*coughcough...* No one picked up on some really glaring errors in this now that I look back on it...er...I'll fix it tonight.

___________________
Alcoholic Alliance
The Ecstasy (MDMA) Bible Thread 2.0

quote:

Originally posted by Masonious you win again dude - and nice move shoving the whole i figured out how to order pizza thing in my face. i tried that 4 and a half months ago and woke up with a Taiwanese transvestite but to Ygrene it's just, "anoother day in the life, noooo biggieee".

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Nuclear *coughcough...* No one picked up on some really glaring errors in this now that I look back on it...er...I'll fix it tonight.

Well... either we are too polite to mention it... or we are just a bunch of crazed illiterates who wouldn't notice even if they jumped up and bit us in the arse.

Also given the quality of the majority of posts on this forum, anything with a vague resemblance of structure is often welcomed with open arms.

Juzz zo jooooo is undazdandin' meh!

Cheers
Nem

___________________
https://www.mixcloud.com/Calvin_Karass/

quote:

Originally posted by borron Thanks for the support Nem. But i'm stil pretty much in the dark, i keep making mistakes. I have many tracks which i can't classify. Take a look at this case: I have a small very calm and relaxed track with a saxophone behind. It is quite difficult to find the correct key. Mixmeister gave me G minor, and i did a few mixes and it went ok. But a musician friend of mine came here and told me it was D. So i tried mixing with A to take away the doubts. It went well. And when i pass it through rapid evolution, it says it is an A minor. This happens to me all the time! I guess the best way to make sure is to find out by mixing, right? But the problem is that this track sounds nice when mixing with A, D, G and C! It does sound a little nicer with A than with C, so i'm making it a D.

Hey there Borron,

I would be inclined to go with what your musican friend says (assuming that he has been playing for long enough to tell, which I am sure he has). The human method is often the best way as I have found that people who use the automated ways often come across errors. Not saying the human method is flawless but still more accurate than using applications.

quote:

Also another thing: let's imagine i have a track in A major. Can i treat it as an A minor, or i have to treat it as F# minor (the relative minor)?

It's better treating it for what it really is but you can get away with treating it as a minor. It depends largely on the structure of the song that's being played out and the one you are bringing in. If you are bringing in a track that at that point has just got bassline then it shouldn't matter assuming that the bassline is the root note.

An A major would also work with D and E in theory.

_____________________________________________________________________

On a more general note to someone who is not sure if it's for them.

The thing to remember is this.
A lot of DJs will disrespect harmonic mixing as they think it's DJing by numbers. They will often say that they will pick a track because it feels right. Which is fair enough as there are a handfull of them that actually harmonically mix without knowing that's what they are doing. The vast majority don't however.
Once you start learning more about it, your feelings and choices will just be more educated hence you have nothing to loose by learning this.
Before I discovered harmonic mixing in terms of the theory, I used to spend a lot of time finding records that sounded good together, that just seemed to flow for some reason.
Then I read an interview with Oakenfold who happened to mention this and I was imeadiately intrigued. I looked into it further only to discover that it was what I was doing all along. The diffrerence was that with musical knowledge I could do it everytime I mixed without having to see if a record was compatible or not.
Then also taking it to the next level through energy changes and so on. There are very few DJs who can instinctively mess around with energy levels and get it right without knowing some theory.

I have had practice at doing this and at this point I can actually tell you in most cases what key a track is in without the help of a musical instrument, or at the very least what other tracks would work with it. This will come in time if you practice I promise. The more you do it the more familiar you are with how it should sound.

It's like beat matching, if you do it often enough you will in time actually hear what the pitch should be set at before you even compare the two tracks together just by the feel of the flow. (Admittedly not a 100% match but in the right area).

It's all about practice my friends. I still do it after all my years as a DJ.

Sorry for the ramble... just felt like it.

Cheers
Nem

___________________
https://www.mixcloud.com/Calvin_Karass/

updates in 1.01
-fixed and added a few definitions
-added some samples; only one sample mix up right now, I'll add some more soon
-added some samples of the music theory stuff
-added more detailed method to key by ear
-added information on the dominant/subdominant mix problems

___________________
Alcoholic Alliance
The Ecstasy (MDMA) Bible Thread 2.0

quote:

Originally posted by Masonious you win again dude - and nice move shoving the whole i figured out how to order pizza thing in my face. i tried that 4 and a half months ago and woke up with a Taiwanese transvestite but to Ygrene it's just, "anoother day in the life, noooo biggieee".

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Nuclear updates in 1.01 -fixed and added a few definitions -added some samples; only one sample mix up right now, I'll add some more soon -added some samples of the music theory stuff -added more detailed method to key by ear -added information on the dominant/subdominant mix problems

The lady is a superstar.

Nem

___________________
https://www.mixcloud.com/Calvin_Karass/

I keep hearing that "don't mix by numbers, mix by feeling" shit from local dj's and friends. The thing is that i choose my record solely based on the feeling, and THEN check if it's harmonically compatible. If it's not, then i chose another and check again. And so on. I guess it's the right thing do to! And i happen to be harmonic most of the time by feeling

About the key preference, i only got 50 records or so, but 20% of the tracks are in Am! I also got a lot in Cm, Dm, D#m and Em.

quote:

Originally posted by borron I keep hearing that "don't mix by numbers, mix by feeling" shit from local dj's and friends. The thing is that i choose my record solely based on the feeling, and THEN check if it's harmonically compatible. If it's not, then i chose another and check again. And so on. I guess it's the right thing do to! And i happen to be harmonic most of the time by feeling About the key preference, i only got 50 records or so, but 20% of the tracks are in Am! I also got a lot in Cm, Dm, D#m and Em.

Absolutely,

Also as you say it's in key most of the time anyways. Usually a record feels right because it is in the right key. Besides don't worry about what the others say. If they don't do it fine... you would just be different to them which is actually a plus for you as it will make you stand out.

Cheers
Nem

___________________
https://www.mixcloud.com/Calvin_Karass/

quote:

Originally posted by borron I keep hearing that "don't mix by numbers, mix by feeling" shit from local dj's and friends. The thing is that i choose my record solely based on the feeling, and THEN check if it's harmonically compatible. If it's not, then i chose another and check again. And so on. I guess it's the right thing do to! And i happen to be harmonic most of the time by feeling About the key preference, i only got 50 records or so, but 20% of the tracks are in Am! I also got a lot in Cm, Dm, D#m and Em.

heh, that a lot is written in C, D, A and E is not surprising. C minor is what people tend to learn first when learning the minor scale, A minor is all white keys, and D and E minor are mostly all white keys as well (E is also used in a whole lot of tracks that involve guitars because guitars are tuned by default to an a major chord that can be easily modulated to minor).

I have a psy from one artist with 6/9 tracks in a minor.

quote:

-A minor is usually associated in very "happy" tracks; these tracks spread a lot of energy and happiness

Usually they sound the same as any other minor track (unless there are accidentals in it). I could give some sad tracks in minor offhand: portishead - roads, radiohead - street spirit...

Some producers have very little formal music education and just kinda make music based on what sounds good, so you may get some songs with very loose scale-based stucture.

___________________
Alcoholic Alliance
The Ecstasy (MDMA) Bible Thread 2.0

quote:

Originally posted by Masonious you win again dude - and nice move shoving the whole i figured out how to order pizza thing in my face. i tried that 4 and a half months ago and woke up with a Taiwanese transvestite but to Ygrene it's just, "anoother day in the life, noooo biggieee".

Last edited by Fast Turtle on Jan-16-2004 at 21:35

in the manual it says you can use mixmeister to find out which key a song is in.
i have cool edit pro 2, is this as good as mixmeister at working out the key?

Ok i have one more question.

Let's imagine i'm playing a track in B minor at a pitch speed of +2.2%.
Can i mix it with a track in E minor at -2%?

I didn't quite get that part of the pitch differences, so what counts is how much a single track is away from the 0 pitch (2% and 2.2 are both below the 3% threshold), or if it is the pitch difference which cannot be more than 3% (in this case, 2.2 + 2 = 4.2%, above the 3% threshold)?

And can you tell me if the answer to the above applies when mixing between the same key (B->B) or just to different keys (B->E and B->F#)?

Please enlighten me on this (i hope you understand what i mean, english is not my native language and sometimes it's hard for me to express myself).

Last edited by borron on Jan-20-2004 at 17:43

Bloody interesting question and one I don't have an answer for to be honest. Never really thought about it.

I will check it out and get back to you if no one answers you before that.

Nem

___________________
https://www.mixcloud.com/Calvin_Karass/

quote:

Originally posted by Nemesis44 Bloody interesting question and one I don't have an answer for to be honest. Never really thought about it. I will check it out and get back to you if no one answers you before that. Nem

The pitch is shifted linearly....I had actually thought of this problem before but hadn't solved it yet. When the pitch is adjusted between tracks with percents, the cents also change equally.

Now I will take care of it, though.

Let's take A at 440 hz. Now, a pitch shift of 2% up leaves A roughly 33 cents up, at ~448.5 hertz or so. Now look at A one octave up at 880 hz. +2% pitch change yields +33 cents, so ~897 hz.
So, a song in the same key pitched up 2% will mix perfectly with a song in the same key pitched up 2%. Additionally, songs which would mix well at 0 would mix fine if they're both at 4%, etc.

To further prove this, let's look at mixing an E song into an A one. (E into subdominant). E is ~330hz and A is 440. Pitch these up 2% (33 cents) and E becomes ~336 and A becomes ~448.5. Now, look at the ratio between 330 and 400: .75. Now, 336 and 448.5: ~.75. If I use more accurate measurements for the frequency, the ratios are revealed to be exactly the same. Therefore, a mix between the two if they're both +2% sounds exactly as nice as if they were at 0.

However: Let's look at a song in B and E, B pitched up at 2% and E pitched down at 2%. The frequency of the B song would be +33 cents (from ~247hz -> ~252), and the E song would be -33 cents (from ~330hz -> ~323.4). So the difference between the two would be ~66 cents (4%).

If you didn't understand that technical stuff, this results in the tracks sounding very bad together (the E and B ones), so when you choose what track to play, one of the most important factors to keep in mind is the overall pitch difference between the two. The difference should not exceed about 2.5 or so percent.

This'll be added in the next update to the guide.

___________________
Alcoholic Alliance
The Ecstasy (MDMA) Bible Thread 2.0

quote:

Originally posted by Masonious you win again dude - and nice move shoving the whole i figured out how to order pizza thing in my face. i tried that 4 and a half months ago and woke up with a Taiwanese transvestite but to Ygrene it's just, "anoother day in the life, noooo biggieee".

Last edited by Fast Turtle on Jan-21-2004 at 04:21