DJ BETTER - HOW TO MIX IN KEY (THE CAMELOT WHEEL)

[Music] what's going on you guys welcome to the video my name is Armand if you're new to the channel I am a toronto-based deep house and progressive house DJ lawyer by day DJ bait by night and car lover so this video has been a long time coming because I've gotten quite a lot of requests from from people on this topic so here it is it is a video on how to mix in key when you're DJing so we're gonna have to go through a little bit of the basics of music theory to understand some of the very high-level basics about keys and key shifting and what is a major key versus a minor key but don't worry I'm assuming because you're watching this video that you don't have any advanced musical training or music theory which is why you're watching this because if you if you did you would already know what it means to mix in key or how to shift between the different keys and do that without the sounds clashing so what you might have noticed before if you're in a nightclub and the DJ does a bad mix is you may sound like the the two songs as they're blending just don't quite fit with one another and usually that's because there's some kind of harmonic melodic problem that is one song isn't another key that is just not compatible and the DJ is made the error by selecting a song to play and you know the one way to do that if you're gonna just absolutely have to play that song is wait until the melodies have fallen away from the first song right so the beats just it kind of just reduces down to the baseline and the beats and then you might be able to mix in the new song notwithstanding that it's in a clashing key but what we're trying to talk about today and what what the goal is for taking your DJ skills and your mixing from a beginner level up to an intermediate or more of advanced level would be to be able to not drop the energy level and just reduce things down to the beat only during your set because believe me that's noticeable we're talking about being able to lay our harmonies over one another be a bit more bold with our mixing you know start mixing in the next song when the other song still has like two and a half minutes left to play and you're gonna have melodies layered over one another so before it sounds like the first song is about to stop or that's coming to its end you're already well on your way with the next song so the energy level maintains and it becomes a lot more difficult for the people on the dance floor to understand that the song has even begun changing and that's what you want right is you want seamless sneaky mixing but the listener doesn't even know the next thing they know it's say oh the new song is already it's on it's arrived I like this song but when did it when did it change right that's what we want to do so to help explain today and so that that you can actually hear it we're going to use three different aids today to guide us through this tutorial we're going to use guitar my turntables and the famous Camelot wheel okay so to start with let us have a look at what the Camelot wheel is because that may be a term or a name that you've never heard before the Camelot wheel is a fairly ingenious graphic representation of major of all the keys major keys and minor keys and they're arranged in such a fashion that it allows you to visualize what key would mix well with another key so the way this is arranged is that you'll see all the major keys are on the outside of the wheel and that there's twelve of them and then on the inside of the wheel you have the twelve minor keys the way this is intended to be used is that if you're in say B major which is cell number of one B you're able to move so say the song you're playing is B major and then you have to choose the next song the next song then allows you to go next door to E major or down to f-sharp major or immediately down into the interval for the minor keys to a flat minor those are the permitted moves that you can get away with and not have a harmonic out of key clash that will sound bad so if you're playing in B major then this here is your permitted zone everything that's outlined in red of where you're entitled to go now before we go a step further with let's talk about what the differences are between major keys and minor keys let me get the guitar to demonstrate if you've been following my channel you may have heard me mention this in previous tutorials that major keys tend to sound more full more rich and more pleasing to our ears so for example here is the chord of D major okay and then if I change it to D minor which is only a half step of difference on my East high e-string of my guitar [Music] now I think everyone can agree that sounds a little bit darker a little bit unsettling like maybe one note is out of in the wrong place or something is missing from the chord so again if I play them back to back more quickly oops sorry kind of sounds like it leaves you hanging right and what I've noticed with deep house music because a lot of it is arranged in such a way is to kind of sound dark and brooding and and a bit mysterious I've noticed a lot a lot of deep bass music is in the key of a minor okay so now what does it mean for a song to be in certain key well it typically is what that means is that the the notes in the song fall into the notes that you can play in a certain scale so it's a bit beyond the scope of this tutorial but for example if you want to look up an a minor scale you can see what the notes are in there and then it kind of has to do with where the notes resolve to in the song what are the leading chords of the song and again I'll leave that further you can obviously read up on the internet lots of resources out there but for now goes a little bit beyond the scope of this tutorial okay so now with that basic understanding let's use the guitar to give a few examples of permissible moves around the Camelot wheel okay so I'm allowed to go from cell 9b over on the left side of the wheel G major I can go up to D major or I could go down to C major or I can even go in to E minor to do a major to minor key shift so let's start out with the major keys I'll go from G major to D major back to G major again and then down to C major that would sound like this [Music] okay and you can hear the thump lament each other well it doesn't sound like anything's out of place or anything's going wrong and it's no surprise because actually those three chords are a three out of like six chords that go almost all the way sasaengs are written with and in fact Oasis would come under criticism from the law of guitar players that oh it's uh unimaginative guitar writings they use like the same six or seven chords and all their songs but guess what they write hits and it's hard to argue with that if it's simple it's it may be catchy and just cuz it's simple doesn't mean it's not good so let's try now going from the key shift of G major into E major so again G is here G major and E minor would be like this [Music] okay that sounds fine as well but suppose I was to go from G major to E major instead of E minor as I'm permitted to do on the Camelot wheel if I go from G major to e major that sounds like a little bit more of something's happening the song is changing up the momentum and the mood now it's not to say that you could never link those two chords together in a song you could but remember what we're talking about here is DJ mixing which means that these chords were notes that belong to the family of scales that's in that key the song is written in will be playing over one another at the same time as you mix the songs and that's where the trouble could could arise right so if I were to play a G major chord and layer it over a say D minor chord at the same time and I'll do that and I'll play them together through my software I'll record both and I'll play them back for you right now you can hear that those two chords are fighting with one another it does not sound good whereas if I play a G major chord in a C major chord at the same time as one another [Music] sounds a lot better doesn't it okay so if that understanding in place now I think we've exhausted the guitar let us go to the turntables and I will do a couple of mixes of permissible moves within the Camelot wheel but then I will also do some that violate the rules and you can decide for yourselves which DJ mixes sound better as I change the song over to the new song alright so before we go to the turntables then as a final note let's just talk about where this takes you in your DJ practicing what I would recommend doing is printing off in color a Camelot wheel for yourself as a reference guide or have it up on your laptop or your iPad or whatever and refer to it for a while and follow the rules and see what happens to your sets record your sets practice mixing in key or with the permissible key shifting of the wheel and see how things improve for you after that you know practice like that for a few weeks or a month take the Camelot wheel away try and use your ears only and try and learn what sounds good and what doesn't based off of these general rules because if you're playing a live set in a nightclub unless it's a pre-arranged set and preview pre-programmed all the songs you're not gonna wanna really be pulling out a camel hot wheel and referring to a bar you're DJing right probably won't look very cool so the idea here is to understand the basic rules the fundamentals and if you can memorize all 24 positions on the Camelot wheel then great if you have a photographic memory that may work for you as well but um you know practice this try and develop the ear for it and I hope that this has been helpful for everyone in terms of mixing in key and if you have any questions just post in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them guys alright thanks for watching and as always please subscribe and browse the channel for other DJ tutorial videos let's go to the turntables [Music] 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Channel: Sound of Arman

Views: 105,522

Keywords: dj mix, how to mix, mix in key, dj mixing, dj mix in key, key mixing, how to dj mix, how to dj, how to mix in key, pioneer dj, deep house, house music, edm, electronic music

Id: 7BWKH-0EKM4

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 09 2018