Getting it all in key
Musical key is a consideration for every remix. At the most basic level, it’ll be needed to make sure that all the elements you add are in key with the elements you’ve brought over and the original track itself.
But music theory can come in very handy if you’re going above and beyond the usual remit. Playing with the key signature of the original song and stamping a new one on your own version is an audacious thing to do, and if you don’t do it right you can fail miserably.
If you’re going to mess with the key of the track, you’ve got two options: the first is to manipulate pitches, transpose samples and force it into a completely new scale. Using modern tools like Melodyne, Auto-Tune or even quite basic DAW or sampler timestretching features, it’s not exactly hard to make a remix conform to your designs by brute force. Transposing elements by several semitones or even whole octaves is certainly one way to make a statement.
The second option is to use a relative key. This is a more clever but quite technical way to do things, and it makes use of the original elements as they are, without the need to tweak any pitches. The relative minor key of C major, for example, is A minor. These two scales share the same notes, but the scales just start at different points. C major is C D E F G A B C, and A minor is A B C D E F G A. Thus, anything from C major will also sound good in A minor.
You can take this concept even further. Analyse what notes the elements you’re bringing over from the original song are made up of. Your selections may contain all seven from the original key, or may contain less. If they contain, say, five notes in total, your key can be any one that contains those five notes. Use a tool like a Scale Finder (bit.ly/ ScaleFinder) to enter the notes you have at your disposal and identify the keys they can fit into. Search only ‘normal’ scales for the best and most logical results.