In fact, I'll be introducing this notation later this year in my music app, Cloudskipper. I prefer this form of notation because it matches hundreds of years of music notation, which in turn makes it easily readable by musicians, and it's easy to look up on any natural Circle of Fifths chart. This format sticks to the classic circle with C at 12 o'clock and simply uses capitalization for Major vs. I'll just call it Circle of Fifths Notation because that's all it is. If C isn't 12, then it doesn't really matter what code is used for major/minor - they fundamentally did it wrong.Īs such, I'll be using my own notation system in this post. At the very least C major should either be 12B or 12d, but neither system does it. That's pretty wonky, especially considering the long legacy of the Circle of Fifths. Between them C major is 8B and 1m while A minor is 8A and 1d. The only problem with the two existing systems is they don't naturally match a clock nor each other. Open key uses D / M for major / minor, based on German (dur / moll) rather than English (major / minor). Open Key's notes closely match the original circle of fifths, except 1 o'clock is on top instead of 12. Even though Mixed in Key is heavily used by DJs, Traktor chose to use an open-source system called Open Key Notation: Traktor just recently added key detection and organization. This rotation and the A/B codes are the core of Mixed in Key's copyrighted system. You'll notice C isn't up top at 12 (it's down at bottom left at 8). Keys are denoted by numbers and A/B for minor/major keys respectively, so E major is 12B and D-flat minor is 12A. Mixed in Key is probably the most popular app and uses a proprietary system called Camelot Notation: A couple of apps have simplified the layout notation to make it much easier: instead of notes, they see the circle as a 12-hour clock and match major & minor notes to positions on the clock. Keeping track of the keys and notes around the circle may be easy for musicians, but for DJs it's hard to remember. The map for these keys is the Circle of Fifths: Key Notation Systems So if you're playing a song in C major, you can follow it with a song in G major and they'll harmonize nicely. Depending on which note you start with, there's a progression that will naturally follow. What's fascinating about major & minor keys is that they follow a predictable harmonic pattern. There's many types of keys but most electronic dance music use major & minor keys. Major keys are most common and have a pleasant upbeat feel while minor keys feel slightly down or bittersweet. The Circle of FifthsĪll songs have a key, which is a dominant note from which other notes & chords will match and sound best. I'll cover apps for detecting and organizing by key, notation systems they use, and then the techniques I use. I've briefly talked about harmonic mixing in previous posts and figured this would be a good time to go into detail.
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