A question about key lock: how many of you use it?

[deevey]

Yep I used the key knob to get stuff in the correct key ALL the time ... you do get some really strange artifacts if you are pitching backwards too much e.g. +4 on the pitch and -2 on the key your bass gets all screwed up and you lose most of your "depth"

Once you keep things within reasonable -+1 levels its ok.

BTW I'm on Ableton now and use transpose the same way, kinda pisses me off that they don't allow mapping (yet) of the fine Transpose though in Ableton.

In fairness though, key lock or transposing alone won't make for a better sounding mix .. unless the people mixing can hear the key clashes anyhow and they have some knowledge of phrasing.

Maybe the 3 people were undercover DJ's...

Think that might be the case :P

[photojojo]

I use it all the time, but don't like to use it for very long over 5%.

[DJ MiCL]

I use it all the time, but don't like to use it for very long over 5%.

Hi,

You don't like it because you hear a degradation of sound quality? Or does having it on for a long time affect the output somehow?

[lethal_pizzle]

Tunes are written in standard tuning. The A above middle C is always 440hz. What keylock does it lock the standard tuning in.

Without keylock, you'll have a bunch of songs you could never mix together; because the relative tuning of the second tune would fall between the chromatic scale of another...

...say you've 2 tunes. The first is at 128bpm, the second is at 129.5bpm. They are both in the key of A minor. If you slow down the second tune to 128bpm then you've slowed it down by 1.5 bpm (a bit over 1%). The key of the second tune is now somewhere between A flat minor and A minor. It'll never sound spot on.

This is where keylock comes in. It's the difference between you listening to an orchestra that's tuned up (and have tuned up to A=440) and one that hasn't. It isn't cheating.

It's also something our brain does naturally. The brain keylocks! Try singing your favourite song. Now sing it twice as fast. Don't sound like a chipmunk? That's your brain's keylock in action.

[mostapha]

Another long one…I really don't do anything at my job.

I do understand those who stay away from it -- sort of like fearing something because their(sic) not sure... "Maybe it sounds just a bit worse than without key lock". I still get that feeling and am currently practicing to let go of that fear.

I think that's probably right a lot of the time. Or people focus on minutia in a nearly clinical listening environment or on headphones with the volume too low, both of which would accentuate the problems.

Based on what I hear…if key lock is the thing that's screwing up your songs in a club, it must be a better system than I've heard. Between crossovers not set correctly, overdriven DJ mixers, lots of processing (delay compensation, compression, etc.), a generally noisy and reverb-y listening environment, and an SPL upwards of 110dB…I'd be really impressed if any halfway normal person could reliably hear the artifacts that come from reasonable time stretching.

If you're using shitty mp3s or the producer, mastering engineer, or sound designer/tech for the venue has already done something that makes it more likely that the transients will get lost (like low-passing the whole song, setting crossovers wrong, or compressing the life out of it), then I'd believe you. But those issues would be there with or without keylock. Keylock just makes them worse.

On a side note, you should check out the TP2 key-lock. They say the algorithm is that of a good DAW.

It's the algorithm from a passable DAW. Rather, Ableton and Traktor both license the same algorithm (Ableton actually has several…one of them is the same as Traktor's).

Any good algorithm that doesn't work in real time will probably give better results. If you can do the math, Audacity gives better results for drastic changes than Ableton or Traktor, but you have to do it in advance and it takes 2 steps. I've A/B'd them, and I can hear a difference in normal-ish listening environments.

Pitch 'n Time is a very good example. It's made by Serato, but it's not the key lock that SSL uses because it doesn't operate in real time. To my knowledge, it's still only available as an Audio Suite plug-in for Pro Tools, which explicitly cannot operate in real time (as opposed to Real Time Audio Suite plugins). It gives very good results based on the little bit I've used it. I only used it once to correct a singer who screwed up a note or two in the good take…and I thought AutoTune was cheating because it is…it also sucks monkey bollocks.

Melodyne is another good example, though it's meant to pitch shift instead of doing both pitch-shifting and time-stretching (they're actually pretty similar in a mathematical sense).

Side note: the polyphonic version of melodyne is freaking incredible. It can move individual notes within chords with almost no artifacts based on a single audio signal. Lots of math. Kinda cool.

Traktor and Ableton's key locks are not that good. But Melodyne costs more than Traktor does. Pitch 'n Time costs the same as Live Studio. You get what you pay for.

Traktor's Key Lock is plenty good for what it is, it's just not perfect at drums. Live's "Beats" mode or the way that drum machines like Maschine do it is better for drums…you just cut the audio right before the transient and play it earlier or later. But that sounds really bad on continuous sounds, so there have to be some compromises if you're effecting a whole song.

In fairness though, key lock or transposing alone won't make for a better sounding mix .. unless the people mixing can hear the key clashes anyhow and they have some knowledge of phrasing.

I disagree. People won't be able to say why the mix was good, but I think it contributes. There's definitely a point of diminishing returns, though.

A technically perfect mix will always pale in comparison to a really good track.

A perfect mix (harmonically, rhythmically, phrase…ically…'er something) into a really good track is even better than just the awesome track.

Just…never sacrifice the awesome track for the perfect mix. That's called wankery.

Without keylock, you'll have a bunch of songs you could never mix together;(sic) because the relative tuning of the second tune would fall between the chromatic scale of another...

That's technically correct, but in reality it's not that big of a deal.

If it were, people would never have been able to mix on vinyl.

The scales, keys, chords, etc. we use in Western music simplify very complex mathematical relationships between frequencies. But they still don't tell the whole story. Lots of non-western music is based on different scales that use different frequency relationships, for example.

Other examples of music that shouldn't work by that argument: rock, blues, and classical…well, anything with a guitar or piano.

Most instruments (wind, brass, drums, etc.) play naturally in a single key. A trumpet player–for example–playing outside of E-flat (IIRC) has to alter her embouchure (shape of her lips) to push the instrument flat or sharp in addition to using the keys and valves. Most instruments are similar.

There are 3 common, big exceptions.

Non-fretted string instruments (like violin) can easily play in any key because the violinist tunes each note with subtle variations in where she places her fingers. It takes a while as a beginner, but it kind of just happens as you get better.

Voice is the same way. Vocal chords are not as constrained as most instruments and can perform in any key with equal precision.

Fretted (or otherwise constrained) string instruments like guitar, piano, and harpsichord are the last exception. They kind of don't play in a key at all. All of the intervals (defined by the tuning and lengths of strings on a piano/harpsichord or the placement of frets on a guitar or similar) are fudged a bit so that they can sound almost right in any key without actually sounding perfect in any of them. Guitars get even weirder when people use non-standard tunings because then the fudged intervals fit even worse in some keys. I've been in a couple very, very good vocal ensembles. At some point, we stopped playing with piano accompaniment not because the songs were all supposed to be a'cappella but because we made it sound out of tune. We could also generate very audible high-order harmonics (2 to 4 octaves above the highest singer) in a good enough room.

Side note: I'm aware that Piano is considered a percussion instrument…it's a string for the purposes of this discussion because of the way it's tuned.

Anyway, that was a very long-winded version of "meh." You can drive yourself mad thinking about these kinds of things, and a lot of technically-oriented people do when they get into something like DJing or Production.

Eventually, you kind of just realize that while a perfect performance is not too much to ask for…when it comes to the bitchy little technical things…"good enough" is actually a pretty low bar compared to what's possible today. Except flaming while using auto sync…that's never acceptable.

[lethal_pizzle]

If it were, people would never have been able to mix on vinyl.

I'm talking about harmonically rich material. Mixing stuff without much harmonic content has never been an issue. Hence the 'DJ friendly' bits at the start and end of tunes with beats and not much else.

If tuning individual instruments in an ensemble wasn't important, then orchestras wouldn't do it.

the Portsmouth Sinfonia
When I go round to a mate's house for a guitar jam, we still tune our guitars together even if they're already in tune with themselves.

I'm well aware of the 'best fit' incongruence between equal temperament and the harmonic series, but the fact remains that they're 'good enough to our ears'. And keylocking ensures that 'in a mix' everything more or less conforms to what we'd normally expect to hear as regards the normal intervals between notes.

There is an acceptable 'level of error' (as you've pointed out with 12ET, which is a 'fudge'), but it gets to a stage where something falls in between notes enough for it to just sound 'wrong'. If you get 2 identical synth parts together in a DAW and detune one by 0.5 of a semitone it sounds awful. Keylock eliminates this particular problem.

Using keylock makes it more likely that your mixes will sound complimentary.

[DJ MiCL]

This could be a good blog post... nice post, mostapha.

I disagree. People won't be able to say why the mix was good, but I think it contributes. There's definitely a point of diminishing returns, though.

I think he meant that if the DJ didn't make use of the locked key, it won't matter that much.

[mostapha]

I'm talking about harmonically rich material. Mixing stuff without much harmonic content has never been an issue. Hence the 'DJ friendly' bits at the start and end of tunes with beats and not much else.

It still seems to work out more than it should.

Don't get me wrong…I use key lock too. But that's out of a combination of habit and getting really used to hearing things in the right keys. I don't think I've mixed without keylock since around 2006, the first time I bought SSL. I've tried it a couple times, and it always sounds worse to me even when only one track is playing.

[lethal_pizzle]

Our brains act pretty weird with music.

We recognise the same tunes at different pitches, tempos and keys, which proves that we analyse, break down and store 'relative' information regarding rhythm and musical intervals.

But when we are asked to 'sing' our favourite songs, we sing them back remarkably close to their original pitch and tempo. So maybe using keylock, for you, means that the tune sounds identical to the 'image' of it we've stored in your head. Do you have perfect pitch?

[Paka Ono]

Keylock is just another tool to use. And the better DJs learn how to utilize every tool in their toolbox.

If you choose to not use it, it's no big deal. Those who do have a slight advantage to those who don't.