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Help me with the nuts and bolts of making a "mixtape"

Muse

Muse

Lifer
I'm not new to making a musical mix, I'm still a college radio DJ, have done it for over 30 pretty much straight years. I've done around 1400 average ~3 hour shows. But I've never made a "mixtape."

My sister's having a big party tomorrow and she asked me to make a mixtape for it and I said "yes." I have time today.

What I have to work with:

1. Over 300 CDs
2. Recordings of my radio shows. I have recorded more than 1/2 of these, either in MP3 format in recent years or cassette tapes from before ~2002.

My sister says she can pipe music from various devices including their Mac computers, CD player, etc.

I'm thinking of bringing one of my portable MP3 players and just have a bunch of MP3s, all tagged with the same album name and set the device to play everything in the album, and maybe repeat if there's not enough material to last through the party. I'd name each MP3 so that they'd play in a certain sequence. For instance:

1a-track.title
1b-track.title
1c-track.title
etc.
1z-track.title
...
2a-track.title
2b-track.title
etc.

So, my challenge (assuming I do things this way), is creating the MP3s.

I have a utility I can use to chop songs out of my ~3 hour MP3s. It's hands on, I can do it, I've done this a lot of times to provide myself or someone else with an MP3 of a song I played during one of my radio shows.

Creating an MP3 from one of my CDs is another matter. Is there a way I can make an MP3 from a CD track that doesn't require me to sit at the computer and play the track in real time? Right now, the only method I can think of is to turn on my Total Recorder Standard Edition software and press record and play the track in the computer's CD player in real time. Thanks for the help and suggestions.
 
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You can burn MP3's from a CD with Microsoft Media Player. You just queue it up and it will burn each track one by one. You don't need to babysit it. If it's a good CD, it will even copy the track name/info as well. If not, that can be added after the fact.
 
Fritzo said:
You can burn MP3's from a CD with Microsoft Media Player. You just queue it up and it will burn each track one by one. You don't need to babysit it. If it's a good CD, it will even copy the track name/info as well. If not, that can be added after the fact.
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Nice. I'll give that a try. I suppose this Windows 7 machine's Media Player would do it? 😕

By "good CD" I assume you mean that it has CD Text employed. I have several 301 CD players that support CD Text and if I have a CD without CD Text I always make a copy that does have it. 😎
 
Well, I put a CD in the optical drive of this machine and launched Media Player. It wouldn't play it without my configuring MP. It had dozens of file types checked for defaults and wouldn't let me uncheck any of them!!! I went along and played a track, presumably "rip"ing it, I could see nothing but a rip button. At the end of the first track I close MP. Hmm. This isn't nice. I use Winamp normally, maybe VLC at time for media. I see online tutorial for ripping CD to MP3 using Winamp, I'm going to look at that. Don't know if my ancient version of Winamp supports this, will see, I guess.

Meantime, I guess I want to change all those file type associations that MP has put in its pocket, don't know how... 😕
 
I figured out how to rip CDs to MP3s using Windows Media Player, the version included in my Win7 install (can't figure out what version it is...). It works fine.

I tried doing this with Winamp 5.66 and damn thing insists I buy the pro version to rip to MP3, it does MP4s free. Fuck that. I uninstalled it and reinstalled my old 2.81 version. Will use WMP to rip my CDs to MP3s. You know, I've done this stuff before, don't remember how, I've created a lot of MP3s from my CDs, don't remember if I had to do it in real time, though.

You can configure WMP to automatically rip your CD when you insert it in your optical drive. Love that!
 
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If you've already got them ripped. Just create a playlist in WMP. Sync the playlist to your mp3 player and voila. Play the playlist and it'll play in the order in which you put them on the playlist or you can use the "random" option. Just make sure your sister has a cable that you can connect from the mp3 player to whatever audio device she has.
 
emperus said:
If you've already got them ripped. Just create a playlist in WMP. Sync the playlist to your mp3 player and voila. Play the playlist and it'll play in the order in which you put them on the playlist or you can use the "random" option. Just make sure your sister has a cable that you can connect from the mp3 player to whatever audio device she has.
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I just talked to my sister this morning. I was going to bring a cable, mini headphone jack on one end, L/R RCA connectors on the other. She tells me they don't have a stereo, can't accommodate that. They figure to connect their Mac to their TV and play the sound through the TV. So she figures I can bring the files on a flash drive, plug that into their Mac and play the MP3s off that. I said I can't vouch for the Mac playing the files in the order that my MP3 player would play them, she said she's OK with that. I figure my naming system (see the OP) would play in that order with the Mac. I don't know that for a fact. 😕
Homerboy said:
...this 2015, right?
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If you say so.
 
Turn on your 1s and 2s and start playing your first track.

Then you get your second track on the other deck and use your headphones to cue it up to the first beat.

Start the second track, first beat, on a 1-beat of the song currently playing.

Listen to both songs and adjust the speed of your second turntable to synchronize the beats together.

Once they are synced to the same tempo, re-start the second track at some point as the end of the first track approaches. Use the cross-fader, channel faders and channel EQs to fade the first song out as you fade the next song in.

Once you've fully cross-faded to the new track, repeat this process with a new record where the first one finished, etc etc.
 
Flame-cliparti1-fire-clip-art.jpg
 
spotify or apple music + load all the songs into a playlist in the order that you want + play = done
 
Can't you just rip the tracks you want with something like WMP or itunes and then dump the files onto a flash drive? All ripping software I know of does it's thing way faster than real time, and they can pretty much all be set to encode files into mp3 format.
 
Muse said:
I just talked to my sister this morning. I was going to bring a cable, mini headphone jack on one end, L/R RCA connectors on the other. She tells me they don't have a stereo, can't accommodate that. They figure to connect their Mac to their TV and play the sound through the TV. So she figures I can bring the files on a flash drive, plug that into their Mac and play the MP3s off that. I said I can't vouch for the Mac playing the files in the order that my MP3 player would play them, she said she's OK with that. I figure my naming system (see the OP) would play in that order with the Mac. I don't know that for a fact. 😕If you say so.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't rename the songs for that purpose. It's more work and easier for future use to keep them as is.

There has to be an easy way to import a playlist into a Mac. I'm sure it's a problem someone has faced before.

Or, see if your sister has an AV input into her TV. You could just use a cable out of ur headphone jack into the L/R port of the TV.
 
Why not just find a mix on Youtube you like? Unsure what genre you are going with but there are some great DJ's that put together 1-3hr long mixes.


I'd also suggest buying a 1-day premium pass to Pandora and seeding a station with a few of your favorite artists and letting it go. 99-cents and commercial free.
 
Best thing ever is stereos with dual tape decks. Make sure it has AM/FM radio too as you can record songs off the radio as well as other tapes. Once you are done with your mix tape you can then make copies and sell them.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Best thing ever is stereos with dual tape decks. Make sure it has AM/FM radio too as you can record songs off the radio as well as other tapes. Once you are done with your mix tape you can then make copies and sell them.
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Gramophone recorder noob.
 
I've always discovered that when your music collection was not massive it was easier to make a mix tape/cd. The moment your collection becomes astronomical it then becomes a nightmare to try to make just the right mix.
 
For a proper mixtape you will need the following:

Cassette Recorder with microphone
Blank cassettes - Is it live or Memorex?
Record Player or Radio (source)

So first you put the tape in the recorder. Fast forward one second to get past the clear part of the tape. If you fail to do this the first song will be cut off at the beginning.

Then put the microphone right up to the speaker and start recording! Remember to pause the recording while you put the next record on. Also if your mixtape is for your chick you can talk to her while its recording "this song's for yooooouuu baby".

Good luck!
 
futurefields said:
cleverly disguised brag thread

im a radio dj!

got so many cds!

youll get no help from me OP
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hey, who needs you! Have a great life but don't crap on my threads in the future, thank you very much. :\

Big thanks and :thumbsup: to everyone who has contributed, and special thanks to Fritzo for his pointing out Windows Media Player's CD-->MP3 ripping functionality, it was fantastically helpful.

Am real busy at the moment but in a while I'll report on how it went, etc.
 
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