Launch of a new series

The “mixtape” featured heavily in my teenage years and early 20s before the advent of CDs, and was an important part of my listening experience. The mixtape was a homemade compilation of music, recorded onto a cassette tape, usually from a vinyl LP, or the radio. My father had an expensive and rather complicated Bang & Olufsen “music center”, as it was called, on which I laboriously transferred favourite tracks from LPs to cassette tapes which I could listen to in my room when revising, or take with me to university when left home. Mixtapes were also made for and exchanged between friends, to share favourite music, or for boyfriends to send messages of love and other stories…… The mixtape could reveal a lot about one’s personality and taste through the choice of music.

Purists and lovers of vinyl and cassette tapes bemoan the fact that we can’t make “mix tapes” like we used to. Wrong – we can. With services like Spotify, you can create your own personal playlists and “mixes” and share them, so that others may enjoy them too. In this new series,  I’m inviting you to submit your personal “mixtape” and share your music on this site.

• Compile a mixtape playlist using Spotify (or another streaming service which allows you to create a playlist). The choice of music is entirely up to you – classical, jazz, pop, World, country, folk
• Duration: approx 45-60 mins
• Optional: write a short introduction to your mixtape, explaining your choices. Perhaps some pieces are particularly significant or recall a certain person or time in your life. Share your mixtape stories!
• Send a link to your mixtape  Click Here To Email Me