Mixing in key

[Basilisk]

This is a topic about mixing in key... I wrote a lot of crazy stuff here, got some tips, researched heavily, and now know a LOT more. Thanks

[Lepton]

Personally I have no musical background, and up until about a year ago I could only sometimes tell if two songs mixing together sounded "off" when they were, well, really off.

 

I'm still stuck in this stage so I don't think I can help you....

Pitching tracks does indeed change the key that's all a know

[dmtree]

I think 2.7% pitch shift is one full key up or down.. though i could be off, since I usually don't do it by the % points. I am pretty sure there was some thread on it on Isratrance last year.

 

I've noticed in the last 2 years I've started picking tracks that are in key - playing it by ear, mostly. I do have a pretty extensive musical background and good sense of pitch, so I can usually tell when there's a disharmony between two tracks.

 

I heard there's software you can use to tell the pitch of a song.. but really, I think doing it by ear is the way to go. IMO.

 

 

cheers

[ukiro]

Turntables do change tonal pitch when altering the play speed, ofcourse. BUT - there are some CD decks that do NOT do this! They use real-time time-stretching in one form or another, to have the tonal pitch intact, or even independently adjustable from the tempo pitch. This would ofcourse allow for amazing fine-tuning of track transitions. I'm not sure which models/makes have this feature, but I've seen it mentioned for many years...

 

Now I'll cook up a simplified example: If a track has a 16th note bassline, all on the same note (say, C), thats the only note we have unless there are melodies or pads playing. Drums don't have a tone, normally. Sure you can pitch a kickdrum and it will sound brigther or deeper, but it has no basic resonant frequency. So in mixing something else in on this 16th note bassline track, anything in C will work, regardless if it's C minor, C major, C phrygian or whatever mode you can come up with.

 

EDIT: Actually, anything that has C in its scale will work. C doesn't even have to be the base note of the scale. So our imaginary track in this example is mixable with almost anything! /EDIT

 

So let's complicate things a bit: If it has two notes in the bassline, C and D# for example, and maybe a pad playing in these two as well, you cannot from this alone deduct wether the track is in normal C minor or in phrygian mode, because they both "fit". However, it's not C Major, because there is no D# in C major.

 

So what I'm trying to get to is that the range of compatibility is much greater than your theory allows - As long as the individual notes played can all fit into a reasonably normal mode it will sound ok. Since the "mixing area" of a track is seldom filled with every note the key or mode of the track allows, you don't run into unmixable tracks as often as you'd think. Phrygian (popular in old goa) is a bitch though, because of its two half-tone intervals per octave. These can really screw you over if you end up with a mix containing 4 half-tones in sequence, like C, C#, D, D#. This will sound awful, and requires some serious EQ skills to pull off. But a transition between two tracks in major keys can result in a phrygian mode if they're in the proper different keys. So song A will sound cheerful and song B will sound cheerful, but in the transition between the two it will sound ominus and mysterious. So while it may be technically and musically kosher, it might screw with the emotional flow of the mix because of how the two scales interact. The easiest way to check this is by testing it. If it sounds ok it is ok.

 

I hope this helped =)

[Spindrift]

Basically you can only control the pitch, ie the base note, when DJing.

So if two tracks have incompatible scales there is nothing you can do about it.

If you use a very precise parametric you could like ukiro suggests alleviate the clash a bit sometimes.

If the scales is clashing in more than one note or octave that quickly would become quite impossible as well though.

 

If you have very melodic material it might not be such a good idea to beatmatch, unless you keep track of what scale each track is in and know what scales will sound ok together.

 

In reality though I must say it's very rare that i find harmonic dissonance to be much of a problem when I listen to other DJs, so i don't give it too much attention myself.

Most of the time it sounds fine, and if i hear a slight dissonance i will try to pitch up one track by one or a few semitones. If that don't work I choose another track or make a shorter mix to not make the melodies overlap.

[kathmandu]

so how does a person know what key the tune is in?

 

 

 

i asked rah about this in another thread but may be he never opened that thread since then.

[X-scream]

If there is some kind of map for what key goes for what key out there, it would be nice to see.  [...]

Anyone care to clear this up for me? I'm looking at you RAH, since you post keys in your reviews (and how do you find those out anyway?)...

292015[/snapback]

For minor scales a simple count to seven ends at a compatible key (say you start at C, now go 7 steps up or down, you end at G or F, so Cminor goes well with Gminor/Fminor). I think there's plenty of sites about this so start googling

 

 

Ok, here's how I do it, however I must admit that I'm quite new to this as well, started to try mixing harmonically in January...

I play the song and sit at my computer playing on my MIDI keyboard. Within a moment I usually get what key feels most "at home".. then there's the difficult part. Is it minor/major/etc? Usually I try to find out what notes are used and fiddle around with different chords to check out what sounds "best" but often I can't come up with anything so if the C-note felt most at home I mark the track as simply a "C" or even "Cminor" since most of trance stuff (especialy new?) is in minor..

 

 

I think 2.7% pitch shift is one full key up or down.. though i could be off, since I usually don't do it by the % points. I am pretty sure there was some thread on it on Isratrance last year.

292074[/snapback]

Actually, I believe it's around 6%, so at 3% you're half way there and it probably starts to sound bad if you have two songs in same key but need 3% difference in pitch..

 

 

 

And about these master tempo / master key features on CD players.. They sound pretty horrible, especially when pitching down (double kicks!). So I try to avoid them

[RAH]

so how does a person know what key the tune is in?

i asked rah about this in another thread but may be he never opened that thread since then.

292241[/snapback]

a good place to strat with harmonic mixing is here

 

http://www.harmonic-mixing.com/index.mv

 

there is a general chart here

 

http://www.harmonic-mixing.com/charts/keychart.mv

 

i have already stated most of these are keyed in by a mate who does know a bit more about those matters than me but i hope this helps.

[Basilisk]

Well, everything just got a whole lot more difficult. I punched in the keycodes for all the tracks I'd been working with to put a new mix together, and it seems as if my sense of pitch ain't bad at all - the mixes I had lined up as keepers were all harmonic. Some of the ones that had been frustrating the hell out of me - now I have options, things to try. That's so excellent! I have discovered a bottleneck - using the camelot keycode system - at 7A. Seems like there are few tracks in that specific key grouping, so crossing over it is gonna be tricky.

 

The one thing I'm still not clear on - why small amounts of pitch shifting don't spoil the sound of the key.

 

There's not a single site on the web with keyed psytrance tracks, is there?

[ukiro]

The one thing I'm still not clear on - why small amounts of pitch shifting don't spoil the sound of the key.

293113[/snapback]

I think it's because it's "close enough" and that the frequencies are still in the right position relative to eachother, i.e. the "spectral width" of the notes/key/mode isn't altered, it's just shifted. (did that make any sense at all?)

[Time_Trap]

If a track has a 16th note bassline, all on the same note (say, C), thats the only note we have unless there are melodies or pads playing. Drums don't have a tone, normally. Sure you can pitch a kickdrum and it will sound brigther or deeper, but it has no basic resonant frequency. So in mixing something else in on this 16th note bassline track, anything in C will work, regardless if it's C minor, C major, C phrygian or whatever mode you can come up with.

hmm.. what if there's some sort of LFO ? in the sequencer it will be shown as C but the LFO might alter the sound's frequence/oscillators/pitch etc etc

?

[ukiro]

hmm.. what if there's some sort of LFO ? in the sequencer it will be shown as C but the LFO might alter the sound's frequence/oscillators/pitch etc etc

?

293232[/snapback]

You dont often have an LFO on the pitch of a sound, do you? That's usually just done on effect sounds, and those don't count anyway =) An LFO on the filter will make the sound appear to travel up and down in frequency, which might be what you're referring to. But that's just an illusion as the "focus" shifts between the overtonesand undertones of the sound, while its original note and octave remains intact.

[khogg]

Hmmm... this is very interesting reading. I have nothing to add. Because I don't have clue what you guys are talking about.

[Basilisk]

I think it's because it's "close enough" and that the frequencies are still in the right position relative to eachother, i.e. the "spectral width" of the notes/key/mode isn't altered, it's just shifted. (did that make any sense at all?)

293225[/snapback]

No, I'm not really following this.

 

I'm glad I asked the question however... I've been reading plenty of good info on the subject, and while there are some questions that don't make immediate sense to me, after spending hours on the decks trying this out I find myself absolutely amazed that no one seems to make a big deal out of this.

 

It was only about 4 months ago that two different people mentioned anything about mixing in key. I hadn't even heard of it before - even after going through some DJ tutorials through the years. Beatmatching, phrasing, and mixer tricks. Effects if you get into advanced territory. None of the sites I was ever on mentioned anything else! That is so bizarre...

 

Unless I'm mistaken, I still haven't come across a single trance song in a major key. Is that right? I might be doing this wrong. So fresh, so new!

 

Thanks everyone, this is keeping me -really- busy.

[RAH]

well it's definatelly a different plateu as DJ... i can pick up notes now and again, but not with much success... it's a work in progress... glad you're picking it up though, maybe you can explian me a few things later