What’s the correct key for this song? Kapa Cat - Ready
Funny all 4 major dj softwares disagree overwhelmingly! 
I understand the vocalist switched keys in the song. Does it make the song have 2 keys?
Djay: 6B
Serato: 3A
Virtualdj: 7B
Rekordbox: 4A
Online Song Key Finder sites (Tunebat/VocalRemover): 4A
I am inclined to go with 4A, but is there anyone here with the key-listening ears to clarify?
@UrbanSmash you’re seriously technical in this field, can you chime?
Maybe this will help you to figure out the two sections manually by ear:
Mixed In Key is generally regarded as the most accurate - but even that’s not flawless, which is no different to trained musicians.
For a key to be determined, the more different note pitches the music contains, the easier it is to reach a conclusion. The Camelot wheel (or circle of fifths) works on similarities between keys, so the fewer notes there are, the more possible keys it could match.
Based on your results, it’s F or Bb but could be major (6B/7B) or minor (3A/4A).
Is love to see recent data on this. Seems like it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a public side by side comparison between all apps.
Well if Kapa Cat is from Africa, it might be so that she doesn’t use western tuning in her instruments or while she is singing.
So that would mean that current key analysis can’t figure out the key.
Or she uses a not so well known scale, which might be difficult to analyze as well.
Some scales
Just an example, I would not even try to analyze this with any tools at all.
Angine de Poitrine - Mata Zyklek (Live on KEXP) - YouTube
Technology is great, but it’s definitely best if you can train your ear to what sounds good. But with the caveat as per what @dj_romy_fi said. This will change based on your locality, as different parts of the World have different scale tunings.
Thanks for the input @BillPayer
one method to work out the key of a song, would be to strip away the vocals and drums… and then take a line on the bass & melodic content involved… the vocals of that particular track will throw most key detection apps a curveball, becos she’s singing out of key
Good suggestion @7nz
Mixed In Key has a plugin called Wingman that can detect keys and suggest chords & bass from the contents of a track. You can separate stems and base detection on any of the stems.
Nice! Thanks for the suggestion @PKtheDJ
There is a quite recent one where Mixed In Key is still the top pick, but the open source project is getting very close. There’s the free OpenKeyScan which is based on the MusicalKeyCNN python project from github
Thanks for sharing @Qun
If I’m guessing where your question is coming from, I assume it’s because you want to know which tracks work well next to each other in your mixes, which is something that, for some mysterious reasons, every listener recognizes, even if they don’t know the key and know nothing about harmonics. Mysterious, because even the best trained composers would have a hard time explaining as to why some ideas work and others don’t. The key of a song is only one of the many ways to approach this question. Developing your hearing and musical imagination would be more rewarding. If I may, I’d like to refer you to Rick Beato’s Youtube channel, and especially his courses in ear training and music theory. Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated to Rick other than sharing his passion for the topic and being convinced he’s a professional. Keep your ears up
Hi @Frank_van_der_Poll, welcome to the Community! Thanks for sharing.
