Packing your bags for Spring Break? Loading up the car with suitcases, coolers full of beverages and your digital camera to capture all your wild antics while driving hours upon hours south to hit the beach and get a tan that doesn’t cost you $12 in some small little booth? Well, don’t forget the most important thing to bring along for that long car ride. No, not a map. No, not your required reading for your class that’s due the Monday you get back. The most important element of any road trip is the music. While albums can become boring after a certain amount of time, making a mix CD is a guaranteed way to travel along those boring interstates.

So today, kids, we are going to talk about how to make the “perfect mix CD.” In a way, this is an art form in and of itself. It takes time, precision, the right tracks and a little bit of love. Before we do that though, I would like to start with a quote from one of my favorite movies, “High Fidelity.”

“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway … I’ve started to make a tape … in my head … for Laura. Full of stuff she likes. Full of stuff that makes her happy. For the first time I can sort of see how that is done.” – Rob, “High Fidelity”

Before we dive into this, I’d like to backtrack to the ‘80s and mix tapes, if you will. These days, I wish I could make mix tapes for all my friends. There is something about mix tapes that just stands out so much more than a mix CD. A mix tape takes time. Lots of time. You can edit, rewind, redo; you can even start over if you screw up big time. The fact that you need to sit down and actually listen to the song as it records onto the tape was the glory part of the process. There are days when I wish I had a cassette deck readily available and all the hookups to produce mix tapes. I wish more people still had cassette decks in their cars so they could actually listen to a mix tape. If I had a cassette right now, I would have to dig through all my old boxes and find my old-school cassette Walkman to play it.

When it comes time to make a mix CD for someone, I ask myself: Why am I making this for this person? Is this a road trip mix? Is this a break-up CD (either I broke up with someone or I am sending it to someone who just broke up with someone)? Is this a happy/sad/depressing mix? Is this a call for help mix? Once you figure that out, you can basically figure out what songs you want on it and go from there.

One of the most important parts of making a successful mix CD is the order of the tracks. You always, always, open with power. You need to grab the listener’s attention right away or else you’re screwed. No slow stuff as an opener (I have opened a CD with a slow song only once and that was because the situation called for it. A rarity, I know). Now that you have opened with power, keep the tempo going for about three or four tracks, and then, if you feel necessary, slow it down. Don’t let it get too slow. The maximum amount of slow songs in a row is three. No more than that or else it gets to be a downer CD. You need to keep alternating the tempo throughout the mix as well. Too fast and the listener may get lost – too slow and things could get weird. Closing the mix is the key. I’ve closed on both fast and slow songs, but I find that mid-tempo songs work best.

Once I place an artist or band in the mix, that’s it. That is all they get. One song. I never repeat an artist in a mix CD. Something about putting three tracks from the same artist in a mix just doesn’t sit right, no matter how far they are spaced out among the mix.

The fact that we are able to fill a 74- or 79-minute CD with songs is pretty amazing. That gives you over an hour to convey a message (if needed), and let the listener hear quality songs by quality artists. Seventy-four minutes is about 18 to 22 songs, which isn’t too shabby. I tend to throw in a jam song as well, something usually over seven or eight minutes. I have lots of these, so I put them to good use.

Artwork on the CD itself is up to the creator. I tend to use a Sharpie (usually black, though I have several colors) and just make up a title on the spot. I never put song titles or artist names on the CD, because if the listener wants to know who it is or what song is it, they will ask.

So there you go. Start cranking out CDs from that burner of yours and get on the road. Don’t forget bail money and ladies and stay away from those “Girls Gone Wild” cameras. Nothing good. can ever come from a man offering beads for full frontal nudity.