Rediscovering Music Part 2 : Mixing in Key

So my last post about Rediscovering Music was written in April 2012. Close to 3 years later, I felt I had write something more about it. In 2012, I was very very new to the whole Electronic scene so I did not have any idea about how deep this genre really went, but as of 2015 after a lot of listening, I have to admit, it's deep, like really deep! 

For a relatively young and currently desperate genre, Electronic music has some of the most obscure artists and producers, some of whom actually prefer to stay away from the spotlight. And I've mostly found that these not-so-popular artists produce the best kind of electronic music. One of my favorite examples is Michael Cassette.

Anyway, apart from 'exploring' the scene, I've also been playing around a lot with my good old DJ Controller, the Numark Mixtrack Pro. I'm really really glad I brought it back to India with me. Should really thank my friends for introducing me to DJing, I enjoy it so much now, I can't help but play around with it everyday after coming back from work.

So Part 2 of Rediscovering Music is about Mixing in Key. Here's a home DJ with not much experience, writing a blog post about DJing techniques, how funny! But to be completely honest, Mixing in Key doesn't really have much to do with DJing. So much so that as far as I know, a lot of DJs don't even consider it or even know about it. Over the last few years (after my 'Rediscovery'), I've been paying a lot of attention to mixing quality at clubs. I may not be able to see who's behind the booth and what techniques he's using, but I can mostly tell what's going on, simply by concentrating on the elements of the individual tracks. Almost all of the time, I've found DJs mixing pretty decently, but not paying attention to the key. The smart ones usually get away with it by mixing the silent portions of the track or cutting the new track in at a good spot. During such times, the sudden key change doesn't feel awkward. But there have been enough times, when I've heard very well beatmatched but horribly dissonant mixing. It was immediately clear that the DJ was mixing out of key.

For a musically trained ear, in my personal opinion, out of key mixing is almost as bad as a non-beatmatched mix. It's not the trainwreck kind of bad, but definitely gives me a kind of awkward feeling like fingernails on a chalkboard during the transition of the 2 tracks.

Very soon after starting to experiment with DJing, I almost accidentally discovered key mixing with two tracks that went a bit too well together. It only took a few seconds to realize that they were composed on the same scale. I never looked back after that. And so I jumped back to the basics and laid out my keyboard in front of me. I sat and played each track against my keyboard and found the root notes for them and listed them out. Here I had another amazing accidental discovery. For a few of my tracks, I ended up noting down the fifth note of the chord instead of the root note. It still blended well with the track from 5 notes away. That was pretty interesting to me, but it also made a lot of sense. It was clear that the relation was musical and technical. I pulled out the paper and pen and started counting the 5th notes of every minor chord (almost all the tracks were in minor keys) and soon, I was ready. I had a full loop of notes. I got overly excited and went online to see if something like this was done before. To my disappointment I found it almost immediately - It's called the Circle of Fifths which has been around for a long long time. At least, I was happy that my loop of fifth notes was exactly the same as the circle of fifths, so I did get my musical theory right.

Another disappointment hit me soon after this, there was software out there that would find the key for you! It was unbelievable. It looked like every possible aspect of DJing that required skill was being eliminated with digital help. It's kind of sad actually. Either way, it wasn't going to affect me. I trust my ears more than any software and will follow my method to finding the key even if it takes longer. It will help me feel the tracks a bit better and find out the particular elements that give it its key. 

My Circle of Fifths mixing worked too brilliantly! It was the moment I decided, no matter what, I'm sticking to this technique. I don't care how long it will take for me to find that perfect track that keeps the vibe flowing and sounds musically right, but I will find it and I will use it.

For the first time, I felt confident that I could start recording my mixes and show it to people. I knew that my musically arranged tracks would undoubtedly blend well, and now I just had to pay attention to the feel of the track which was simple - just feel the track! My mixes were not going to be a bunch of my favorite tracks put together. They were going to be structured and arranged to form a proper musical journey which 'felt good' and was also technically sound. They may not be perfect, but they are very much 'human'.

Today's digital advancement seems to have made the whole DJing thing a kind of a lazy art. Technically, a non-musician with no sense of rhythm or scale, can still DJ because the computer helps him out by finding him the key, analyzing the BPM and also syncing the next track to match the speed. The "Press-Play" DJ is truly a reality. It's not a terrible thing to happen to music but taking these tools for granted is where things fall apart. Not all keying software is accurate, and not all BPM analysis is accurate. So when things go off, it's only the real musician who can save the day.

To close it off, I would say Mixing in Key may not be given enough importance in the world of DJing, but I put it at the top of my list for a well structured musical journey. It's something that almost feels natural to do. Hope the word spreads around.

Signing off with an embed of my latest mix on MixCloud.

Alpha Rex Epsilon - Harmonic Mix by Rajasekhar Lutikurti on Mixcloud

The Real-Digital Debate Part 1 : Painting

This is a multi-part post based on my perspective of how digital advancement has changed some analog/traditional things. Here's Part 1 based on what I've noticed how people look at and react to Artwork these days.

Traditional Art
I grew up surrounded by art. I think I made this clear in a lot of posts prior to this. Among the most noticeable things in my house, are my Dad's paintings on the walls. His work is purely traditional - Oil on Canvas, and many many watercolor paintings. My sister too has quite a good eye with art and has made chalk pastels her specialty - another traditional medium. Now coming to me, I would consider myself a traditional artist in graphite drawing. I have some works posted here on my blog and on my deviantArt page. I'm a little new to the art scene as an artist, but definitely not from an observer's point of view.

Right, so I've been hanging around traditional paintings and drawings ever since I was a kid. Obviously I picked up on that, later than sooner, but I did. I must say I absolutely love traditional art. When I look at a drawing or painting on wall (even if not a realistic kind), it gives a sort of rush that I never feel looking at a gallery of photographs. I don't know why this happens, but it happens to me. So personally I put traditional art very high in my list.

Digital Art
Now, coming to the other side of debate. Digital Art. One of the first names that comes to mind when one says digital art is Photoshop. Yes, there are lots of other Digital Art software like, Corel Painter, Adobe Illustrator, etc. each unique in their purpose, but Photoshop really has become a household name unlike the others. "This image has been Photoshopped". How many times have we not heard that term? Photoshop has become an action word - a verb! Well I have been doing stuff on photoshop for quite a few years now, but recently found a whole new side I never knew existed despite being so familiar with the software.

What I'm talking about is that brush tool! No I don't mean the really complicated but beautiful brush sets painstakingly created by artists to make life easy for others, but the simplest round brush! Digital Art with a round brush? Had someone told this to me a couple of years ago, I would've laughed. But now, I own a Wacom tablet and I know what exactly a round brush can do. It can create wonders. I had almost never started any artwork on photoshop with a blank canvas. There was always an image and stuff got overlaid on top. But after acquiring the tablet, photoshop starts with a blank canvas and stuff gets painted on top! How awesome is that! Digital Painting is one of the most amazing things I've been lucky to learn and grasp. A big bow down to the awesomeness of Photoshop - my respect for it grew 10 fold after getting a Wacom. All this and after coming across some unbelievable concept art and beautiful renders purely painted with tablets, I must say I suddenly HAD to put digital painting very high in my list!

The Face-off

Let's breakdown the face-off into 3 parts again based on Effort, Feel and End Result.

Effort :
This is a category which is actually confusing to describe. Still, I shall try. Let us assume an example where I would like to paint a realistic portrait in both oil and digital media. Let us also assume that I'm skilled enough to create such a piece of work, which means I have the knowledge of colors, values, etc. So now the only difference is painting on a real canvas and painting on a digital canvas. What takes more effort? In Photoshop, I have a choice of millions of colors with unlimited supply, whereas I have a decent set of oil paints but to create more colors I'll have to start mixing and my color supply is limited. So mixing/creating colors requires some work in oils (or any such painting medium). My digital work has been painted in layers, so now I can individually alter a certain layer's (example background) colors, shapes, etc without affecting the rest of the painting. Obviously, I need to put in a lot of 'effort' to make such a simple change in the oil painting. Even if the digital painting was done on a single layer making major changes to colors, etc would not be as difficult as with oils. Moreover in PS, if I realized one eye turned out bigger than the other, I can quickly select the eye, reduce the size and patch up the area around the eye to blend it back in. If I had to do the same, I'd most probably have to repaint the entire eye with smaller dimensions and patch the area around anyway. So again digital painting has the advantage. Now to add details. PS has enough zoom levels to see each pixel, so we can literally add details the size of pixels. If the image is extremely high res, we can details which may not even be visible to the naked eye. But with traditional painting, I'd be limited by the size of the brush I have and I can't zoom in, so I'd have to be extremely careful while doing this work, in other words, more effort. So clearly, if I am well versed with a digital tablet in my hands, I'd find it far more easier to use and finish than a traditional medium, avoiding all the mess of colors and oils spilling, cleaning palettes, smelling like turpentine, setting up a workspace, lighting, etc. Digital Painting wins this round.

Feel :
If you try to convince a traditional artist to switch over to digital because it's faster, better, more efficient and takes less effort, he'd still be hesitant. Why would that be? It's simple, he wouldn't get the feel of doing the real thing. That's where digital art really loses out. Most tablets do not have a screen on them, so you're practically scratching a blank surface hoping for the right kind of line or shape appear on the screen. The feel of actually drawing that line isn't there. That problem is eliminated with a tablet that has a screen, but still doesn't feel like the real thing. You're trying to draw on a glass surface hoping to create something that looks like an oil painting or a pencil drawing. So to be clear, the feedback isn't completely realistic. A person used to the traditional ways would be reluctant to switch over. Traditional media win this round.

End Result :
A lot of people may not bother to find out how you did it, but what you did. So the end result is pretty important. The advantage of digital art is, you can create a piece that resembles any traditional medium quite accurately. So if you'd print a nicely simulated digital work onto a canvas, most people would be convinced it's an oil painting. What's the fun in that? I don't know. But if you wanted to create a digital painting to look like an oil painting or even a pencil drawing for that matter, you'd be able to do it. The reverse is not possible though.

Conclusion:
So what medium is better? Well, my analysis says digital has quite a few advantages over traditional, but in the end, the opinion is of each individual artist. If you've always liked drawing with real pencils and would like to continue doing that, nothing's more awesome. If you're a beginner and would like to see which medium seems easier to grasp, you can use some of the points above to help you decide. If you've heard a lot about digital art but never understood why it is so popular, especially with concept artists and illustrators, again the above points may help.

As far as my personal opinion goes, I've found switching between digital and traditional now and then actually helps me look at things in a fresh way, so I've shamelessly married myself to both media and wouldn't be ready to let go of either any time soon.