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In 1986 a visionary named Stuart Soroka
introduced the DJ world to the concept of harmonic mixing. He published
Harmonic Keys magazine in Key West, Florida, and rapidly expanded a subscriber
base through advertising in DJ magazines such as Dance Music Report.
The most advanced DJs of that period soon learned the value of mixing in
key: It allowed them to complete the sonic tapestries they sought to create,
but in which they had been thwarted by the realities of incompatible keys.
Harmonic programming was difficult, however.
It required DJs to either memorize the relationship of 24 different keys,
or to constantly refer to a table of compatible keys:
Harmonic Keys Overlay
Chart
For their $180.00 annual subscription, DJs received a magazine every six
to eight weeks, and jacket labels for their records. Each issue of the magazine
contained key/speed information for hundreds of current and older songs.
The dance music universe was increasingly covered, until Harmonic Keys claimed
to have more than 3,000 keys in its anthology database in October 1987.
Subscribers were severely disappointed in early 1988 with news that Harmonic
Keys had stopped publication. Office phones were disconnected, and rumors
were rampant that Stuart Soroka had died. Dance Music Report, as the primary
advertising vehicle for Harmonic Keys, was barraged with outrage from hundreds
of DJs who had each paid $180.00 to Stuart and were left with nothing. Harmonic
mixing quickly acquired a bad name.
A California DJ, named Mark Davis, subscribed to Harmonic Keys soon after
it emerged. Since his primary musical area was R&B, he noticed that
the magazine was somewhat deficient in this area. Working with local musicians,
he took the initiative to key recent R&B songs, program a number of
sets, and submit the information to Harmonic Keys. His efforts were rewarded
in July 1987 when Harmonic Keys printed a "R&B Classic Issue" featuring
his work.
With the demise of Harmonic Keys, he continued keying music and offered
this information to the DJ community under the name of Camelot Sound. The
database now contains over 32,000 songs, and is updated monthly. He devised
an extremely simple harmonic programming system based on the Circle of Fifths.
Using this system, a DJ no longer had to memorize or refer to the difficult
key charts used by Harmonic Keys. This "Easymix System"
gave every key a number (keycode) between 1 and 12, like numbers on a clock.
To find a compatible song from any keycode, a DJ needed only to select another
song within one keycode of the current song. Now anyone who could tell time
could program harmonically.
Harmonic mixing brings the fourth dimension, harmony, to DJ mixing technique,
when it allows different melodies to be played simultaneously without clashing.
HOME THEATER ANALOGY: Surround sound brought a fourth dimension, depth,
to home theater audio presentations. A source could be localized at any
point within the acoustic plane created by properly adjusted Dolby Digital
(or DTS) equipment.
