Greetings! I know I have been quite delinquent in the frequency of update of my blog here at area709, and am working on changing that!

I wanted to share my thoughts on something i have been putting a lot of thought into over the last year or so. Its this recent evolution that took mixing music to the next level for me. After starting to work with Ableton Live and building tools to play with remixing tracks on the fly, I started organizing my music to the over all key of each sample/track I work with in my live set.

This opens up the world of mixing for me to be able to consciously put together parts of tracks/samples/loops in the right keys to mix harmonically. I remember achieving this only by chance (since I am not harmonically trained in music theory) in the previous world of vinyl, where I would discover tight harmonic mixes between tracks and write them down or try to remember them. Having the knowledge and tools to know which songs have what keys and which keys work in harmony with others makes this really easily achievable on every mix now.

The tools I have been using are:

1) Rapid Evolution from Mixshare.com.

This is a platform independant, free java based software that you can point to your music collection and get it to detect things like Key, Camelot notation (This helps with identifying harmonic key mixes), BPM.

According to their description, its "an advanced harmonic music library tool for DJs. It helps profile your songs by saving important properties, such as the BPM, key, time signature, styles, comments, etc. You can then instantly see which songs are within BPM range, in key harmonically and in similar styles. "

For a piece of free software it definitely is a gem. I use it to find out the keys of each sample or track i have.

2) The Camelot Easymix chart.

Here is a picture of the Camelot Easymix Wheel:

You can use this chart to figure out what you can mix harmonically with a track/sample of a certain key. I have my ableton live set organized in a way that follows this Camelot notation which makes it really easy for me to stay on key or traverse the keys harmonically as I build my set at a gig live. For those using CDJs, you can check out this forum post.

I hope some of you find parts of this post somewhat useful. :)

Further reading:

Energy Boost Mixes

Harmonic Mixing

Mixed in Key (A commercial software like Rapid Evolution).