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Mixing in Key / Harmonic Mixing / Music management

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Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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  • September 12, 2012 at 8:37 am #1012069
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    Lots of programs can detect they key (VDJ, even the free home version). However I like how MixedInKey manages things, is fast and as far as I can tell the most accurate.
    And we had a lot of topics on harmonic mixing…
    This one is pretty nice: http://www.digitaldjtips.com/tag/harmonic-mixing/

    September 12, 2012 at 9:03 am #1012070
    DeeJay SiBoogie
    Participant

    I read it some time ago before I joined the forum. For non DVS users though RB can be a handy “free” program whereas MIK is $58 and BT$35. RekordBox tends to get looked over becuse it’s seen as a Pioneer product specific to the CDJ’s but it has it uses for non Pioneer users. I’m not sure how accurate any of the progams are as you’ll always find someone somewhere with a tale of woe about their experience with a particular bit of software or hardware. I found Beatunes to have more functions than MixedInKey which was why I went for it and still use it.

    September 12, 2012 at 9:10 am #1012071
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    Well I started harmonic mixing long before I went digital… had to label my vinyls etc. and I am prolly one of the few who remember the time when the “free beep” on old mobile phones was exactly 440 Hz (A) so you had a reference.

    MIK just gets the job done for me, it is no spectacular software. I did not think much about the price, as I always calculate this vs the money I get per gig and compared MIK is still cheap.
    This is also why I consider it cheap software, when you reach the level where you consider harmonic mixing you should already have mastered the basics of DJing quite well and either have good gigs or are very enthusiastic. Either way 50 bucks won’t matter that much.

    I never tried BT though and will try to check it out some time.

    September 12, 2012 at 9:45 am #1012072
    DeeJay SiBoogie
    Participant

    BT has a trail d/l think of it of Itunes for DJs. There’s also a colour/mood system which I’m still not sure about. It will play a track and ask you to assign a colour based on the mood of that track it then stores that information and looks at your collection and assign colours based on ????. The more tracks you process the more accurate it’s supposed to get. So with the key and colour it’s supposed to assist in create a superior flow.
    Price isn’t an issue for us but for the younger (not that I’m saying you’re old) beginers or people just wanting to try something then free can be a good starting point.

    September 12, 2012 at 10:41 am #1012074
    Rob Francis
    Member

    I never see the point of the colour coding system in Beatunes as you can’t do anything with it outside of Beatunes so whats the point? Thats another program I bought but never use (like Xtreme Mapping).

    I have tried out Rekordbox too and it looks good but there is no integration with Traktor.

    As time goes on I get more convinced that everything has to be done in Traktor. I use iTunes simply to store the music. Once it comes to tagging / playlists / comments etc you have to use Traktor. I’ve lost no end of MP3 tags that either iTunes or Traktor have deleted as they don’t play well together.

    I guess it is all a ploy by Native Instruments…

    September 12, 2012 at 12:03 pm #1012079
    DeeJay SiBoogie
    Participant

    @Rob > The colour system comes in to play when creating playlist either manually or letting beatunes do an automatic playlist based on your criteria. Similar to the way itunes creates a playlist, I have had some suprisingly good results to. You can export those playist in to Traktor or any DVS, in my case I put it on usb stick and did a broadcast. Admitedly I don’t use the auto function normally as intially I got it purely for the Key funtion.

    RekordBox as it stands now has it’s own Key recognition which is the main reason for this post. I found itunes slow to respond making tagging a slow process whereas RekordBox is much more responsive. There’s a progam called Rekord Buddy that allows you export all infomation from RekordBox in to Traktor, beatgrid, cue points, loops etc. I’t’s freeware from a DJ here: http://www.facebook.com/DamienSirkis the link is on his FB page

    September 12, 2012 at 1:05 pm #1012083
    Rob Francis
    Member

    What I would like is an application (or an add-on to Traktor) that allows you to define a number of “tags”. These tags would include anything you like, e.g. the mood of the track (“dark”, “uplifting”, etc) or certain aspects of the track (“vocals”, “breakbeats”) etc.

    Then you could quickly tick a couple of boxes to tag the tracks. This would apply some kind of MP3 tag which you can the search on in Traktor. Say you wanted house with a latin beat, you would search for “latin”.

    September 12, 2012 at 1:33 pm #1012084
    DeeJay SiBoogie
    Participant

    I use the Genre Column and comments. eg Genre would Soulful House Vocal in the comments I’d put Swinging or Sax blowout. I then create a general playtist with all my Soulful house tracks in and I can filter the columns. I will also create specific sub playlist so the under Soulful House will be other playlist containing vocals, instrumentals, piano breaks etc, and other contains Moods like High enery, Mid tempo, Smooth. There’s duplication of tracks in each folder but it makes for a quick find. Some of my tracks I’ll list in multple genre playlist if if fits so under my main Soulful House playlist there a V/G playlist that could include some Funky House, Tech House or anything that I think goes good. It’s just my way of quickly cross referencing my collection. Then every set I mix is also saved as a playlist, every track that gets a good response is tagged. That’s reminded me of the one irritating thing in RB is that you can’t amend the tag information on the fly if the decks are linked to it all you can do is tag(tick) for future reference.

    I don’t trust the search option on any software when playing live

    September 13, 2012 at 11:23 pm #1012138
    Erik Toth
    Participant

    I’ve been looking around for long time on different forums (even here) for tips how to organize my collection. Honestly it’s pretty much different answer every person you ask. So it’s ended up with something I made up on my own mixed with advice I’ve read (I think on DJTT).
    Genre/Track name/Artist are given ofc.
    I used MIK on my collection first and added the key to the comment. Then I went through my collection and rated the songs for energy (1* for low energy, 3* for mid and 5* for high energy level), this is 100% individual as what I find low energy maybe is mid for someone else…but I’m gonna play my tracks so it’s for me only. The same time I made a note in the comment field after the key (added by MIK) is the song is I=instrumental, SV=semi-vocal, V=vocal. So comment field can be like “4A – SV”.
    At the end I’ve sorted the tracks in 3 different directories depending on the 1-3-5* and done. if I want to see only a certain energy level tracks I open the directory in the browser in traktor. Sorting tracks in the collection by comment gonna give you tracks sorted by Key and I-V-SV within the same key.

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