Harmonic mixing (and matching)

It’s easy to identify the elements of your tracks that fit together in the same key by using specialist software – we’ll show you how…

Music theory isn’t for everyone, and that shouldn’t be a mark of shame – especially when there’s so much software out there that can simply take a lot of the work out of it for you. Mixed In Key is one such piece of software. Technically a sample organiser, Mixed In Key throws in analysis of tempo and key signature, tagging your sample or track library and letting you filter the collection down to only the elements that are far more likely to fit together. The software uses the ‘Camelot’ system of harmonic mixing, colour-coding and tagging different keys with different combinations of numbers and letters to more easily fit things together without too much study. Yes, Mixed In Key was originally designed for analysing whole tracks but, as you’ll see, it can make short harmonic work of a bunch of samples, too. > We launch Mixed In Key. When we click the Add Files button, we can point the software to our Remix Kits folder (your free 4GB of Construction Kits). Mixed In Key immediately analyses the samples as to their Tempo, their Key, and their ‘Energy’ and ‘Cue Points’.

> Instead of keys like C major and Db minor, keys are named from 1A to 12B. The outer ring (the Bs) are major keys, while the inner ring (the As) are the minors. Moving clockwise or anticlockwise one step takes you a fifth up or down. Select a key to filter the samples list.

> We can use Mixed In Key as a browser, dragging samples into our DAW. When it’s time to change key, select samples from the next segment, clockwise or anticlockwise; when you want something that fits with the current key, take a sample from the same segment ‘number’.)