The Space Between

Nick Hornby said that there's a trick to making a truly great mix-tape. He's right, of course, but it doesn't lie entirely in the selection of the songs, nor in the pacing of each one compared to the songs that precede and follow each. No, it's in the way each song transitions into the next.

In Tibetan Buddhism, they have a word: bardo. It means "between states", and refers to the moment between living and dying, waking and sleeping, breathing in and breathing out. Any instant between two states can be a bardo, no matter how big or small, lengthy or temporary. These moments are sacred because, if we can see them and seize them, they are the opportunities to choose a new direction or to commit to continuing on a course of action.

The bardos between songs on a mix tape carry a similar weight, the right or wrong choice of action can make a huge difference to the final product.

For our wedding, Jen and I made a handful of mix CDs, without paying attention to the order of the songs since we just put them on shuffle. Every fall we put together another CD of songs that we'd have to think about putting on our wedding mix if we were getting married again. And each year we think we put together a pretty good bunch of songs.

It's not choosing the songs that's the tough part - usually we come up with 35-40 songs that we cut down to 19-22 by the time our anniversary comes around. Once we get about half of them picked out we begin the cull, and this is when it gets tricky, because you have to start paying attention to the mood of the gaps between the songs.

The thing is this: you have to know, more or less, what you want the finished product to sound like. So if you're in love with the new Snow Patrol and you absolutely have to have it on the CD, chances are you're not going to have Baker Street on there, too. At least not next to each other.

Mix CDs are a journey, and you want the journey to be smooth. You're not likely to encounter a beautiful park right next to an industrial area, or a honky-tonk bar in the middle of a high-end residential area. If you want to get to the honky-tonk bar you have to go through the right neighborhoods.

Our latest CD has John Lennon, Counting Crows, The (English) Beat, Van Morrison, and Gomez among others (right now). You can see that going from girlshapedlovedrug by Gomez to Watching the Wheels isn't going to run properly, so we need at least one track between them. That's the first trick. The second is that you have to be prepared to cut a truly great track if it doesn't work with the other songs. In the last two years we've cut, among others, Black-Eyed Peas "Mas Que Nada", "Barely Breathing" by Duncan Sheik and Raconteurs "Steady As She Goes".

So you make your list and keep moulding it and cutting it until what's left on the disk is, as Bono would say, all that you can't leave behind.