Mixing for a Good Time

moliminous (mo-LIM-in-uhs) adjective

Massive; laborious.

I finally finished a mix CD I'm giving to my soon-to-be-married friend. Who knows how long I actually spent on it; I tend to get absorbed in mixing. The whole process totally consumes me when I finally sit down to do the tracking. Usually it pieces itself together over the course of about a week, or, when the schedule permits, I might devote an entire afternoon or evening. Regardless, I spend the majority of time scrolling through songs, testing transitions, teasing out the tone, trying to find the right fit for whatever occasion or person inspired me in the first place. Sometimes I'll listen to an entire album by an artist and ultimately decide against its inclusion. My mind's musical conception of the subject matter tends to eek out slowly as I choose a couple hours worth of songs, then delete and rearrange...

I rarely set out to make mixes for myself, but, thanks to modern technology, I get to keep each one on my computer and, yes, I do play them. Probably more than whoever receives them, really. At least, that's how I imagine it now, in the age dominated by mp3 players and iShuffles and thirty-second samples, a clunky CD with a compiled set of songs that don't magically appear when inserted into a computer simply doesn't fit modern specifications.

Not that I truly consider myself a modern man.