Jumping Jack Flash or Get off My Cloud (anyone skipping the q or bouncers wrecking your head)

5. Stiff Little Finger - At The Edge (when your mates say, you cant do this or that..)

6. The Bee Gees - Saturday Night Fever, prob manadtory

7. I'm Still Standing - Elton John: for those moments when nobody will shift/go with ya. was gonna say lonely by akon but christ there is no need for depression.

8. Jump around - house of pain: probably only time you will happily get on the dancefloor for a bosterous redevous with the lads.

9. what is love - ?: simply for the comedy moments from Will Farrell's in "a night at the roxbury"

10. Columbia - Oasis, when you have one of those moments where your new g/f or you miss understand each other, but unable to put it into words.

11. Slide Away - Oasis or The Beatles - We Can Work It Out, the easiest way to say you love your g/f without getting all mushy and mates not queing for the toilet to get sick

hard to make compilations all right, i am sure many will think this is rubbish, oh well

Makaveli

What Is Love is by Haddaway and it's cheesetastic.

John

Great thread! I still make compilations (either in CD or mp3 format) and I'm currently working on one. I'll post the theme and the tracklist when I'm done.

DerekD Goldfish

I love compilations
a recent one I made
"Cd1
01-Gil Scott Herron- Home is where the hatred is
02-Wire- I am the fly
03-Gang of Four- To hell with poverty
04-Cabaret Voltaire- Yashir
05-McLusky- Lightsabre cocksucking blues
06-Talk Talk - I beleive in you
07-World Domination Enterprises- Asbestos Lead Asbestos
08-Big Black- The Model
09-Otis Lee Crekshaw- Drunk
10-Prefrab Sprout- Appitite
11-Sluts of trust- Greatest Gift
12-The Last Post- The Only Thing
13-The Pop Group - We are all prostitutes
14-Boris- Woman on the screen
15-Cocteau Twins- Sugar Hiccup
16-PIL- Religion II
17-Raincoats - Lola
18-Slint - Nosferatu Man
19-65 Days of static - Retreat Retreat
20-Guided by Voices- Twilight Campfire


Cd2
01-Ben Folds- Inbetween days
02-Chamelsons- Dont Fall
03-Sandoz- Armed Responce
04-Neil Young - Cortez the Killer
05-At the drive in - Invalid litter Department
06-Teenage Fanclub- Aint that enough
07-Tom Waits - Downtown Train
08-Whipping Boy - Tripped
09-That Petrol Emotion - Creeping to the cross
10-Nick Drake- Fruit Tree
11-Lightning Bolt- Ride the skies
12-Meat Puppets - Plateau
13-Chris Morris - Does Steven Spielberg Exist
14-Kitchens of Distinction - Drive That Fast
15-Felt- Dismanteled king is off the throne
16-Doves - The man who told everything
17-Television - Torn Curtain"

crosstownk

Yeah - I agree. Building your own compilation is not as prevalent as it used to be. I suppose one advantage of a car CD player that doesn't support MP3 is that I still need to burn CDs for the car - and I tend to make compilations. The thing is I have so many CDs and I never label them.

I reckon the term 'compilations' is destined to become 'playlists'. I have various Playlists in iTunes for when I'm out and about with my iPod and these playlists are mostly complilations.

mike65

C90 comps are not dead - I've got a box load of them. I admit I've not made many recently but I got 1.5 GB of mps that I can stream to tape and do so now and again. I work on the raod so they are pretty important to me!

Mike.

Frankiestylee

John wrote:

Great thread! I still make compilations (either in CD or mp3 format) and I'm currently working on one. I'll post the theme and the tracklist when I'm done.

You make great compilations so ya do

gucci

as was said above the fact that cd players etc exist in cars there is a slight need for "playlist" style complinations. i also make them to "give" to friends when were travelling in theyre car. its easier to wean them in on better music when you mix it in the middle of something they know, at least that way i dont get subjected to whole albums of green day etc dont have the set list of my last complination but il post it tommorro.

gucci

walrusgumble wrote:

9. what is love - ?: simply for the comedy moments from Will Farrell's in "a night at the roxbury"

you've gotta do the funky dance as well!! me?him?me?him?me?him?

Ponster

I remember that once I had worked out the track order, I'd see what the song lengths on each side of the tape were going to be. After a little swaping around it was time to open up the tape and cut it down to a better size (e.g. from 90 minutes to 85) so that all my songs fitted and when you got to the last song on side 1, it switched to side 2 by itself within seconds.

It was truely an art form in itself. I made one for the wife's office last Xmas but looking through some peoples lists above I think I'll take some time to try again.

In fact, I think I'll start with cornbb's list to get me back in the mood

lady_j

saw on tv a website that you can login into a swap mixtapes with people. Lost the link, anyone heard of it?

Makaveli

A mixtape isn't really the same thing as a compliation tape though.

I never really made compilations on tapes. To do that you had to sit there and listen to every song and swap stuff around, an absolute pain. Almost all of my compilations are on cd, but with a DAP I don't really use cds anymore so all I do now is make playlists and most of the time I can't be arsed doing that either.