Pate's Tapes: Mix and enjoy cool

Have you ever made a mix tape? Do you know about Pate'sTapes?

Charles Pate has created mix tapes from his beloved, vast music collection and placed them online; you can stream and listen to wonderfully-edited music of many genres. The site supplies hundreds of hours of music to accompany your activities, and, for relaxation and reverie,  the "Sunset" series.

Pate's mix tapes are free, just click and enjoy!

Charles Pate courtesy Friends With Both Arms blog

A great mix tape is like leafing through a stylish friend's closet, where the fabulous and funky are jumbled together in an idiosyncratic way. You are enchanted, edified, transported.

Pate answered the question, "How do you go about crafting a mix?" on the Friends With Both Arms blog:

"There is definitely a musical narrative and it tends to be built around pace and mood changes, which come around every 12 to 15 minutes. So you end up with three or four episodes in 45 minutes, it’s like making a film or designing a magazine– I’ve done both so the disciplines come in handy. The hard piece is getting the end of one track to go with the start of another. 

Even harder than that, is knowing when the record's sound will hit the needle – exactly at the time you release the pause button on the tape deck. I didn’t work on the turntables and mixing units that are available now; the turntable went one way, forward. If you get your timing right Eureka! Well almost…then you have to rewind the tape and see if it worked. Often it didn’t. It’s a serious labour of love."