July 1, 1979: it was thirty years ago today that the Sony Walkman went on sale, launching mobile music for the first time.

Wait – rewind (so to speak). That honor really belongs to the portable transistor radio – and, indeed, part of the reason America already knew and loved Sony by the time 1979 rolled around, having embraced their pocketable radios as early as the 1950s. In fact, if you want to blame a device for degrading audio fidelity, you should again look not to MP3s and iPods but back to — you guessed it — the same transistor radio.

But no matter. The Walkman did popularize carrying your own music collection with you. It was not only about mobility, but mobile music collections free of airwaves, mix tapes and the experience of walking around the city or doing a workout with your own personally-assembled soundtrack. It turned everyone into DJs and made the music something that could easily bounce around inside your head rather than around your living room or a music venue. The Walkman and not the iPod might also have to carry the burden of claims that music was made antisocial – but it also made for a uniquely personal experience.

And do we ever love cassettes, with their ability to accommodate our own mixes and recordings and stack in neat cubes.

True, the link that’s making the rounds on the Web parodies the clueless 13-year-old child of the iPod age:
Giving up my iPod for a Walkman [BBC News]

This comes from a different planet than the one on which we live on CDM. In this world, snarky 13-year-olds have no idea what the metal/normal switch does, and the zinger is “Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?” Okay, you snot-nosed brat, it’s a good thing global warming will revert us all to a primitive Stone Age existence and you won’t have to suffer the fate of technological advancement. PS – your dad says never to call him Alan again. (I kid, kid, really. Just can’t resist.)

Of course, on our planet some 13-year-old is probably assembling his or her own cassette player out of spare parts and turning it into a circuit-bent DJ machine, and knows the entire history of the Sony Walkman by model number, and can tell you which factory assembled your old broken model based on the serial number. In that demented spirit, I invite readers to share your own Walkman memories, and offer up a selection of my favorite cassette-themed posts from CDM (of which, I was surprised to discover, there are quite a lot).

I won’t even try to summarize the history of the Walkman, because I have no idea what it is, and Wikipedia has beaten me to the punch.

The middle child of audio technology, neither as hip as vinyl or as modern as the MP3, the cassette lives on in a massive online shrine called the C-90 Project. Odds are, if you’ve ever seen a blank cassette, it’s stored in here or soon will be. We saw its colorful compact novelties back in 2005. Now, the site has grown and added features, including bi-lingual discussions in both English and Russian, plus organization by format (compact cassette, the standard size, as well as microcassette and minicassette) and brand. If you want to add to this collection, they welcome participants. History will thank you.

A couple of the odder selections here. Weirdly, I remember seeing both back in their day. (Hey, I guess TDK decided to add some Latino flair to their tape line.)

Project C-90. An Ultimate Audiotape Guide. (indeed … it’s even bigger than you think)

Continuing in the spirit of cassette tapes, here are two more cassette items.

Cassettes that Hold Your Change

Completely useless, but somewhat amusing: Designboom’s Cassette Wallet recycles old cassette shells into zippered money holders. If you’re looking to get your retro chic on, they’re $43. Or, if you find some lame tapes as you’re rooting throw your collection for the Cassette Jockey Competition at Maker Faire, you can try to figure out how to recycle it into something like this and sell it for $43. Via the Spanish-language JP-Geek, Sweden’s English-language Fosfor, and a site you already know about.

Cassettes for Analog Resampling

In the domain of the musically functional, Roland from Munich wonders if cassette players with pitch control could be the perfect addition to a digital studio.

Just saw your post about cassette players and wanted to ask if you know of any old commercially-available players that allow you to set the playback speed manually (maybe some professional model?).

Could really use that for sampling since I am not a big fan of the digital algorithms available.

I’d love to hear some reader thoughts on this.

No laptops. No CD players. No turntables. The Cassette Jockey World Championships will be cassette tape only. And the rules are tough: store-bought, commercial cassette tapes only. (Dig that Paula Abdul out of your closet — you know you want to.) Sounds dull? Think again: how you play those tapes is entirely up to you, and from what we’ve seen insane circuit benders and mad scientists of circuitry do to tape machines, that could get real interesting.

Mark Gunderson, aka Trademark G, is organizing the event at day one of the Maker Faire outside San Francisco, Saturday, May 19. You’ll need a ticket to the Maker Faire — but if you have even a slight shot at access to the Bay Area that weekend, I’d suggest you do that, anyway. (I’ll be there, lurking about, trying not to burn out sensors because I confused +5V and +9V.)

It’s an open call — and if you think you’ve got what it takes to judge, you should get in touch, as well.

Art of the Cassette Tape

Whether you’re going to the Maker Faire or not, I’ve also rounded up cassette tape creations from CDM stories past, just to get your tape juices flowing.

Homemade Cassette Tape DJ Mixers + Max/MSP PC
International Mixtape Project Sharing Tapes, CDs Worldwide
Warhol for TDK Tapes (Okay, video cassette tapes … maybe a VJ session should come next.)
Obsessive Cassette Tape Collection
Homebrewed Game Boy sequencer, via Walkman tape player
Put a Cassette Deck in Your Windows PC

Open Call for Cassette Jockeys

Here’s the full scoop on the “CJ” competition from Trademark G:

2007 Cassette Jockey World Championships
*** CALL FOR COMPETITORS ***

CALLING ALL: Cassette Jockies… Retro-Tech Lovers… Magnetic Media Monsters… Circuit Benders… Multi-Media DJs… Walkman Hot-Rodders… we want you at the:

2007 CASSETTE JOCKEY WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
at the Make Magazine Maker Faire!

Russian DJ Artyom has built his own DJ audio hardware out of wood and electronics, complete with dual cassette playback boxes. The cassettes feature pitch control (fine and coarse), pitch bands, a motor off switch, and more, and he’s custom-built mixers, cross-faders, and EQ.

Then, he hooks these boxes up to his PC and relaxes — wait, no he doesn’t. His PC is packed with custom DJ patches built in Max/MSP.

Full hardware and software details at Artyom’s site, including downloadable Max patches, in English (see also Russian content — I’m sure someone out there speaks Russian):

Self-made DJ equipment
Max/MSP DJ Stuff

Via the rich electronic music blog, Filter27: How to DJ with an old cassette tapes

See also: KDE-Head photo on flickr with specs

Updated: Doh! Tom at Music thing beat me to this in 2005. Slight CDM lag there. ;) Nonetheless, maybe somebody will have a look at those Max patches and get some new ideas.

Man, these lazy newbie DJs, embracing a new-fangled playback medium like cassettes and Max/MSP patches. They’re nowhere near as authentic as the oldskool DJs playing … erm … CDs … at weddings. ;)

Another gorgeous shot of his brilliant hardware-building work after the jump (so you don’t have to wait through glacial load times):