Keeping in key [music production help]

[LilJuice9]

hi btf,
i was putting a beat together over a drake acapella yesterday and I was putting piano chordes and a simple bassline as a starting point for the track. i had a friend with me and he told me that the track wasnt in key. does anyone know what this means? I dont understand what it is lol. ive never done music theory at school before and i know basic piano chordes. lol if anyone can help then that would be great thanks (ill give karma for sure)

 

[RsKderpu]

hi btf,
i was putting a beat together over a drake acapella yesterday and I was putting piano chordes and a simple bassline as a starting point for the track. i had a friend with me and he told me that the track wasnt in key. does anyone know what this means? I dont understand what it is lol. ive never done music theory at school before and i know basic piano chordes. lol if anyone can help then that would be great thanks (ill give karma for sure)

Mixed in Key tutorial 1
Dubspot DJ Tutorial: What is Harmonic Mixing - Using Traktor + Mixed in Key by DJ Endo

 

[LilJuice9]

wicked! thanks! karma coming your way (i mean by btf karma not karma as in shit karma) ;-)

 

[yraparla]

The bigggest thing though is to start working your ears. Most of the DJs I really respect aren't so formulaic with this, everything is done by ear. So try mixing it so it sounds good, then check the keys to see if you did it correctly. Adjust it and relisten and try to focus on what's different and why you thought your original mix was fine.


That's the only way to learn and get better, and once you do you can try more creative things rather than just simple mix-by-numbers

 

[LilJuice9]

The bigggest thing though is to start working your ears. Most of the DJs I really respect aren't so formulaic with this, everything is done by ear. So try mixing it so it sounds good, then check the keys to see if you did it correctly. Adjust it and relisten and try to focus on what's different and why you thought your original mix was fine.


That's the only way to learn and get better, and once you do you can try more creative things rather than just simple mix-by-numbers

ok, that sounds good. i will most definitely train my ears. also, if the vocal, piano, bassline were all in different keys then what would be the final key of the track overall? cause i know some producers do the vocal and music in seperate keys

 

[yraparla]

You know I don't have a lot of music theory background, just picked it up on the way. In my experience it's based on what you're doing for the mix. If you EQ you can pick out just the part of the song you want (i.e. vocals/bassline/whatever).


Songs can sound good even if it's not a perfect tonic match. Following website gives some examples. So if the production has different keys, you can find a key that would mix with all the ones present in the song


http://www.mixshare.com/wiki/doku.php?id=mixing_harmonically


furthermore, just because it's different keys doesn't mean they're really that different. Could be a note or two, so you could try and find where those notes are particularly jarring and pitch shift them individually. It all depends on what you want to do, and this is what I meant by doing something more complex.

 

[LilJuice9]

thanks for that swi
+1 to you sir!