harmonic mixing question
When I’m mixing I know that relative to the key I’m in a perfect 5th up is considered harmonically correct but what about going using 3rds or 7ths. for an example A minor (8A) is harmonically correct with E minor (9A), but is it harmonically correct with it’s third C minor (5A) or it’s 7th G minor (6A) I did some experimentation with it but it seems kinda dodgy, just curious what you all think about it.
I wish my music theory were good enough to have an answer for you 
+2 and +5 work some of the time, good for energy building.
When it comes down to it, it’s more relative to the particular part of the song you are mixing from than just the overall key, chord progression at that point etc.
Since there are so many harmonics throughout, and you will most likely be eq’ing and changing pitch, certain partials will be attenuated or amplified and can correspond differently than if you take the fundamental as a complete guide.
Obviously certain keys are compatable, in theory, in practice there is so many variables that determine how the final sound is perceived by the audience that you have to take keys as a rough guide and focus purely on the the mix point.
I’m waffling a bit, but to answer simply, they CAN be compatible but it really depends on the particular sound and how it is delivered.
yeah use your ear, because its true, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt
sometimes “in theory” it should work and it doesnt, and sometimes “in theory” it shouldnt work and it does
You can go so far in to “mixing in key” that you should be thinking about your sound system, room accoustics causing inteference and phsycoacoustics, you could drive yourself insane.
It really is an extremely rough guide as an aid to selecting songs, i only really use it for when i’m mixing music like chilled house or ambient, things with nice sustained prominent sounds like strings and such.
Remember with MiK the basic rule is +1,+2,+7 .. backed up with your ears of course
I’ll go directly opposite the wheel all the time which would be + or - 6. Thought I read that on the MIK site.
Here’s some theory (even though I’m not a music scholar)…
You mention A minor and E minor. The reason they sound OK is that they share 7 out of 8 notes. The only difference is that A minor has the F note and E minor has instead of the note F, the note F# instead.
Yes, melody lines, chord progression and how “busy” the tune is will play a lot of difference but with 7 out of 8 notes matching musically, you have given yourself fair odds of a good harmonic mix.
Now, looking at A minor and how it relates to C minor you will find that only 5 of 8 match. A minor is all white keys (A minor is the parallel key to C major) while C minor has the notes D#, G# and A#. This is why you will hear more dissonances.
Lots of good points, brought up in this thread. Has me thinking, there are just too many variables to have any real definite answers/rules about mixing harmonically.
Mixed in Key or keying by ear and keyboard, and some music theory are a good start, and will work alot of the time, but your song may have other ideas. Like changing keys at the end of the song, the bridge being in a different key, etc.
So the only real rule should be use these tools as a guide, know your tunes and always tag your songs that mix well together. Then forget it all and experiment till you come up with some crazy badass mix that shouldn’t work, but does.
I’m pretty sure I read on a website somewhere that you’re not actually supposed to mix the melody’s of two tracks unless they have exactly the same key code (even though I do it anyway). It recommended that you wait for the melody of track A to end and then jump to the melody of a track with a compatible key. Check out this thread I started ages ago, it’s on a similar concept and also delves into the music theory on page 2 of the thread:
And the camelot site:
Sometimes it’ll work very well to loop a few beats of a track in order to grab part of a melody where the key differs from the tune’s root key.
Alternate between the usual melody and this (special points if you can do that just by halving/doubling loop length), blend loop with other track on a different key and Bob’s your uncle! Then ride the mix like the mashup master you are.