Quote Originally Posted by smittten View Post
For a several weeks I tried to work a lot of my tagging and mixing around mixed in key. I soon found that using mixed in key was far less reliable than my own ear and more importantly - it sucked all the fun out of mixing. I think Mixed in key has a place but you will find it really limits your creativity as it will likely encourage you exclude tracks that will mix well simply based on it having the 'wrong' number. Then again, I never liked painting by numbers.
I mix a lot of Trance so I need to use key numbers. However, I use the Camelot numbers in every possible way - I'll follow circle of fifths or move a full tone or a semi-tone or to a relative major of the next minor along...

And sometimes I just wait till a really chunky beat or break and then loop it and jump to another track.

I also find that many of the errors of mixed in key are just semantics - they'll get a tonal centre but it might not be the dominant one in the song.