Harmonic Mixing

What is Harmonic Mixing?

All songs are in written in a certain "key". A musical key is a note or chord that a song is based around. The song's other notes kind of revolve around this center note or key. For example a certain track may have a key of C Sharp, and another track may have a key of E Major. It's more complicated than that, but unless you want me to teach a class on music theory, that's close enough.

Certain musical keys flow well with other keys. And other keys don't mesh well together. The art of Harmonic Mixing means only mixing tracks together that have complementary keys. When a DJ plays a set using Harmonic Mixing, the set will flow and sound much better than if they don't. Many times, this musical difference is a subconsious thing. Most people don't listen to a set and say, "those songs didn't have complementary musical keys!" Mixing songs with keys that don't complement each other IS noticeable, but the listner just doesn't know why it doesn't sound good.

If you've been a DJ for a while, you may have noticed that some tracks just don't go well together. You may not have really know why, but it just didn't sound right. It's probably because the songs were in non-compatible keys.

Traditionaly, musicians can find the key of a song by using a piano. But unless you've been trained in music theory, this may be pretty hard for the average person to do. There is now some Harmonic Mixing DJ Software that will help the average DJ figure out what key all of their songs are in.

But, there's something even better. There is now a Pioneer Mixer that will adjust the key of the songs for you! Much less work.

Make sure you start to practice Harmonic Mixing, otherwise your sets won't sound as good as the guys who do!