This week I'll be mostly making a compilation cd

Burning a cd.
Not sure if I'm doing it right?

I come from a generation of kids who used to sit in their bedrooms on Sunday nights with a radio and a tape recorder, taping the music off the Top 40 on Radio 1. It was quite an exacting science. I think I speak for most of us when I say that it was incredibly important to not have any talking from the DJ in your recording. There was an art to working out when the record was beginning to fade and Tony Blackburn was just about to start wittering on, or Tommy Vance was going to share more wisdom. You'd hit pause at just the right point - or if you were too late, press stop, quick split-second blast of rewind, then record and pause - then wait for the next song.



These tape recording skills came into their own when making compilation tapes. (Some people called them mix tapes. Round our way we called them compilation tapes.) Ok, so you didn't have Tony Blackburn or Tommy Vance to contend with, but still it was a long and time-consuming process. Press record and pause simultaneously, put the needle on the record, watch for the needle to get to that bit of the groove where you know the song starts, release pause, do your 3 minutes or so of recording, listen intently for the full fade out, press pause then stop, then on to the next track.

Kids nowadays have got it easy. Put your mp3s in the computermabob, add them to your playlist, and click on the burn button. Simples.

But the real art of making a compilation is in the track selection and the running order. It's all well and good chucking a dozen tracks together and hitting shuffle, but there's something to be said for the old-fashioned listening to the beginning and end of each song, deciding what goes best with what, maybe putting up-tempo tracks together, or maybe throwing a bit of Iron Maiden into sharp relief by following it with Joyce Sims.

I'm currently putting together Now That's What Paff Calls Music 3. When I say 'currently putting together', what I mean is I've had half a track listing in my head for about two years now, and only in the last two months have I started getting them in any semblance of order. I'm finally happy with the track list, and I think I've sussed the running order.

Of course the sleeve notes are going to take a while to write. If Now That's What Paff Calls Music 2 is anything to go by, if I get cracking now, I might have the whole thing finished by Christmas.