Many of you DJs have a musical background of some sort... this really helps for HM because your ear is pre-trained. Unfortunately there's no software to do it for you because of the complex nature of musical harmonics. You'll just have to learn the ropes.

Before we begin, having access to a keyboard is a big help in understanding and keying your music.

Let's start with a bit of musical background. Music, in its elements, is simple. You've got several notes (or keys) and their sharps (represented with a '#') / flats (represented with a 'b'). You're thinking ... hey, I've seen those symbols on my CDJ display! You're right ... they're used as part of the pitch control for whether you're above or below zero percent.

Don't let the flat/sharp thing confuse you. C sharp is the exact same key as D flat.

They are (starting from C, which isn't the lowest letter, but known as the 'middle' or 'start'):

C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, B, C again, but one octave higher. An octave is the full 8 notes higher.

Each key is known as a 'semitone'. So going from C to D isn't one semitone, but two (remember, you've got the sharp in there!).

If you know anything about musical harmony, for example singing in harmony, you have a person singing the melody, and a person (or 2 or 3) singing harmonies. They are keys that are pleasant and friendly to the base (melody)key, and accompany it rather than clash with it (ever listen to a barbershop quartet?). Let's assume we have 3 singers (it makes this really easy), you have base plus 2. A standard piano chord (and this is the "key" that we talk about when referring to "keying" a song) is 3 keys pressed at the same time.

When listening to a song, it has a certain musical key that is the base, plus two 'harmony' keys, which will make a chord! So how do we find the key? Get your keyboard (either real or software... real's easier to hit more than one key at a time), and while listening to the music, press different keys 'till you get the same sound as the foundation. Most times it's the same key as the bassline, but you'll find it varies occasionally.

Let's say the song has a base key of C. It's 'key' will either be a minor or major. Wait, what's minor vs. major? It's all in the sound of the chord (the 3 notes at once), and it's really easy to do. (Most Trance, for example, is minor. It just has that sound that appeals to its' genre.) What are the other sounds you're hearing? They will almost guaranteed-ly fall into this pattern:

First key - (whatever it may be)
Second key - if minor, 3 smitones from the first, not counting the first! - if major, 4 semitones from the first, not counting the first!
Third key - a total of 7 semitones from the first, so if it's minor, go 4 past the second key, or major, 3 past the second key. (or just count 7 semitones from the first key).

For example:

Major chord: 1st key - C, 2nd key - E, 3rd key - G.
Minor chord: 1st key - C, 2nd key - Eb, 3rd key - G.

You'll figure out chords pretty quickly that way, and a lot of "keying" a song is listening to it and playing with the keyboard. It will take some practice, because there are a few curveballs where you find your base, but it ends up sounding "higher" than your melody tones... just work around 'till you've got the chord that sounds best, and that becomes your song's "key", be it 'A Major', 'Db Minor', or other.

Now that we've got the keys, how do we mix 'em? Well, mixing any similar keyed songs together will mix best (A Minor -> A Minor for ex.), but this is where the "wheel" comes in handy. Let's look at the wheel shal we?

Open this link to see the wheel - image tag is disabled

You'll see on the wheel that minor chords are on the inside, majors on the out. I've set my minors with 'A' and majors with 'B'... I borrowed this from a resource on the web that uses the EXACT REVERSE, so if you ever run their website and start reading the info, remember that my wheel is backwards!

Each chord has a number assigned to it - G Minor is 6A. They go around like a clock, 12 in all. Any given number will mix with ane one touching it! 6A will mix with 5A, 7A, and even 6B. It won't mix with 5B or 7B though, because of the leap to major, and the chord difference.

If you're wanting to know the musical terms for the mixes, follow this (we'll use 6A again):

6A -> 6A : Tonic
6A -> 5A : Perfect 4th
6A -> 7A : Perfect 5th
6A -> 6B : Relative Major (the reverse is a Relative Minor)

A neat thing about applying this to DJing is the fact that we have tempo control. One fact you need to remember is a 6% shift = 1 semitone.

If you're mixing an A Minor and you take it down 6%, it'll become an A Flat Minor. Stretching songs 6% usually reaks havoc on the tempo, so it's more likely you'll use a combination of stretch - 4% here, 2% there, for a rough total of 6% (remember when pitch shifting, a plus/minus will not always be equal). You can then "bridge the gap" of a semitone!

Well, hopefully that gives you a good primer on HM... I've got the full-size printable wheel for y'all to download, print, and use! (The coolest thing is I've made it the size of a CD so it fits in perfectly!)

You can download the fullsize wheel here.

Please post here if you have any questions or comments ... your feedback is appreciated!

Christian

Pioneer National Trainer // Product Specialist

A sneak trick I've used to match pitch once tempo's are matched, is the pitch shifter on the DJM500 ... usually it's only about +/- 3% or less.

Make sure you monitor whether the MT is on or off, it makes a difference! Such a nice feature.

Christian

Pioneer National Trainer // Product Specialist

Just one question, do you (or others) generally write on their CDs/records the Keys?

Or do you just remember them?

Or, with practice, are you just aware of what they are.

Again thank you for that very generous and helpful post. I'm very inspired to share my latest DJ tip now. In fact I will.

Click here to view a sample.

If you check out the right side, there's a sticker for every track. I don't write down the time or BPM - that's already on the cover. The info is:

Top left - my 1-10 scale of how much I like that track.

Top right - the key

Middle bottom - the track type (as per my perception and genres)

I love being able to pull off melodic mixes.

Christian

Pioneer National Trainer // Product Specialist

Franklin

Is it possible that two tunes in the mix may sound right to the ears and yet, be wrong according to the rules or harmonic mixing?

I don't really understand the harmonic mixing rule/guide cuz I've never taken any music classes so I rely heavily on ear.

Sometimes it's very obvious that two tunes just don't go together but sometimes it's iffy, sounds OK and sometimes you just know it sounds good together.

Is it possible that two tunes may sound good together and yet at the same time go AGAINST the rules of harmonic mixing?

Some of what you may be talking about, could be experienced as (what I call) elemental harmony. Where you have 2 bits of tracks that just work really well together.

Most of the time what you're hearing (as sounding like a 'good mix') is a harmonically correct mix. If it's bad, it's off-harmonic.

As I mentionned, there are several matches for each 'key', so it's not a 1-to-1 mixing rule.

You ears, although seemingly untrained, have experienced thousands of hours of music, and other sounds that you have grown to identify as pleasing and/or 'off'. You know by default what sounds good and what doesn't.

If you play around with what I've described, you'll learn some of the musical theory (maybe I'll write a quick FAQ on that over the weekend).

Chistian

Pioneer National Trainer // Product Specialist

--
Dave

Quote:

---

Well then, maybe there might be a time when our two worlds could collide, bringing the harmonic mixing video and a small cash fee together in harmony.

---

Lol adam, hopefully you meant merge and not collide to get all them harmony juices flowing :P

Zet