tikidweller wrote:
I'm a DJ so I know all about this crap. It's about matching up the beats and making sure that the tempos work together. Nothing sounds worse than a slightly off beat count because as the tracks that your mixing together continue to play, the beats start sounding more and more off and it's too late to fix them.
Not quite....
Besides getting beatmatched as a given, the largest part of what would allow Song-1 to sound good laid over the top of Song-2 is by matching the musical key in which the songs are written in. Sure, you can take any two songs with similar BPM's and match their ends together. That's easy. But I'm guessing the OP is talking about making a proper mash-up.
Although you don't quite need to know music theory to do it, as you can do it by ear, it helps to know the basics. And if you do know some theory - enough to determine a song's key - then you can
know whether or not two will go together without even trying it out or hearing them.
Here's one rough way of determining whether Song-1 will be able to go together with Song-2. It's not 100%, but it's a pretty reliable 'quick & dirty' way of doing it....
Listen first and foremost to what notes the
bassline is playing. If Song-1 keeps on coming back to(for example) the C for it's bassline, if it keeps 'resolving' on C, then that's probably the key the song is written in. If Song-B also keeps on wanting to 'resolve' to C, then you're almost there... Next the question is whether or not Song A and B are in C Major or C Minor. That's a bit tougher to figure out without theory.
But, fortunately, Minor keys usually more common in pop music, so it's worth trying it out at that point.
In other words, if the basslines of both songs keep playing the same note, they theres a very good chance they're in the same key, and won't clash if you played them at the same time.
There's a little bit of wiggle room though, if you use a little bit more music theory:
Song-2 can still sound basically good with Song-1 if they're different by precisely a 5th interval. For example, if Song-1 is playing in the key of C, it would still sound good if song-2 were playing in the key of G or F, because G is a fifth UP from C, and F is a 5th DOWN from C.
As an identical example, if Song-1 were in the key of A, then it would sound good if Song-2 were in they key of either E(5 up from A), or D(5 down from A).
When you're dealing with hip hop vocals, things get a lot easier. Often times, hip hop vocals aren't tonal at all! They aren't 'sung' in any key, it's just random or chromatic. So it doesn't matter what music you put the vocal with! However, if there's music behind it, you'll have to listen to it's bassline like anything else. On the other hand, more club oriented hip hop vocals lately have been doing a lot of mono-tone vocals.
Usually those vocals resolves on the same note over and over... just like a bassline. Thus they indicate what key they're in.
This is how mash-up artists like Girl Talk and Z-Trip do their thing. It's how I tend to mix my progressive house sets, if I've got enough songs in enough keys to support key-mixing.
If incorporate a little bit of basic music theory into the process, you don't have to do all the trial-and-error guesswork... You KNOW which ones' are going to be compatible in advance, and which ones will sound dissonant and awful.
07 Mar 2010, 2:52 pm
