A question about key lock: how many of you use it?
I’ll give you a little background as to why I’m asking this question: earlier this month i was going out with a buddy of mine for his bday, when i got to his house i found out he had a few other friends over one of which brought his DJ gear. Cool. Turns out he has been DJing for like 10 years and is doing a good job of it at the house.
Skip to the end of the night and for reasons which i won’t get in to i’m now on the couch feeling kind of sick So my buddy decides to hop on the decks and with essentially little knowledge of Traktor is mixing up a storm with 0 problems of clashing keys. I can’t move from the couch to get up and look but I’m thinking “ok, wtf? either all the songs the DJ friend has are in the same key or i’m missing something” So he’s going at it for a good long while before another guy hops on, same result, again “wtf?” Finally a random girl decides to try it out and again same result. Now I’m actually rather annoyed cuz this is just way too easy. It takes me weeks to get just the right songs for a given mix sometimes, and these 3 are doing this all on the fly??
See I’m an Ableton guy, but I did dabble with Traktor when i was just starting and I seemed to recall talk of a function called key lock. With a little Googling turns out this is the case. My question is how many people actually use key lock when they mix? There is always the seemingly monthly thread about using “sync” to beatmatch and how this is clearly cheating blah blah blah, however it strikes me that if a bunch of randoms can hop on the decks and flawlessly harmonic mix, then how is key lock never discussed as being 10’xs worse than sync? I’m not saying it is or isn’t “cheating” (my take on that has been if it sounds good, who cares?) but coming from someone who pretty much does every mix harmonically without that function and knowing how brutal that can be sometimes to find songs which fit the mood and actually go together key wise, I’m curious to know how many people are doing this. Is this standard or is it, like sync, a matter of personal preference? Because if 3 people with essentially no knowledge of the songs or Traktor can do it that easily, then I gotta be doing something wrong.
Key lock has nothing to do with Harmonic DJing if you are not a DJ.
If your friends , who are not actual DJs are mixing various BPMs and its sounds good its more likely that the music they are playing is in the same key or related keys, just like most music of certain genres are of a similar BPM.
Key locks just prevents the track sounding like Mickey Mouse.
Keylock is not discussed by sync moaning ‘morons’ because most of the sync moaning ‘morons’ come from using CDJs that have ‘Master Tempo’ which is the same as as ‘Keylock’.
That why they dont moan about it, cus its a legitimate “cheat” in their book.
Of course its not a cheat, its a stupendously obvious technology that should be used.
Moaning about KeyLock is like someone riding a bike without pneumatic tyres saying that people riding bikes with dunlops is cheating.
Or riding a track bike in a city. Brakes were invented for a reason.
Dito.
I keep hearing about people slurring over transients and hating the sound of key lock, and despite the fact that I’ve never heard it, I thought that was what this thread would be about.
As to the OP…they were DJs of some kind. Or they were being guided by somebody. If it takes you weeks to put together a set, I’d look seriously at how you’re approaching things, because you just might not have it in you to DJ.
Also, I’ll be impressed if this isn’t a troll. I wouldn’t be surprised if the OP doesn’t know how to mix in Ableton without key lock.
Made me laugh, i was thinking of someone lying on a sofa fucked out of their faces on md. listening to people mix going ahhhhhhhh mannn thats amazing your soooo goood. haa
In Traktor I start hearing a difference from around ±7% or so. It’s quite noticeable at values like ±30% but in those cases you’re most likely doing it for special effects (like taking a house track loop down to 80 BPM and moving to DnB or something) so you would probably use key lock even if it was crappy… and Traktor puts up a pretty good fight there too.
A lot of vocals and loops are already time stretched in the production so it’s really kind of silly thinking time-stretch can ruin the song… but I do understand those who stay away from it – sort of like fearing something because their not sure… “Maybe it sounds just a bit worse than without key lock”. I still get that feeling and am currently practicing to let go of that fear.
sorry but in my opinion you cannot compare the high-quality timestretching of SOME SINGLE ELEMENTS in a good DAW software with the absolutely LOL sounding timestretching of the whole track with a slutty cd-pitcher.
(as i said above, i only judge the keylock of my cdj200 pitcher and this one is CRAP ;D)
maybe my tsp2 have a better sounding one, never tried it ^^ maybe i should =)
same as what I was thinking. Even just when drunk, my mixing sounds way better, on drugs…well it’s been a long time, but basically the same x a thousand.
Having said that, key lock ftw. I leave it on all the time and mix harmonically as much as I can.
Interestingly I was listening to a desyn masiello burning man set the other day and I notice that whatever he’s using, he’s turned key lock off because a track he’s playing (which I’ve got) is down one key (or octave) forget the terminology. So there you go, not all the big dj’s use it, or at least not all the time.
The first version of traktor I got, which was just a couple of years ago, had a crappy key lock algorithm, anyone remember that? Glad they sorted it out quickly…
You sort of followed up by yourself afterwards but I never compared anything to a slutty cd-pitcher
And anyway, what I wanted to say in that line was that I should judge whether it sounds good or not based on what I hear, not my knowledge that key-lock is activated… that’s all…
On a side note, you should check out the TP2 key-lock. They say the algorithm is that of a good DAW. I was skeptical but really, I’m not sure if I could tell on/off if I couldn’t see the screen. Something changes, I can sense that, but it’s not like I can say which is better than which. And sometime I think it just might be that my ears are not used to speed changing without the pitch changing together.
*There are noticeable artifacts when scratching by scrubbing the waveform. Probably a switch-over thing from maintaining the pitch to not doing so (scratching would sound wrong if the pitch didn’t change)
So my buddy decides to hop on the decks and with essentially little knowledge of Traktor is mixing up a storm with 0 problems of clashing keys. I can’t move from the couch to get up and look but I’m thinking “ok, wtf? either all the songs the DJ friend has are in the same key or i’m missing something” So he’s going at it for a good long while before another guy hops on, same result, again “wtf?” Finally a random girl decides to try it out and again same result. Now I’m actually rather annoyed cuz this is just way too easy. It takes me weeks to get just the right songs for a given mix sometimes, and these 3 are doing this all on the fly??
