Some little tips on organising tracks for DJ sets

With the rise of music’s digitalisation, one of the major challenges DJs have to face nowadays is organising the huge amount of tunes for their sets – what’s the best way to categorise and arrange them so that you can make the full use of them during your performance? In this post I’m going to talk about how renaming and sorting your tracks properly can greatly facilitate your creative process when using DJing software.

So here’s an example of the music files in my dance music database: Dance Like Paranoid (Marcel Dettmann Remix)_Terence Fixmer_8A.wav

It starts with the track title (including the title of the remix), followed by the artist of the original and then the key code. I’ll get into the details about the key code shortly but the reason why I always include those information is that when you’re on the stage it’s always better to keep your thoughts flowing as quickly and smoothly as possible; sometimes when a track springs to mind you may only be able to remember bits and pieces of the information of it, for example, “a remix of Terence  Fixmer” or “a Marcel Dettman remix”, instead of the whole package of the track’s info. Spending too much time looking for a track will waste your time for improvisation and kill your flow, therefore including enough information in the file name will certainly help you fetch the next track with the search engine easily and keep your momentum going.

As for the key code, I’m sure a lot of people have used or at least heard of the Mixed In Key programme, which analyses the keys of tracks and assigns key codes to them according to the Camelot Wheel. The concept behind mixing in key is that tracks in the same key as well as some specifically related keys can theoretically blend more smoothly. In the Camelot Wheel each key has a key code attached to it, for example A Minor is 8A and C Major is 8 B. (“A” means Minor key whilst “B” means Major key ). Obviously 2 different tracks in A Minor (8A) will fit with each other, but there’re  2 other guidelines: 1) tracks with the same letter can mix with their neighbours, e.g, 8A goes well with 7A (D Minor) and 9A (E Minor); and 2) tracks with the same number but different letter can mix well with each other too, e.g. 8A and 8B.

In fact I’ve heard of the Mixed In Key program for a long time but  I’ve also read on the internet that sometimes it doesn’t work well with WAV files properly due to some tagging problem (I always DJ with WAVs instead of MP3s). But the other day when I visited the new website of Beatport (I  don’t go there very often because I’m so lucky that I got sent high quality promos from agencies and labels constantly) I discovered that it shows you the keys of the tracks EVEN BEFORE YOU BUY THEM. So I googled the image of the Camelot wheel, renamed some of my tracks accordingly, tested them out in Ableton, and I’m really pleased with the result.

In my dance music database each genre has 3 folders: opening, tension, and peak-time. What I do is I go to the specific folder to which the idea in my mind belongs – e.g. “tension techno” if I want to build more tension with a techno track – and then type the key code into the search engine according to the track that’s being played (I have to decide whether I want to stay in the same key, or go up/down a number or switch between Major and Minor). Then I’ll have a list of theoretically appropriate tracks to choose from immediately. It’s very handy especially when you’ve got a bunch of new and unfamiliar tracks all of sudden and it saves a lot of time in track selection for those who prefer long and subtle mixing between 2 tracks and/or those who like improvising with loops and FX throughout their sets.

Nevertheless, whereas the key codes are very powerful, in my opinion it’s not advisable for DJs to rely on them completely. First, when you alter the tempo of a track, its key will change too, so the key codes won’t work properly when you change the BPM coarsely.  Second, despite their importance, keys are merely one element of music, and just because two tracks are in the same key doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll fit perfectly – there’re still a lot of things, such as rhythmic patterns, timbres, moods, etc, to consider. Last but not least, instincts are paramount in music – it’s perceived both consciously and unconsciously by our mind and body, and the process goes beyond any theory or reflection. Therefore, if a tune springs to mind, just go for it first; if unfortunately it doesn’t really fit, you still have a great tool covering your back, which I believe is what all this organisation of tracks is essentially for.

*Note: although this blog post is about digital DJing, I’ve been redeveloping my interest in DJing with vinyl lately; I’m going to write about the relationship between DJing, vinyl collection, consumption, creation and art next time. Stay tuned.

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