Thanks to Beat Spot, a popular educational platform dedicated to demystifying music production, mixing, and engineering, you can finally find out how to “not suck” at DJing.
It’s no secret that beat-matching is the crux of DJing, but the ability to cohesively mix each track in key is one that eludes many artists. Beat Spot points to harmonic mixing as the most crucial aspect of putting together a perfect DJ mix. Knowing the key of every song an artist cues up—as well as compatible keys—is essential to a smooth performance.
Harmonic mixing is done by blending tracks that are in the same or related keys, which you can determine by detecting on your own or using a program such as Mixed In Key. Using the Camelot Wheel as a bedrock, Mixed In Key allows users to plug their music library into the program before it analyzes each track, assigning a number and a letter to each one.
Beat Spot points out that the letter “A” stands for the minor key, while “B” represents the major. Using these tags, artists should mix tracks in the same key—like 4A to 4A. They can also mix songs that share a tag, such as 5A to 4A or 5A to 5B. Check out Beat Spot’s post below.
