Blank cassette tapes are art in themselves
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
Blank cassette tapes are art in themselves. For decades these tapes were used to record and compile number of songs and to capture and retain some special moments. People gave these as a kind of gifts to others. Blank Tapes were also passed among friends as a way of sharing music. These tapes would be constantly moving around the circles from friend to friend as music tastes continue to spread.
I would listen to the radio for hours to hear my favorite song. This was back in the days before mp3’s. I would capture those moments on blank cassette tapes, if I was really lucky. However, those tapes weren’t perfect and there were a lot of hits and misses; I would often record the DJ’s small talk and commercials while trying to create the perfect mix tape.
Some people even stretch their artistic abilities to the blank cassette labels. Those can be decorated with markers and stickers. Quite often, when I blank cassette tape was a gift a creative name was made up and decorated appropriately. This really was an art form in and of itself. It was not just about the music it held, it was also about the presentation.
Audio recording technology has cntinued to advance along with the rest of society. Audio cassette tapes have been replaced by CDs and Audio DVDs. Recording has been improved with the new system of digital audio tape. Mixes have gotten steadily easier with the MP3 format. Now, you can download any song for your computer, burn it onto a compact disc in minutes, and even produce a customized CD label for your very own. Amazing, isn’t it?
Many of us still hold that no later invention has improved upon the old blank cassette tapes. There are now online groups where people discuss, buy, sell, and trade cassette mixes. The goal is to increase one’s knowledge of the music of yesterday and today, and it’s a great deal of fun besides. Exposure to different music from different places and times is such a wonderful feeling.
Wherever technology will take us, we’ll never forget the cassette tapes and the mark they left in our society. It converted all of us into music mixers and permitted creativity to flow. And we continued this into the new CD and mp3 world, but it’s not such fun any more as with those tape mixes.
Blank cassette tapes are art in themselves. For decades these tapes were used to record and compile number of songs and to capture and retain some special moments. Some even extend their creative impulses to blank cassette labels, which you can decorate with stickers or marker pens. If a audio cassette tape is intended as a gift, it’s common for an imaginative name to be thought up, and the tape to be decorated to match. A system of digital audio tape is now also available that provides greatly improved recording quality.