I was so inspired by the What CD Are You Listening to Now? Redux thread that I made what I will refer to as the Swiddles’ Kickass Mix Tape. However, on both sides of the tape I have about 1m:20s worth of nothing. Too short to put a whole song, and nothing pisses me off more than half a song. I don’t think this question was addressed in * High Fidelity *, which is a guide on how to make a proper mix tape, so I’m a bit lost. Any secrets? Any thoughts on the art of mix tapes in general?
A friend made a tape for me several years ago and he had about 50 seconds to fill on the end of side A, so he used the first 50 seconds of Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed. MMM is a double album from the early 70s, 1 hour, 1 minute and 4 seconds of feedback. Rumor is that Reed made it to get out of his record contract. The first 50 seconds is more than enough. Side B of the tape began with my friend, and another friend, doing an a cappella cover of the first 50 seconds of Metal Machine Music. In stereo. Indescribable.
I have a CD compilation/soundtrack from an old political satire TV show called That Was The Week That Was. There’s a routine on it where they introduce all the democratic presidential candidates as if they were birds in a naturalists field guide. And each one has it’s own distictive call, “Veep. Veep. Veep.” “Need a quorom.” “Vietnam okay. Vietnam okay.” I just strung the calls together at random to fill up about 30 seconds, and if I’d had a mixer I would have tried to layer it over some jungle sound effects or something.
The last minute of a mix tape is like a sig quote. Randomness reigns supreme.
I’ve found that “Her Majesty” by the Beatles at the end of “Abbey Road” is an excellent choice. It’s only about thirty seconds long.
Hama -
I had a friend that always put that song on the end of tapes. He was a Beatles fan too.
As for me…I have a collection of Muppet songs and ld TV theme songs. Works nicely to fill in those blank spots. Plus a tape of my two friends doing a radio show where they were drunk. That one works well too.
Well, when I used to make mix tapes, I’d usually only have about 20 seconds left per side at most. I’d write down the length of each song, measure the times for each side and work the songs out so they were very very close to 45 min. Thank God I don’t need to worry about it…Mix CDs are so much nicer. 
Jman
There’s a song on the Smashing Pumpkins Adore cd at the end that’s only 17 seconds long. I use that.
Sometimes I take a clip from a song that would indicate that the tape is over (“It’s Over”, “The Last Song”, “Farewell and Goodbye”, you get the picture)
Or, if I have a microphone, I’ll sing myself. I credit myself to being an excellent singer so I can always sing something goofy or nice, whatever mood the tape is, or I can talk and say something to whoever will get the tape.
My two cents. :^)
There’s an instrumental Dylan song about that long called “Suze” that can be found in his bootleg series albums. about a minute into it, you hear him cough, go on and play for a few more seconds, and then:
Bob: That’s the end. Back, back before I coughed. It fades out.
Producer: I’ll note here, “fade at cough.”
Fits just about anywhere.
[hijack]
The question is, though, what do you put at the end of a cassette dub of Metal Machine Music? I used to listen to this record all the time in my first year of university - it seemed to fit my mood well - at the time, it was dismissed as a hoax and a joke, while Reed countered that it contained classical music themes overlaid amongst the feedback. Reed was full of shit, of course: for one thing, NONE of the sides are 16:01 - that was supposedly the average length for an LP side, and for another, the technical information on the back was just swiped from an electronics magazine. His liner notes are awesome though.
But the strange thing is, I saw Sonic Youth about a year and a half ago, and parts of their show sounded just like MMM for long periods - sometimes about 5 minutes. Maybe it really was just ahead of it’s time.
[/end hijack]
For the OP, there’s a Napalm Death song called ‘You Suffer’ that goes for 3/4 of a second - you could just program this to repeat 200 times (Guaranteed to crack you up!)
HenrySpencer
Isn’t there a similar little snippet of noise at the tail end of “Sgt. Pepper”? I seem to remember there’s a loop of a voice intoning “…any other way, any other way, any other way, any other way…” for about 7 seconds or so.
I don’t usually make mix tape. My brother makes them for me and he always uses TV theme songs. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to “Family Feud”, “What’s Happening” and “The Jeffersons” among others. It’s a neat idea and the songs are always short enough to be filler at the end of the tapes.
I have a muppets/sesame street tape so I usually put “C is for Cookie” or “Rubber Duckie” in those last seconds.
…and she references High Fidelity to boot…
My good friend teases me that I should get royalties from that movie, due to character similarities.
Ya gotta make sure the last track leaves on as good a track as the first. Otherwise it’s like a great party that ends poorly.
I’ve put snippets from movies at the end. WAV files and what-not. A lot of it depends on the intended recipient. Or where YOU plan on listening to it. Is it gonna be a good driving mix, or a work out tape? For a SO or an ex-SO? Lots of things to consider.
My suggestions for a good short track: Hmmm… There’s “Worms” (last track on the Pogues’ If I Should Fall From Grace With God.
"The worms crawl in
and the worms crawl out.
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin.
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout.
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out.
Be merry my friends, be merry…
(Sung in a deep Grinch-like voice)
Always a happy little ditty to end a mix.
Are you familiar with Meryn Cadell? Spoken word/ musician. Has any number of short tunes that are hillarious/tragic. “Job Application”- 1:24or “Flight Attendant”-1:22 for instance.
If you wanna swing it a little geeky, theres always the Beat Farmers-“Happy Boy”-1:17 (a Dr. Demento Fav.) Or MST3k has some short bits that are pretty funny. Master Ninja Theme Song for instance at 1:13
They Might Be Giants has a great little short ditty caled Wake Up Call (I think) thats about a minute long.
Although, again, it all depends on the intention of the mix. If you left the tape on a really great song, don’t deminish it with a lesser one just to fill space.
Best 'o luck.
-seriousart
I use Winamp software on mp3 files and it calculates the times for me.
Random snippets from the They Might Be Giants song “Fingertips.” As a sidenote, playing the Apollo 17 album on random shuffle is awesome…because “Fingertips” is actually something like 30-40 very short sound/music clips, so you’ll hear a great song, then this wail of “Mysteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerious whispers…mysteeeeeeeeeeerious whispers!” Freaked me out the first time I did it.
Speaking of TMBG, I have often used “Minimum Wage” to fill in that last little bit of a mix tape.
Love that song . . . “minimum waaaaaaaage hiyaaaaaaah !”
My recommendation would be to either just leave it blank, perhaps record a brief personal message to the person whom you are recording for, or find a piece of music you enjoy and fade in and out during one of the better parts. I mentioned in another Swiddles thread that I was in training to be my radio stations Music Director. In essence I have to make a 24 hour mix tape every day ! What a kick-ass job.
Carry on . . .
- NM
The MD at the station I worked at had a TV in his office that was on all day. He just programmed, look calls from record label guys who kissed his shiney white ass, and screamed at ESPN. Then, once a day, he’d go on air for four hours and complain at great lengths about Celine Dion. Nice gig. Congrats, NM!
Alright, seriousart. You gotta stop it. You’re freakin’ me out, man. I walked out of High Fidelity with the intention of finding a lawyer to sue. The bastards ripped off my life AND changed my gender to boot! The nerve! Any movie that makes references to Belle and Sebastian and Stiff Little Fingers is OK with me. (raise your hand if you were the only one laughing at the Green Day/Fingers reference in the entire theater…)
Now, back to the tape. It isn’t for anyone in particular, I just felt the need to flex my mix tape abilities. And drumroll please…I have decided to put either some King Missle on the end (you may know them from a little ditty called Detachable Penis,) they have a piece on one of their albums that fades in and out. I can use that. Or I will put some wav files on if I can figure out how to get a clean sound. (can I attach a line from my computer to the mic imput on my stereo?) But TMBG is next up if either of those fail, I can’t believe I didn’t think of them.
Listened to my Kickass Mix tape in the car, and it is certifiably Kick-aaaaaaass. With a little tweaking, it will be SuperDuper Kickass. Thanks for all the suggestions!
I can answer that. I knew someone who put MMM onto a 90 minute tape. He put album sides 1, 2 and 3 on side A of the tape, then he put side 4 on side B and let the infinity groove run until the tape ran out.
I don’t think he stayed in the room while this was happening.
Yow, that is just not good at all.
I typically head to the newsgroups for sounds- alt.binaries.sounds.tv-themes is a pretty good one as is alt.binaries.sounds.mps.video-games. I’ve got a “xenical” snippet from one newsgroup (“You may experience increased bowel movements and an inability to control them…”) that I’ve used a lot.
For PC to stereo taping I picked up an adapter thingy from radio shack and a cord to connect the two for like 10 bucks.
There may be a better way, but I ran a line out my headphones jack into the A/V input on the back of my stereo. Sounded pretty good.