Guide to Harmonic Mixing 1.01

Chapter 1 - Introduction
Chapter 2 - Basic Music Theory
Chapter 3 - What is Harmonic Mixing?
Chapter 4 - Applications
Chapter 5 - Credits/Contact Information

Chapter 1 - Introduction

This guide is provided as is by DJ Nuclear (Christina B.), copyright 2004. You may not reproduce any segment of this or the whole document without providing the author's name clearly and easily viewable within the document.

The guide is designed to teach about the basics of harmonic mixing. In order to properly understand the concepts, you will need an understanding of beatmatching and DJing in general. I will try to make everything as clear as possible so that even those with little understanding of music will be able to follow everything.

Chapter 2 - Basic Music Theory

I will start by first explaining music theory in the depth required to understand later segments of this guide. If you are well versed in it already, skip ahead. Music is composed of three fundamental things: harmonics and chords, melody, and rhythm. This
will dwell on the first two but not the latter.

Example: A Short Melody
Melody in C Major

So, what are these things? First, a melody is a progression of notes played over a segment of time. Every key on the keyboard plays a different note; the difference between one note to the next is called the interval. For instance, find the note C on the keyboard, easily shown in the diagram below:



Now, find the white key one key to the right of C (D). It is coloured in blue below.



Now, the interval between C (red) and key D (blue) is 2 semitones. A semitone difference is one single note movement on the keyboard, be it black or white, to the immediate left or right of whatever key you happen to be playing. From C to D would be 2 semitones because you move from C, to C# (black key to the right of C), to D, and therefore take one step. A step is just a movement of 2 semitones; as in, one step up from C is D, and two steps is E. A halfstep up from C would be C#.

So, the interval from C(red) to G(green) is seven semitones up, with an interval of seven semitones.



Now that that's established, let's look at all the notes the keyboard has to offer.



You will notice above the keyboard that there are two sets of note names (IE, C#, Db) It is important to know that these mean the exact same thing. C# is only another name for Db. Now, why are they called these? You'll see on the bottom CDEFGAB. These notes are the C major scale, which I will discuss later. When you put a # (or sharp) on a note, it means that you are moving one halfstep forward beyond the note. When you see a b (or flat), it means you are moving one halfstep behind the note. So, for example, E# would be the key F.

Another thing thing you'll see is that there are 12 fundamental notes that keep repeating on the keyboard (follow C to the next C, you'll see they start over again). This is because our keyboards, and most all western music, is based on a 12 note scale. Now, is the C down at the bottom the same as the next C up? Yes and no. The interval between the first C and the second C is 12 semitones, or one octave. If a note is one octave from the other, the note one octave above is double the frequency of the original note; play them on the keyboard together and you'll note that they sound very harmonious. Both are still called C.

Now I will introduce scales. A scale is composed of several notes at different intervals. Let's look at the E major scale on the keyboard.



All of the red keys are E major. You will notice that there are seven keys in the scale before it reaches the next octave (from E to the next E) up. In fact, all standard scales are composed of 7 notes. Now, how did I come about these notes? I use the following intervals:

Major Scale
Key:______1st_2nd_3rd_4th_5th_6th_7th_Oct
Interval:_0___2___2___1___2___2___2___1 (semitones)

It should be noted that the first is often called the root. If you want to know what the major scale sounds like, refer to the melody example above.

What does that all mean? To get from the first to the second in the scale, you go 2 halfsteps up. To get from the second to the third, you go 2 halfsteps up. Et cetera, until you finally reach the next octave up (rarely called so, the eighth). Now, you can make any major scale on any key by using these intervals. Try it with C as the first; you'll see that it's just all the white keys!

Why are scales important to music? All music is generally composed within scales. For instance, in a song, you'll hear lots of notes, but they aren't being played on random keys; they're all usually part of a given scale. A major scale is usually called the happier scale. Play it out on the keyboard; it sounds cheery. Now, the other most important scale is the minor scale. It works much the same way as the major, but with different intervals. (It should be noted that 95% of trance songs are minor. Some good exceptions are songs from Airbase.)

Minor Scale
Key:______1st_2nd_3rd_4th_5th_6th_7th_Oct
Interval:_0___2___1___2___2___1___2___2 (semitones)

The image below highlights the C minor scale.



You can now make an E minor or G minor or whatever scale based on these intervals.

Example: The Same Short Melody Above, Modulated to the Minor Scale
Melody in C minor

There is also another important note which exists on both scales: the fifth, or "perfect" interval. You'll see that in both major and minor scales, the fifths are both the same key, known as a perfect fifth. This notes are very important harmonically; I won't get into the physics too much, but they resonate in a similar way to how octaves do. For instance, play C and it's fifth (G) together. You'll find that the two are very harmonious together.
Remember when I mentioned using sharps and flats earlier? They have a large application in scales. Sometimes musicians will intentionally play (usually) one note sharp or flat of a normal minor or major scale to get a certain sound. When they do this, the modified note which is not in the original scale is called an accidental. If it is sharp, it is known as augmented. If it is flat, it is known as diminished.

Next up is chords. Chords are, simply, more than one note played at the same time. For instance, when you played C and G together a minute ago, you played a chord (in rock, this specific one is known as a "power chord"). The standard contruction for a chord is a triad, which consists of the first, third, and fifth of a scale played at the same time. Therfore, a C minor triad is C, D#, and G all played at the same time. Try it on your keyboard, it should sound a little "sad". Chords of any size can be constructed, and are named specifically for what they contain, but I won't get into how that works.

It is important to note that the chord a fifth up (C triad to a G tried, for example) is called the dominant. A chord a fourth up (IE, C triad to F triad) is called the sub-dominant.

Harmony refers to the sound created when keys are played as a chord. For instance, good harmony would be keys played within the scale, while bad harmony would be keys played together which are outside the scale and clash.

Chord progressions are made by playing multiple chords in succession, like you would a melody.

Example: A Short Chord Progression (Staring with a C minor Triad)
Chord Progression

The chords used in the above example, for visual reference. The song begins with a C minor triad then moves on to play several other manipulated triads.




Conjugate scales are when a minor scale has indentical notes to a major one. For instance, C major has all the same keys as A minor (all the white ones!). For every major, there is also a corresponding minor with the same keys.

Conjugates
Minor__Major
A______C
A#_____C#
Bb_____Db
B______D
C______Eb
C#_____E
D______F
D#_____F#
Eb_____Gb
E______G
F______Ab
F#_____A
G______Bb
Ab_____Cb


Know and understand these terms. Musicians of all genres use these; you'll hear them a lot if you ever go onto any other musical scenes.

Chapter 3 - Harmonic Mixing

Now we can begin learning about harmonic mixing.

The goal harmonic mixing is to basically make our own (2) chord progressions when we transition between songs, or find songs with similar scales to enough so that their melodies and basslines
can work together harmoniously.

First off, though, how do we find what key a song is? The easiest way is to use mixmeister, which is correct 85 or so percent of the time. It is also quick and automatic. It works by detecting which notes are played and decides which scale those notes best fit into. It is important to note that mixmeister will only return minor scales when it reads the keys. If a sound sounds major as is given as minor, refer to the conjugate chart above to find the proper
major key for it.

You can also do it by ear. The first note of the melody is usually (but not always) the key of the song. So, you can playing a keyboard or instrument with a song, and discovering what note the first note of the melody is by ear (also, the bassline usually revolves around the key a song is in). Some of you may be a little tone deaf and have great difficulty figuring this out; mixmeister might be better for you.

To elaborate on the ear method: take out a keyboard, set it to piano or whatever you prefer. Play a song you want to key in the background. Begin pressing around random keys, and try to find the one that sounds most like the starting note of a song. Then, begin playing the rest of the scale along with it, and if all the keys in the scale sound right, then you have found the key of the track. If not, start again from a different key until you find one where all the notes seem to be matching. You may also notice some tracks where 6/7 of the notes fit into place, and no other scale you seem to try works. When this happens, you have probably discovered a track written in a substandard key such as harmonic minor. Rather than identify exactly what scale it is, though, just jot down whatever note in the scale is accidental along with the key.

So, once you have the key of the song and the next one you want to play, you can begin harmonically mixing. However, something important to note is that when you change the speed of the song to match the speed of the other record playing, you adjust the key it's in. One semitone difference is exactly +/- 5.61257%. So, if you were to have a song in C and pitch it up 5.6%, it now becomes C#. If you pitch it down 5.6%, it becomes B. Because the shift is linear, 5.6% will shift exactly one semitone regardless of the key of the song.

With that in mind, there's a % range you should try to stay in when mixing. + or - 1.5% will usually still leave you in the original key. +/- 4.5-7.5% will be about 1 semitone up or so. Note that mixing outside of these ranges potentially sounds very bad. However, you also need to take into account the song you're mixing into. For instance, if song B is at +4%, and song A is at +4%, and song B is mixed into song A and they are both the same key, the mix will still sound good

Chapter 4 - Application

So, now that we have the keys of the songs as well as understanding how the pitch slider affects the key, how do we apply this to mixing? The easiest way is to just mix in the same keys; for instance, mix a song that's in B minor into a song that's also in minor. The notes will blend together perfectly and you will likely barely hear the mix. While this is nice, if you made a whole set in the same key, it'd be a lot like playing a melody all with the same key; very boring.

Another good one, similar to mixing in the same key, is mixing by conjugates. An example would be an A minor song into a C major one. This will make a very smooth progression from a sad song to a happier one. The problem you might run into is that there aren't many songs written in major scale for your genre.

Mixing into a scale a fifth above your key (dominant) is a very good idea, though. A scale one fifth up (for instance, your starting tune is in C minor, and then you mix into G minor) will sound good because 6 out of the 7 keys in a scale one fifth up will be part of the original scale (Though, if the second is used a lot in the dominant track, it will sound bad. Use your ears, you'll be able to hear it easily.) But generally, it is a good idea to mix between fifths. Fourths (sub-dominant) also include many of the same intervals and will also mix well (C minor --> F minor).

Example: Mixing to a dominant
Jirah - Emergency (Fm) Mixed into Talamasca - Lysergic Warp (Cm)

Now, if you try mixing a bunch of tracks using either the dominant or subdominant chords, you may find that certain songs work better using the subdominant than dominant, or vice versa. What is the cause of this? Let's look at how the dominant and subdominant scales line up in comparison to the original scale.

Original Scale Compared to Dominant Scale (C minor vs G minor)


Original Scale Compared to Subdominant Scale (C minor vs F minor)


As you can well see in the dominant scale image, the G minor scale has an A, which is not included in the C minor scale. This means that if you try to mix into a G minor track from a C minor and the creator of the G minor song decided to use a whole lot of seconds in the song he wrote, then the mix will turn out somewhat lacking in harmony.

On the other hand, you can see that the subdominant scale also is lacking of a note in the original scale; F minor includes C sharp (sixth on the Fm scale). The resulting problem you could have here mixing from C minor to F minor is that the person who wrote the F minor song decided to use a whole lot of sixths, which will sound bad with a C minor scale.

The solution to the above mentioned problems is to either have a really keen ear that can look out for seconds or sixths in a track, or to test them at home beforehand.

You can also mix between any of the keys in a scale for given effects. For instance, on the C minor scale, D# is a third up. So, you can mix a C minor song into a D# minor one to produce a nice harmonic effect between the transitions. Try this with other intervals on the scale as well to produce different results.

You can make various elaborate transitions in your mix using these methods. You can swap basses between two songs to imitate playing a short 2 chord progression on your keyboard (for instance, play a C minor triad on your keyboard and then a G minor triad. Sounds nice, huh?). You can make several different transitions represent a whole chord progression. Label your records and CD's, keep track of all their keys in your head, and memorize the scales so that you can instantly think off the top of your head what will mix well.

I will also include this chart that you might want to print out and keep with you so you can easily know all the notes on a minor scale.

Minor Scale Chart
____1st2nd3rd4th5th6th7th
C : C__D__D#_F__G__G#_A#
C#: C#_D#_E__F#_G#_A__B
D : D__E__F__G__A__A#_C
D#: D#_F__F#_G#_A#_B__C#
E : E__F#_G__A__B__C__D
F : F__G__G#_A#_C__C#_D#
F#: F#_G#_A__B__C#_D__E
G : G__A__A#_C__D__D#_F
G#: G#_A#_B__C#_D#_E__F#
A : A__B__C__D__E__F__G
A#: A#_C__C#_D#_F__F#_G#
B : B__C#_D__E__F#_G__A

Chapter 5 - Credits

All this is written by me, Christina B., AKA DJ Nuclear. You can contact me at [email protected] about questions or concerns about this guide, or (more likely to get a response), post them right here in this thread.

Made exclusively with textpad, fruityloops, and MS Paint.

I hope that this guide helps those who were struggling with these concepts before.

___________________
Alcoholic Alliance
The Ecstasy (MDMA) Bible Thread 2.0

quote:

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Last edited by Fast Turtle on Jan-16-2004 at 01:00