Needless to say, this was a faff.Įven so, “It wasn’t that niche,” Brewster told me. As Brewster and Broughton outlined in the book, though, finding a track’s key meant manually playing notes on a keyboard until you found its keynote, which you checked by playing a chord or a scale over the track. At that point, the Camelot Wheel, which gave keys a more easily understood alphanumeric code and displayed these codes on a wheel, had become an essential tool. I personally became interested in the early 2000s, after reading a relevant chapter in Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s influential 2002 book How To DJ (Properly). Whatever your view, there’s no doubt that these days harmonic mixing is far more accessible than it used to be. Do DJs limit themselves by choosing only harmonically compatible tracks? Can an audience tell if a DJ is mixing harmonically? And following from that question, is the value actually that people sense harmonic mixes rather than knowing them? Is harmonic mixing relevant for someone playing, say, minimal techno? Questions like these were clearly on the DJs’ minds as they gave their responses below. The debate, however, tends to stem from related questions. But fundamentally, harmonic mixing is pretty straightforward. And many DJs will say that harmonic mixing is something they do intuitively, building a sense of what works through experience. ![]() Some DJs might use keys to intentionally create dissonance, or play with the energy of a room by, for example, ascending a musical scale. ![]() It’s a method of selecting tracks based on compatible keys because at root you, the DJ, like how it sounds. See what you think.Ĭould you tell the difference? Did you prefer the first mix? Does this interest you? Both track A (JazziDisciples’ “Weyo”) and track B (Kabza De Small’s “Sponono”) in this DJ mix are in the same key. I chose amapiano tracks as the style’s melodic richness makes easier to hear what’s going on. Here are two quick examples I mixed in rekordbox. (We won’t get into the weeds of the music theory behind compatible keys here it’s enough to know that the popular understanding has been that there are four possible keys you can mix into, although there are in fact six.) A likely explanation is incompatible keys, or a “key clash,” as DJs often call it. On the other hand, even if the tempos of two tracks are perfectly matched, there can be something about a mix that feels off. It therefore follows that when a DJ mixes two tracks in the same key, or in musically related keys, it will sound… not better, necessarily, but more stable or smooth or yes, harmonic. There’s a single tonic or keynote, which can be thought of as a song’s home-we say, “This track is in C minor.” Even if we don’t know why, we get a sense of resolution when a song returns to its “home” note or chord. ![]() In Western music, most songs or tracks have a key, a set of notes that relates to a scale. Let’s pull back for a second, though, and clarify what we actually mean by harmonic mixing, while exploring some of the key questions it tends to throw up. All of the DJs we spoke to are, naturally, advocates for harmonic mixing, but they also appear to hold it lightly, knowing that ultimately the technique is a question of personal choice. ![]() People enjoy discussing its value, its necessity, and even its definition. Like many topics in dance music, harmonic mixing, or mixing in key, as it’s also called, can spark passionate debate.
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