1. Press the "Add a New Track" button to choose your first song. You can search your music collection by Artist, Album, or Title. Once you add the track to your project, iMashup will begin analyzing the harmonic content of the file if it hasn't already been calculated.
2. Once analysis is complete, press the "Add a New Track" button again. Any songs in your music collection that have already been analyzed by iMashup or Mixed In Key 5.5 with elite mode enabled will now be sorted based on harmonic compatibility relevant to the first track you added. Songs that are a perfect match will be labeled "Mixed In Key." You will also see a percentage number for some songs. The best option is to use "Mixed In Key" results, and experiment with 80% results if you run out of choices.
3. Beatmatching in iMashup is automatic, although you will have to align the audio waveforms to get the downbeats lined up. The automatic beatmatching works well for most songs, but occasionally a slight adjustment can make things even tighter. If the beatmatching is completely off that indicates that the original tempo in the track controls is wrong. Tap on the BPM button on the track controls. Here you will see two BPM values. The first is what iMashup has calculated the original BPM to be. The second is the target “master tempo” that you want for your project. The BPM adjustment made to beatmatch the tracks is derived from the difference between these two values. Try entering a more accurate original tempo if it is completely incorrect, or rounding the BPM to a whole number.
For example, if your first track is reported in Mashup as 127.89, and your second track is reported as 126.78, try entering 128 for the first track and 127 for the second track. This will fix most issues with beatmatching, but if things still sound a little off you can shift the waveform left or right using the Phase buttons found in the bottom left of the BPM menu to get the kick drums perfectly aligned. Next to the Phase buttons is a switch for turning beatmatching off for spoken word or any audio that doesn't have a beat.
4. Each track has a Solo button. Pressing this button lets you hear only that track, which can be useful for locating the downbeat when adjusting beat matching and moving song segments into place.
5. iMashup includes adjustable volume and EQ. Select the volume or EQ that you want to edit by tapping on the envelopes button. The volume envelope is orange, the low EQ envelope is green, the mid EQ envelope is blue, and the high EQ envelope is pink. Tap on the envelope line to create a control point. Having a single control point on the envelope allows you to adjust the overall level for the entire track. It is a good idea to make some adjustments using a single control point first. Once you have your overall levels set, add some more control points. Use control points on the volume envelope to fade a track in or out. Reduce the high and mid envelopes on a single track to isolate the baseline, or lower the low EQ on a track to emphasize the melody. You can delete control points by double tapping on them and choosing the "Delete Point" option.
6. Tap the split button to bring up the scissor tool. You can drag the scissor tool left and right, and move it from track to track without exiting the split UI. Once it is positioned where you want to split your track, tap on the scissors to perform the cut. Beginning and ends of breakdowns are ideal places to split your tracks. When you are done, press the split button to close the scissors UI. You can now drag the segments to reposition them, but the order of the segments cannot be changed.
7. Splitting tracks is a great way to get songs of different length to fit together. If you need to remove a segment of audio, double tap on it and choose the "Delete Segment" option. This is a good time to mention, iMashup has an "Undo" button, so if you make a mistake just press it and you'll be back in business.
8. Once your project is complete, tap on the Home button to choose an export method. Press the "Share via Facebook" button to embed a static video with the iMashup logo in your Facebook timeline. Press the "Share via Email" button to email the completed mashup in 44.1kHz, 128 kbps .M4A format. This format provides medium-quality audio with a small file size, perfect for sending over email. If you want to create a high quality audio file for DJing, press the "Share via iTunes" button to export a .WAV file. If you choose this method, you need to plug your iOS device into iTunes on your Mac OS X or Windows computer to access the completed mashup file. Select your iOS device in iTunes, then click on the "Apps" button. Scroll down to the File Sharing menu and select iMashup. Your completed audio file can then be accessed from the file browser at the right. Select the audio file, and press the Save to… button and choose a location on your hard drive to save the file to. It's a bit complicated, but that's how Apple made it work :)
9. When you're ready to start a new project, tap on the Home button and press the "Create New" button. Your previous projects are automatically saved, and can be accessed by pressing the Home button and then the "Open" button.
You can email us for help anytime: contact@mixedinkey.com
Want to create live mashups and remixes? Try our Flow 8 Deck DJ software for your Mac.
Created by award-winning Mixed In Key DJ Software