enter the garden! 🌱

February 8, 2024 10:57 AM

mixtapegarden.com is a collaborative mixtape making site. Make an account, make a mixtape, & then you (or anyone else!) add 7 YouTube videos to it. Once the 7th one is added, it's converted to a single, crossfaded MP3 you can stream or download! (by @tobyalden)
posted by simmering octagon (37 comments total)

clicked at random. This is already much better than my algorithm feed. Thank you.
posted by heyitsgogi at 11:10 AM on February 8

This will get shut down quickly if they're just ripping audio from YouTube.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:59 AM on February 8 [4 favorites]

MUSIC TO SCREAM AT OWN ASS TO

I'm in love
posted by weewooweewoo at 12:31 PM on February 8 [2 favorites]

I love this and, like all fun things, it will soon be destroyed.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:46 PM on February 8 [4 favorites]

what the fuck have you done
posted by elkevelvet at 1:24 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

ahem: MUSIC TO SCREM AT OWN ASS TO
posted by elkevelvet at 2:00 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

While I think "mixtape" should be reserved, in the non-hip-hop sense, for bespoke cassettes manually compiled for a treasured other in order to express the unexpressable, this is still very cool. So I made one.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:27 PM on February 8 [4 favorites]

Lol at "A Mixtape To Send To Your Crush" that's just "I Touch Myself" six times followed by "Closer"

This is ridiculously fun, thank you
posted by phooky at 2:41 PM on February 8 [5 favorites]

I wish I could have controlled the timing of the fades, but that's what DAWs are for if one really wants to go whole-hog. Incidentally, back when I made mixtapes on the regular I thought doing one on my computer (in Cakewalk, circa 1998) with cross-fades and echo and precise timing would make for just the coolest mixtape, ever. But it came out too precise and kind of lifeless. Those little "pfft" sounds made by the tape head pushing and pulling against the tape when pausing, stopping and starting added to the visceral realness of the format. Someone actually pressed that button, in service of creating this collage for you! And then, of course, the sleeves, with hand-written track lists and/or custom-printed artwork. And having to be mindful of just how much time there was left on the tape - no dead space! And also, hooking it up to the VCR so you could add movie quotes. And maybe plugging a Radio Shack microphone into the combo stereo so you could say silly or meaningful or romantic things. And then that tape, because there was only one, being a treasured artifact of the recipient.

God, I miss mixtapes, giving them and getting them. I tried making mix CDs but it wasn't the same.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:41 PM on February 8 [14 favorites]

I made one too.

I miss making mixtapes too. I made many many in the 80s & early 90s. CDs killed that. Tried with Spotify et. al. but it just ain't the same. This ain't either, but it's fun.
posted by chavenet at 2:58 PM on February 8 [4 favorites]

Until a few years ago you could get a $5 crappy MP3 player, load it up, put it in a cassette case and give it to a friend. Mixchips! Unfortunately now that they've killed wired headphones, no one can even pass the aux cord anymore and you'll need to find something with bluetooth. ANNOYING
posted by phooky at 3:05 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

mine

choosing just 7 was hard! i had like 5 alts i had to cut
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:46 PM on February 8 [4 favorites]

Treat it as a Side A and put your other 5 on a new Side B mix. My length of choice when I was making mixtapes was a 90 min cassette. 60 minutes was too confining whereas two hours was more likely to encourage me to put in some filler. But 90 minutes was quite a canvas and conditioned me to think of mixtapes as two part compilations with 8-10 songs in each part.
posted by bl1nk at 4:04 PM on February 8 [8 favorites]

I enjoyed your "The Acceleration of the Age of the Idiot," chavenet.
posted by doctornemo at 4:28 PM on February 8

Ooohhhhh you can download the mixes as well !

Yeah this site is gonna have the lifespan of a mayfly..
posted by Faintdreams at 5:06 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

There was a time when I made mix cds a lot bc my car had a cd player and I had a cd burner so it was the easiest way to get napstered music to play in my car. I made one of these butI'm not happy with it because I didn't realize you couldn't mess with the order afterwards, if the site is around long enough I'll remake it with the right order later.
posted by juv3nal at 5:24 PM on February 8 [1 favorite]

THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO ALL THE CYBERPUNKS WHO FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE AND CORRUPTION EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES
posted by juv3nal at 6:19 PM on February 8 [2 favorites]

Great idea but doomed.
While it lasts here's hylomorphism
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:34 PM on February 8 [3 favorites]

by complete coincidence, earlier today I made myself laugh so hard I started choking with the sudden thought out of nowhere of a Rush mixtape that contains three whole songs
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:15 AM on February 9 [4 favorites]

OK, getting better at sequencing stuff.

milk & cookies side a
milk & cookies side b
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:59 AM on February 9 [2 favorites]

Oh my god this is perfect in time for Valentine’s Day
posted by corb at 7:48 AM on February 9 [1 favorite]

I made one !

"I Care but I want you to think I Don't"

Enjoy.
posted by Faintdreams at 8:01 AM on February 9 [2 favorites]

I'm loving your mixtape, thatwhichfalls! Nice sequencing and variety of songs, and they crossfade well!
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:04 AM on February 9 [1 favorite]

You simultaneously ruined my Friday and made it awesome. Magic!
posted by missmobtown at 10:05 AM on February 9

God I miss making mixtapes / mixed cds.

So of course I had to indulge my obsession with linking songs by someone playing on each side of the fade.

It's all connected (90's Industrial Version)
posted by cirhosis at 1:18 PM on February 9 [3 favorites]

I do so miss opening up a fresh TDK D90 and going to town with my Bic Biro decorating the cover.
posted by poseathon at 3:27 PM on February 9 [3 favorites]

I got into making mixtapes about 5 years ago for events like Wasteland Weekend and Neotropolis.

I used my computer to find the songs (mostly on youtube) and got a used cassette recorder to record them off the 1/8" jack on the computer straight to the deck. You can also grab sound bites from films.
I generate a image on midjourney and then do the sleeve for the cassette in photoshop. I try to duplicate the art style of the era. The cassettes are all from garage sales and craigslist.
posted by boilermonster at 10:52 PM on February 9 [2 favorites]

Here's my mix of essential retro film & TV themes.
posted by mokey at 12:52 AM on February 10 [1 favorite]

Can't hold onto a playlist, turning it in your hands, admiring the neat printing the maker used to label the songs, and thinking of all the effort they put into assembling this work of love.

I make playlists for my partner, who loves receiving them as no one ever made mixtapes for them. Still a work of love but now my handwriting isn't getting better.
posted by bacalao_y_betun at 7:14 AM on February 10 [1 favorite]

God, I miss mixtapes, giving them and getting them. I tried making mix CDs but it wasn't the same.

Ditto, solidified a lot of lifelong friendships with my over-thought C90s which fortuitously featured at least one song that the recipient loved (and vice versa, but I'm easily pleased)

Between the 79 min limit and lack of flipping I feel like I never quite got the hang of mix CDs, except for with my one mate who just loved hearing anything "new". As his mate who also loved hearing anything "new" that worked out great for both of us
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:27 PM on February 10 [1 favorite]

Oh, on actually finally clicking the link I really, really like the collaborative aspect, although I imagine it's still gonna get squished/eaten the same way YT is trying to squish/eat Patreon. I'm a happy fellow, I know (sorry!)
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:38 PM on February 10

Mod note: [btw, this thread has been added to the sidebar and the Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:43 AM on February 11

High school mix tapes were my art. I invested a lot of time in money in an analog mixer, ran through my tapes, my dad's record player, eventually a CD player, and two VCRs. For me to make a mix tape usually took about a week, the first two days to plan the journey, then the next five to curate songs and audio clips, another day to queue up all the tracks, and then I recorded it in usually one go. Afterward I would usually scour magazines for images and colors that matched the theme, and then I'd pull all those pages out of the magazine. I'd then type up my liner notes (songs, time, movie clips, album, artist, and year) and rubber cement a collage of the images across the back of the liner notes. Then I'd carefully mark the folds and use an exacto blade to weaken the now rigid notes into folding.

Transitions for music had to match the tone and mood, I'd pick my change ups carefully, and I'd slide in movie clips every few songs. If I was running a 90 minute tape, I'd have 45 minutes a side timed down - and we'd have gone on a journey...

So I love this... but.. the 7 clips just... just breaks me.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:36 PM on February 11 [3 favorites]

God, the 90-minute, handmade mixtape. I'm proud to say I've made a mixtape for everyone I've ever dated (for the last mixtape, in 2015, I had to buy her a Walkman on ebay, too).
posted by mabelstreet at 6:32 PM on February 12

I've reconstructed a handful of my high school mixtapes (from the original notebook planning pages), but they didn't sound right until I bought a 5-second mp3 of someone pressing eject, flipping the tape, and pressing play. Now I always include it.
posted by mabelstreet at 6:35 PM on February 12

Okay guys I made a Valentine’s Day mixtape for my partner, we will see how it goes over!
posted by corb at 6:38 PM on February 12

Amazingly the site is still up so here's the mix I made for walking this week - The Weather has a Grain
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:27 PM on March 2