Yes, I know CD burners exist. Yes, I know about MiniDisc. Yes, I have heard of MP3s and I have heard what they sound like coming out of a computer speaker. A CD you burned in eleven minutes is a floppy disk with songs on it. A mixtape is ninety minutes of your actual life, spent sitting on the floor next to the stereo with your finger on PAUSE. The person you give it to can tell. That's the whole point.

I have made, at last count, 212 tapes since 1993. Here's what I've figured out.

1. Side A, track one, is a promise. It says: here is what the next ninety minutes are going to feel like. It should be good but not your best song. Your best song is track three.
2. Track two is the setup for track three. Track three is the one you actually made the tape to give somebody. Don't lead with it. Let them get their coat off.
3. Never put two slow songs in a row on Side A. Side B you can do whatever you want. Side B is after dark.
4. Key and tempo matter more than genre. A loud song and a quiet song get along fine if they're in the same key. Two songs in the same genre in clashing keys sound like a car accident. Hum the ending of one and the beginning of the next. If it feels wrong, it is.
5. Every side needs one song they've never heard. Only one. Two is showing off. Three is a lecture.
6. Every side needs one song they already love. This is how you earn the one they've never heard.
7. The last song on Side A should make them want to flip the tape. Something that ends on a question.
8. The last song on Side B is the real last word. It's what they'll remember. It's what they'll rewind to. It has to end clean, not on a fade, and it has to fit (see side math, below, and God help you).
9. Sequence for the car, not the couch. Most tapes get listened to in a car. Nobody is going to skip a track in a car. They will listen to your mistakes in order.
10. Don't be clever more than twice. A joke track works once. Twice is a bit. Three times and they think you don't mean any of it.

A C-90 is 45 minutes a side. A C-60 is 30 a side. A C-100 is 50 a side but the tape is thinner and it will jam in a cheap Walkman, so don't. There's also a C-46 (23 a side) if you've only got half an hour of things to say, which, sometimes.

BUT: the 45 is not 45. The leader (the clear plastic bit at each end that doesn't record) eats about five to seven seconds at the top and bottom of each side. Pause gaps between songs, two seconds each, times eleven songs, is another twenty-some seconds. So plan for 44 minutes of music per side on a C-90 and you'll have breathing room. Plan for 45 and the last song will cut off eight seconds before the end and you will hear about it for the rest of your life.

What I actually do:

• Write the song list down on paper first. Get the times off the back of the CDs (or the LP sleeve, or time it with a watch if it's off another tape).
• Add them up with a calculator. Add two seconds per gap. Add the leader.
• If Side A comes in over 44:00, take the weakest song out. Not the shortest. The weakest.
• If a side comes in way under, don't pad it with a song you don't mean. Silence at the end of a side is fine. A filler song is a lie.
• The tape counter on your deck is NOT minutes. It's just a number that goes up. It goes up faster at the start of the tape than the end. Learn your deck's counter for one tape length and write it inside the deck lid. Mine hits 000 to about 415 on a 45-minute side.

The one exception to all of this: if the last song on the side ends on a long fade, and it gets cut off mid-fade by two or three seconds, that's fine, nobody will know. If it ends with a big chord and gets cut off, that's a disaster. Choose your last songs accordingly.

• Levels. Set the record level so the loudest part of the loudest song just kisses 0 dB on the meter. On normal (Type I) tape, don't go past 0. On chrome (Type II, "high bias") you can push the peaks to about +3 and it'll take it. Metal (Type IV) will take more but metal tapes cost as much as lunch, so I use chrome. Set the level for the loudest song on the side, ONCE, and then leave it alone. Do not ride the knob from song to song. That's how you get a tape where every song is a different volume and the person is fiddling with the car stereo the whole drive.
• Bias switch. Your deck has a switch or it detects it from the notches in the shell. Type I is "normal," Type II is "CrO2" or "high." Get it wrong and it sounds dull. If in doubt, chrome tape + high bias and stop thinking about it.
• Dolby. Dolby B makes the hiss go away, but only if the person's player also has Dolby B and they have it switched on. If they play a Dolby tape without Dolby, it sounds a little bright, which is not the worst thing. If they play a non-Dolby tape WITH Dolby on, it sounds like it's underwater. Rule: if I know their Walkman, I match it. If I don't, I record with Dolby B and write "DOLBY B" on the label. Dolby C is better but half the players out there don't have it. Skip it.
• Never use high-speed dubbing. The button on your dual-deck that copies a tape in half the time. It sounds exactly as bad as it sounds like it should. Real time or nothing.
• The pause button is the whole instrument. Hit RECORD + PAUSE, cue the CD, release PAUSE, hit play on the CD. At the end of the song, PAUSE the deck the second the last sound is gone. Not the second the CD player's counter changes: the second the sound is gone. Listen for it.
• Clean the heads. Q-tip, rubbing alcohol, the capstan too (the little metal post) and the pinch roller (the rubber wheel). Do it before every tape. Fifteen seconds. It's the difference between a good tape and a muddy one.
• Fresh tape only. Do not record a mixtape over an old tape. It's bad luck and you'll hear the ghost of whatever was on it in the quiet parts.
• When you're done, break out the tabs. The little plastic squares on the back edge of the shell. Break them out and nobody can record over it by accident. If you ever need to record over it anyway, a piece of Scotch tape over the hole works.
• Listen to the whole thing through before you give it away. Both sides. All 90 minutes. On headphones. You will find something. You always find something.

The J-card. The little folded paper thing in the case. Take the printed one out (it's got the tape brand on it and that's boring) and either use a blank one from the pack or cut your own out of a manila folder, which is the right thickness and a great color.

Tools: a fine-point Sharpie for lettering, a regular Sharpie for the big stuff, and a silver one if you can find it (they exist now, art supply store, they're amazing on black paper). Colored pencils for shading. Glue stick. A page torn out of a magazine, a map, a ticket stub.

The spine is the most important part. It's the only part they'll see once it's on the shelf next to forty other tapes. Title on the spine, in your handwriting, legible. The front flap is for the art. Inside the fold is the tracklist.

Tracklist, or no tracklist? Depends on the tape. A mystery tape (no list) is romantic and annoying in equal amounts. A full tracklist with times is generous. What I do: the song titles, tiny, inside the fold, no artist names. They can ask. Asking is the point.

Write the date on it somewhere. You'll be glad in ten years.

• A mixtape is a letter. Treat it like one. You don't send a letter you didn't read over.
• If you get a mixtape, you owe an answer. An answer tape within two weeks, or at least a real conversation about it. "Yeah it was good" is not a conversation.
• Never re-gift a tape. Never give the same tape to two people. Especially two people who know each other. ESPECIALLY especially two people who are both, let's say, prospects. This has happened to a friend of mine and it did not go well and the tape was really good, too, which somehow made it worse.
• Don't put a song on a tape that's "theirs" with somebody else. You know the one. Leave it.
• Don't give a break-up tape. Nobody wants ninety minutes of that. Write a note like a grown-up.
• A tape from somebody you like is not a contract. It's a question. You're allowed to say no to the question and keep the tape.
• If someone makes you a tape and you don't like the music, you still listen to the whole thing. Twice. Then you tell them the one song you did like, and you mean it.
• Never, ever tape over a tape somebody made you. I don't care if you need a blank at 2 a.m.

A friend who's moving away: the easiest tape. Every song you ever listened to together. Order it chronologically. Cry while dubbing. That's allowed.

Your little brother who only listens to what's on the radio: half songs he knows, half songs that sound like songs he knows but better. Don't get preachy. He'll come around by Side B.

Your mom: she wants the songs she liked when she was your age. You'd be surprised. Ask her. Then put two of yours in between, quietly, and see if she notices.

The long drive: tempo matters. Nothing sleepy after the halfway point. Big singalong on the last song of Side B so you arrive happy.

Somebody you like who doesn't know yet: the hardest tape in the world. Every song is a hint, so you have to make sure none of them are a confession. Side A: friendly, upbeat, one slow one buried at track six. Side B: warmer. Track four of Side B is the one that says it, and it should be a song that could plausibly just be a really good song. Deniability. Last song: something hopeful and short. Then you hand it over and say "I just thought you'd like these" and you go home and lie on the floor.

Somebody you like who does know: now you can put whatever you want on it. Congratulations. Don't make it too long. You've got time.

Yourself: underrated. A tape for walking to the bus. A tape for cleaning the apartment. A tape for the one bad week in February. Nobody's judging the sequencing. Put the slow ones in a row.

No tracklists. That's between me and the people I gave them to. But here's the shape of them.

Tapes in progress: AUTUMN, APPARENTLY (C-90, for the same person as track-four-Side-B, above; it's going fine, thanks) and Y2K: LAST TAPE ON EARTH, for New Year's Eve, which will be all songs about endings on Side A and all songs about beginnings on Side B, and if the power goes out at midnight, well, a Walkman runs on batteries. That was always the point of a Walkman.