Harmonic mixing theory allows you to choose the best possible tracks to play together. As it takes key into consideration, you can pair your songs with other keys that will work well in the mix. There's a number of different systems you can use to figure this out but we'll look at the Camelot wheel.
This wheel shows you a grid which helps to identify keys that will play nicely. For example, if you are mixing a track that is 6A, you can also play any track with the same key, a neighbouring key (6B, 7A, 5A) or one semitone above which would be 1A (add 6 to your Camelot number).
Here's a handy pro tip from one of our Product Specialists, Karl Y. We'll show you how you can use Serato Smart Crates as a music discovery tool in your library to find tracks that will sound great together.
"I use Mixed In Key DJ Software (Harmonic Mixing) for most of my sets, so I created a set of Smart Crates for harmonic mixing.
For example:
Crate 1A contains all songs with Keys
- 1A (the same key)
- 2A, 12A, 1B (neighbours)
- 8A (one semitone up, creates an energy boost according to the MIK guide, and usually sounds good too)
Simply download and add these Smart Crates to your Smart Crates folder inside your _Serato_ folder, and voila, jump between crates to mix harmonically.
They contain a few dummy tracks, otherwise they would not memorise the smart crate rules I've put in them, so you will see 13 special "missing tracks" once you imported them, but you can delete those once the crates are propagated with your own tracks."