![]() ![]() ![]() I remember you could find the root key at the start of each notation. What I really found useful were these notation books of pop songs Pop Hits of 88 was one of them. I spent hours and hours reading about music theory, although I couldn’t play a single note on an instrument. There was no Internet to Google the information, and no harmonic mixing gurus were around, so I did it the old-fashioned way: I went to an actual library–you know, where they have books and everybody whispers. It used to review the DJ battle sets for DMC’s World Mixing Championship eliminations in the UK, and it used the phrase “out of key.” Curious as I was, I had to investigate what this key thing was all about. It puzzled me why this happened now and again.Īnother factor was the club and DJ magazine Mix Mag. I guess they blended so well that it was hard to tell them apart. At that time, I had to concentrate really hard to keep the beats in sync, and when the songs coincidentally were in the same key or in harmony, I had a hard time hearing which song was going faster or which one was going slower. Prince: I guess I started out mixing in harmony around 1987, at first just by accident. When did you start using the technique yourself? You launched one of the world’s first websites about harmonic mixing back in 1996. We spoke to him about his approach to making mashups and mixing harmonically. DJ Prince: Guru of Harmonic MixingĭJ Prince has been our mentor for all things related to DJing as a musical art form. When you’re creating a mashup, make sure the specific sections of the tunes you blend together are in the same key–or harmonically related keys, if you have time to experiment. ![]() Even if two songs are in 4A, the chorus of one might be in a different key, so it’s possible you won’t be able to overlay them without dissonance. It’s also important to be aware of key changes that already exist within a song. But when you’re making a mashup, it’s usually best to choose two songs in the same key to make things easier on yourself. It’s common to mix from 8A into 7A into 6A in just minutes. When you’re mixing in a club, chances are you’re changing the key with practically every mix. Michael Woods, “First Aid” Camelot key: 4A Kaskade and deadmau5, “Move for Me” (acapella) Camelot key: key: 4AĪs you can see, both of the original songs are harmonically compatible. Let’s take a look at Kaskade’s “Move for First Aid” as an example. The best mashups usually don’t go for too much complexity, but there’s still an art to making the different elements mesh together smoothly. A few years later, DJ Inphinity’s mashup of LMFAO’s vocals over Chuckie’s “Let the Bass Kick” became one of the biggest summer anthems of 2009. Guetta’s production partner Joachim Garraud took the lead vocal of Guetta’s “Love Don’t Let Me Go” and mixed it with The Egg’s “Walking Away (Tocadisco Remix).” The result made a huge splash on YouTube and was a worldwide club hit. Two mashups of tracks by David Guetta and LMFAO are perfect examples. Like The Grey Album, they can even become just as famous (or more so) than the original songs. If they’re done well, mashups can fundamentally change how people remember songs. A more complex mashup might alternate between two different melodies while using an acapella from a third song. Whatever method you choose, keep in mind that the most common (and accessible) mashups take the beat from one song and the vocals from another. You can use your DJ mixing setup to produce a mashup live in a club, or you can use software tools like Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase, or Mixed In Key Mashup to make one ahead of time and save it as an MP3. With that warning in mind, there are a number of ways to make them. Mashups can be powerful, but it’s best to use them in moderation. Even worse, you might piss off the club manager, which means you’ve lost any chance of coming back. Mixing five huge dance anthems together might energize a crowd, but to a lot of devoted fans of dance music, it degrades the clubbing experience. Of course, there’s also a not-so-fine line that separates a mashup as masterful as The Grey Album from a cheap, cheesy knockoff. It was a work of genius, and needless to say, when it leaked online in 2004, it also stirred up a lot of legal questions about sampling, rights ownership and copyright control. Probably the most well-known (and controversial) mashup ever made was Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, which mashed the solo vocals from Jay-Z’s The Black Album together with digitally chopped selections of Beatles songs from their classic White Album. ![]() One way is to create a mashup.Īt its most basic, a mashup blends two songs together to create a new one, but there’s really no limit to the number of sampled elements it can contain. There are a few more ways you can differentiate your sound, even when you’re playing the same tracks as another DJ. ![]()
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