Harmonic mixing
I’ve been studying harmonic mixing and practicing and songs blend really nice with each other when you follow the Camelot wheel.
One thing i noticed, while using VDJ is that some songs are on the C#m key, which this is not in the camelot wheel, what should i do to blend this key into another one?
Hi,
C#m is actually the same key as Dbm. When you see the “#” sign, that’s called a Sharp notation, and when you see a “B”, that’s called Flat. Just different ways of writing the same thing.
To avoid confusion, it’s easier to use the Camelot notation. It saves a lot of time, and you don’t have to memorize that C#m is compatible with C#m, Dbm, E, F#m, Abm, G#m, and can modulate into Ebm / D#m.
Whew.
12A goes with 11A, 12A, 1A, 12B or modulates into 2A. Much easier if you read How-To Guide from Harmonic-Mixing.com
Good luck!
Yakov
I second the motion. Mixed In Key leads the harmonic mixing market.
thanks alot, i didn’t know VDJ was actually capable of showing me the keys in key codes (12A) etc. thanks alot for the quick reposnse.
I’ve been wondering, is mixing in key really noticeable ?
Its really good, you really see difference playing the songs together…i felt in love with it.
sounds a bit cleaner. I use it when I can, but matching the beat and key narrows the selection of the next track.
Harmonic mixing software and following the camelot wheel is mostly marketing hype (see the first two posts here…) or just general internet hype and in practice is incredibly overrated and when used how most people who pick it up by following the wheel religiously is pretty limiting.
Not to mention a lot of the time with song structure or mixing style key is completely irrelevant, and there is more to mixing in key than going around one direction in a circle.
There is mixing by a semitone which is going from 2A to 9A (adding +7) and 2 semitones which is 2A to 4A (adding +2). That’s the only 2 methods i know of.
Ya know, I’m starting to wonder the same thing.
I mixed harmonically for a couple of months, but don’t do it so much anymore. I think it was helpful in guiding me to make better song choices when I was starting out as well as help limit my selection a bit, but there were always those occasions when songs still didn’t work and you could tell this by ear.
I think the more important steps are knowing your collection and thinning out the crap. that helped me a lot
camelot key
s there a site where I can download a club track according to its camelot key?
Beatport lists the “proper” keys in the track details. That’s as close as you can get but I don’t think you can search along that criteria.
Actually listening to your music?
Seriously, you can also take supporting software TOO far…
trust your ears more than any piece of software…
I have always felt that mixing in key isn’t necessary. There are other factors that will make mixing in key sound horrible, like melody, instrumentation and simply 2 songs that may be in the same key that just don’t sound good together. I have always gone by drum beats and bpm and how it sounds by ear.
btw. you can doubleclick on the note in VDJ then it switches to the numbers-system you know from the camelot wheel ^^
I really despise all the hype around it, I really don’t think there is that much value in it and more often than not it seems that people who focus on using it and even going so far as to buy music based on what key it is in are so focused on key they forget about more important factors in song selection. Most of the time it doesn’t even matter and they may pick a song to play next soley because it is in the “right key” when 20 other songs that would fit much better get overlooked just because they key is “wrong” even though for the type of mixing or song structure it is completely irrelevant.
Check out http://www.track-finder.com/
I think mixing in key is a very, very useful tool and can make your sets sound really clean. Albeit, its at the bottom of my list of importance when choosing my next song.
The fact is, most dance music has a very minimal intro MADE for mixing. It’ll either have no melody or very little melody at all, so in fact, the key of the song you’re mixing into doesn’t even matter. If a song does start off with a melody though, then I find that those are the best times to use the camelot wheel.
Just don’t let the wheel ever limit you, and don’t feel like your going to be a bad DJ if you don’t follow it with every mix. That’s complete nonsense right there.
I also wonder, what about tracks that are not the exact same BPM ?
Changing the pitch on one of the two tracks will change its key, unless you activate the “key mode” on Traktor or “Master tempo” on CDJs.
And by activating these modes, you decrease the quality of the audio going out right ? So you would decrease the audio quality just to have matching keys ? That’s silly.
Therefore, mixing in key is only viable when 2 tracks are on the same bpm ? Well, that’s some heavy limitation here.
I don’t think i’ll ever bother about this, and just play what sounds good to me.