Tim

Mixing is total craft, from records to baking, mixing is simply craft.

You can learn how to count beats

You can learn what texture dough should be before rolling

Mixing is as craft as it gets.

The art for sure is engaging an emotional response, but this is not a new development and surely has always been there. I am unsure, but I believe we are both discussing the same idea, holding the same opinion, but from completely different ends. I feel you are evaluating this from more of a radio DJ perspective and myself as the sonic continuum of meticulously woven streams of audio; and this clearly relates to our lives and fields of experience.

I despise the quiet within a listening experience, the “breath” disengages my listening and again my brain is pondering, and therefore: not listening. Can you not view this mix tape as a sonic continuum? Trevor Wishart discusses notions of planes of sound, of these planes becoming webs or meshes that our brain can appreciate, the spatial movements, the flow (literally) like waves. Where is extreme quiet in all of this? The wave “breathes”, but it is not quiet – it is a gesture, a shape, a morphology.

The track ordering is curation, not mixing, the ordering is the set, the tape, the art. Mixing is combining of two (or more) things, the multiplication, the crossfade.

In your method songs do not “siege” or “mutate” into each other, they simply see each other from a distance before they are gone, they never touch or attempt to make contact, they do not combine, they just see the other across a plane of quiet before they disappear.

Surely you would know me well enough by now to know I am not only talking about beats.

None of this is or ever has been a mix

Neil

Neil

Nothing is ever left that long.  And few posts result in me thinking about our collaboration, namely how long it takes me to put my finger out of my arse, or how long it takes you to reply as your brain races at the speed of light.

So are you saying a ‘good mix’ is defined by paced rhythm, builds, tempo and changes?  Is this the ‘craft’ at work?   Do you think the art of the mix tape has evolved, embracing ‘emotional response’ over time?

To answer your question.  No, I do not liken moments of silence to periods of waiting.  To me the silence, or at the least ‘extreme quietness’  is only about waiting when in the doctor’s waiting room, the eventuality of a knock at the door, or at the worst, doomsday.  To me the silence in a mix tape IS a form of mix.  A breath between a song, a period of reflection, or the tension before a new track.  Maybe what I am trying to say is that the order, or sequence of the tracks is the real mix, before the fun of the actual fade in/fade out occurs.  I never really think too hard about how the songs siege into each other.

Speaking of which, I like how you have highlighted my use of the word ’siege’.  Maybe I don’t really mean that.   I’m moving towards ‘mutate’.  But that will probably have changed before the next post.

Tim

Tim

I know you said to not reply immediately, and I haven’t, but I didn’t leave it very long.

A ‘good mix’ would adhere to the conventions of traditional mixing, and I assume these conventions originate from dance (music) culture. There needs to be a constant continuum of similarly paced rhythms in order to keep listeners dancing, or of course carefully blended builds and tempo changes. Even within the realms of the DJ, there is nothing left to silence; any fades or moments of quiet are filled with speech, conversation and/or spot sound effects.

There should never be any silence no matter what forms of music, or audio, you are mixing, but this doesn’t mean that there can’t be moments of quiet.

In the world there is never silence. You cannot ‘mix’ nothing.

I am interested in your use of the word “siege” in: “how one track sieges into another?”

Siege is like battle, but mixing is about harmoniously weaving together, there has been little room (so far) for dissonance in mixing.

But think about it: is there ever room for dissonance amongst mixing?

Weird tasting food? Bizarre smelling perfume? Paint?

Here’s questioning consonance.

Do you wish to liken moments of silence to periods of waiting?

Neil

Neil,

I’m playing devil’s advocate here, so go with me on this one.  I’m intrigued by why there should be no silence between tracks in ‘good mixes’.  What is taboo in this respect?  Is the ‘mix’ in mix tape about the craft of how one track sieges into another?  Or is how the listener is taken on a journey, or how an emotional response is communicated the ‘mix’.  In my mind a period of silence could be part of the mix, the stream of consciousness, the emotional resonance as equally as the two tracks blending into each other.

Tim

Tim

I agree that it may be truly unnessary to establish a rule for mixing the text, but I feel it is essential that we do attempt to mix the text. And I hope you are attempting this. Like the mixing, as per Paul D. Miller, pulling together the disparate streams of our consciouness and combining them for a couple of sentences would add a really nice flow/continuum.

To textulate?

I like blank space in books, I feel we should look for canons of how to lay out text, immediately I can think of John Cage’s collection of writings: “Silence: lectures and other writings” and my personal favourite “Nova Express” by William Borroughs.

Nova Express

REMEMBER:

1. As in all good mixes – there should be no silence between the tracks.
2. We are not writing a blog, this is the place to discuss ideas, or pose questions, but you must still be writing the text in secret.

I am glad that you are on board.

Neil