The art of creating a perfect mix tape is becoming more and more of a lost art. With the advent of iPods and digital music downloads, it’s easy to rip all of your music on to one device and set it on random.

But to sit down and agonizingly pick the right songs and put them in the right order to create a mood is not as easy as it sounds. Whether it’s for a road trip or for a special someone or for falling asleep or just for sitting alone in the dark, there’s a science and an art to creating a mix tape (or CD, if you will).

You can mess up a mix cassette tape and record over it (but after a few times, you lose the audio quality). With burning a CD, you have to get it right the first time.

Anyone can put together a collection of all the top songs of any given time period. But to select songs that define a part of your life is a completely different matter. They have to be songs that evoke tangible feelings and memories that take you back to a specific time and place and conjur up details of where you were and what you were doing when you first heard that song.

About 10 years ago, I created my own collection of mix CDs based off a radio station I was listening to at the time. It was one of the first independent/alternative-to-the-normal-top-40 stations I had ever heard and I was instantly smitten. I got introduced to groups like The BoDeans, Susan Tedeschi, Iris DeMent, Cowboy Junkies, Wilco, and many more artists that I had never heard of before. My musical trajectory was forever altered during that year.

I can still listen to those CDs and remember what I felt when I first heard those songs, my hopes and dreams and aspirations. I wouldn’t call them perfect by any means, but they serve to encapsulate a time in my life.

If you need guidance on how to put together a mix tape, I suggest watching the movie High Fidelity. Also, movies like Juno, Elizabethtown, and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist have soundtracks that might suggest ideas for what songs to put in a mix tape.

Just have fun with it and try not to over-analyze it too much. Go with what feels right. Also, let me know what songs you put into your mix tapes and CDs. Who knows? I might be inclined to make one for myself.