Mixtape Redux

Intro: Mixtape Redux

As a teenager, in the gone all-analog era, I spent hours and hours making mixtapes. It went like this:

If you like somebody, make and give this person a mixtape. If you want to show your rebellion and test your parents, make yourself some mixtapes and manage to have them played in the car. All the time.

USB flash drives, today, are as handy as cassettes almost were yesterday.

A few years ago, I saw a cardboard mixtape-shaped USB drive case there, and found the USB idea quite neat. But I wanted something more, well, authentic.

And very recently, I wanted to share music with a person I like.

The above intro picture tells it all, you now have the whole concept. Really want more details? read on...

STEP 1: Needed Stuff

Materials:

• A compact cassette. A model assembled with screw, not heat staking. So that you can open it.
• A cassette box.
• A cheap USB flash drive, with a physical size that can fit into the cassette, as described in the next step. The keyring hole position should be placed so as to ease the placement of the pivot, if possible using one of the cassette's small holes (see step 4).
• You will also need one small (M2) screw, and two nuts.

Tools:

• Screwdriver
• Cutter or X-Acto knife
• File
• Drill press (or Dremel) to adjust the USB flash drive
• Flat pliers

STEP 2: Gut the Cassette

Open the cassette. Keep only the shell halves, and the screws.

Remove some inner ribs, carefully enough to not damage the outer sides of the shell:

• Mark fracture lines with the X-Acto
• Fold and tear off the ribs, with flat pliers
• Remove unwanted remains with a file, until it has room for the USB flash drive to move quite freely

STEP 3: Adjust the USB Flash Drive

If needed, enlarge the keychain hole, so that the screw can cross it.

With a large drill bit, carefully make room for the nuts.

STEP 4: Add a Pivot

Cut and file the free end of the screw to the proper length:

• long enough to enter into the other shell half's hole,
• not too long, so that it won't scratch the cassette box.

STEP 5: Remount the Cassette, Adjust the Box

Close the cassette, and tighten its screws.

Due to some slight excess space taken by the USB flash drive, I had to remove some ribs molded into the box, so that the box and cassette won't grip.

Basically, we're done. All the rest is obvious (copy songs into flash drive, make a label).

In the old days, we spent hours making nice labels, minimizing the gaps between songs, fading song ends, etc., making mixtapes true works of art. We now want to apply a similar (digital) perfectionism, so please read on...

STEP 6: Create the Playlist, Export and Order the Songs

The objective is simple

1. Make a playlist
2. Export it as MP3 files, on the computer
3. Copy the MP3 files onto the USB flash drive

It seems easy, but there are some unexpected pitfalls... Here are some tips.

Possibilities

There are many many ways of creating MP3 mixes these days. Usually you use your computer's music player; most players offer export features. Although not an Apple fan-boy, I'm using iTunes.

Tips

DRM:

I purchased very few songs on iTunes, protected by DRM. I soon realized it sucks (cannot play MY purchased music on MY other computers). I solved this by burning them (as WAV) to a CD (a CD-RW is great for that) and re-importing them.

MP3 export:

Given the capacity of the USB flash drive and the number of songs you want, lossless format will take too much space, so MP3 is the way to go. The quality loss (if you can notice it) shall remind us that, in the cassettes era, "lossless" was hopeless.

I didn't quickly find a player able to export in other formats, and it was a bit late at night to play around with the command line (mplayer/gstreamer), so I found TuneClone which works great together with iTunes. TuneClone pretends to be a CD writer; it intercepts track writings from iTunes, converts them and orders them into a directory of your choice.

Songs ordering:

I wanted the songs to be playable sequentially (like a cassette) to match the playlist, and importable hierarchically, with artist and album names. So I exported the songs twice:

- all songs in one directory, each song prefixed by a sequence number;
- in a hierarchy by artist / album / song.

File names:

Also some players may put "dangerous" characters (from the album/song names) into directory or file names, like quotes, column, semi-column, parenthesis brackets,... It's usually a good idea to remove these characters.

They may also (especially for classical music) produce extremely long names (containing the composer name, conductor, orchestra, soloists, album, movement, tempo, etc.). It's a good idea to shorten them and keep only the essential information.

STEP 7: Create the Label

Print a cover label with the playlist (the sequential version, if you include the two orderings, as described in the previous step).

If you have more time than I just had, combine the list with a nice cover artwork.

Yesterday: done manually, or with a typewriter, or with an Amiga + matrix printer... you name it. Today: done with e.g. OpenOffice and a laser printer.

STEP 8: Create a Booklet

Wanting to add some more info about the songs, I created a booklet.

To make sure the album artworks were here, I used CoverScout to import them into iTunes, prior to making screenshots.

I made screenshots of the playlist (showing songs with album artwork), displaying the wanted info, then imported the screenshots into a drawing software (e.g. OpenOffice draw), and overlaid some text containing a personal note for each song.

Because a printed version would not fit into the cassette box, I made a PDF file that I copied into the USB flash drive.

STEP 9: Done!

Final touch: add a hand-written label on the cassette. Only side A is used ;-)

Admire your work, and give it to your friend!

Look for the reaction. "Oh, a tape! Mmh... where is my Walkman?"

Comments

[TheRealDutchOwner]

Kinda bad of you to use such a high quality tape though. There's lots of garbage quality tapes, and you went with a MA-X...

[laxap]

Kinda amazing that people can distinguish those tapes nowadays... ;-)

Now that I have no more cassette player, what (else) should I do with the tape?

[spyromaster]

You can keep the tape reels in to make it look more realistic.

[deathnotx101]

That's what I did! Just winded it up to the appropriate out of the way portion, get a tooth pick with a speck of glue, and BAM!

[deathnotx101]

Gave one to my friend, their Walkman and ticket, she said,"This is pretty kool; I might as well kick it." :) No, not really! Fresh Prince was my favorite. It's really weird to be 15 and nostalgic.

[FredLB]

great !

[lumpee]

Now,what to do with those old 8tracks. :) Am I giving my age away?

[zack247]

haha i like it! when i was a lot younger cassette tapes were still all the rage, (this was either before or just after cd players stepped onto the scene, 1999-ish) and i had a old cassette stereo, i still have the mixtapes from back then, but my taste in music haas certainly changed since then..

as i was reading your walkman comment i got an idea for a possible version 2:
have the usb plug capable of plugging into a walkman modified to have a usb connection inside for the flash tape, then give that to your friend as well, in my opinion, it would add that extra little touch to the perfect gift.

the one thing i can still remember about tapes though, there was no skipping when you hit a bump in the road...

[imark77]

and no scratches that caused half the music not to play or whatnot.
And don't forget rewritable with no DRM. if you didn't like the band, a strong magnet and it was all over.

[2tnt]

Good project! Better idea!

I will make same project for me :D

Thanks for sharing!

[ramhardikar]

Good one!

[ChrysN]

So clever! Great idea.

[annahowardshaw]

Is it weird to have a crush on an Instructable?

[janw]

Not at all!

[vishalapr]

I agree!

[ATTILAtheHUNgry]

awesome.

[copilarim]

I'd love such a present!! Great idea:)!

[sunshiine]

Thanks for sharing your hard work! Nice ible!

[noahh]

This looks great! I often create mix CDs for gifts, I think I'll give this a try next time.

[NostalgicStone]

Very clever!