How to use the Advanced Search Page

TL;DR - watch the video to see the Advanced Vinyl Search page in action, otherwise, for a deeper dive, read through the article.

Why it's a circle

There are twelve notes. Start on C and count up a fifth and you get G. A fifth above G is D. Keep going and you get A, E, B, Gb, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb, F — and the twelfth step lands you back on C.

That's the reason it's circular. Stacking fifths visits all twelve notes and returns home. The useful part isn't just the shape though. It's what sitting next to each other means in context.

Neighbours share notes

C major has no sharps or flats. G major, one step clockwise, has one sharp. F major, one step anticlockwise, has one flat.

So neighbouring keys differ by exactly one note. Two steps apart, two notes. Three steps, three. Distance around the circle is a direct measure of how much two keys have in common — which really just makes it a map of similarity, not only a way of arranging things tidily.

Opposite sides of the circle share almost nothing. That's why a record can be technically "in key" with something and still sound wrong: if it's six positions away, you've got two notes in common out of seven.

Fifths and fourths are the same move

Here's the bit that sometimes confuses people.

Going clockwise from Am to Em is up a fifth. Going anticlockwise from Am to Dm is up a fourth. Same single step, opposite directions. A fourth up and a fifth down land on the same note, so "playing in fourths" just means working the wheel the other way round.

They don't feel the same, though.

Musicians call the clockwise neighbour the dominant and the anticlockwise one the subdominant. What that actually means at the mix is that the two keys differ by a single note, and the direction tells you which way it moves: clockwise sharpens a degree, anticlockwise flattens one. One tightens, the other loosens.

The two rings

The outer ring is major keys, the inner ring is minor. Each position holds a pair — C and Am, G and Em, F and Dm.

Those pairs are relative majors and minors, which means they contain exactly the same seven notes and differ only in which one feels like home. You'll hear musicians talk a lot about "feels like home". Moving between the rings at the same position is the smallest change on the whole wheel, smaller even than a step around it.

Most house and techno lives on the inner ring. Head over to the crate digging page and you can see it for yourself: the key distribution there counts every key in the catalogue, most common first, and each one takes you straight to the records.

Why the spellings looks like it does

You'll notice G#m sitting next to Ab, and F#m near Gb - each key is spelled the way its key signature is actually written.

B major has five sharps, so its relative minor is properly G#m, not Abm. Db major has five flats, so its relative minor is Bbm, not A#m. Every position on the wheel follows the spelling a musician generally use for that key signature.

The colours are the wheel

Using the store's circle of fifths on the Advanced Vinyl Search page, you'll see that each of the twelve positions has its own colour. There's a reason for that — I chose a colour system so I could use those same colours everywhere through the store, on record cards, in tracklists, and in the player at the bottom of the screen.

So in the store, a key's colour is its position on the circle.

Using the wheel

The wheel sits in the left column of the Advanced Vinyl Search page, above the filters.

Tap a key and the records filter by that key - tap the same key again to clear it.

Watch what stays lit. With a key selected, three others stay bright: its relative major or minor on the other ring, and the two neighbours either side of it. Everything else dims back. Those three are your next moves, and they're the same three relationships the whole circle is built on.

Walk it. Tap Am and C, Em and Dm stay lit. Tap Em and the highlighting travels with you — now it's G, Bm and Am. Keep going clockwise and you're building the slow lift; turn around and work back the other way for the release. While you're searching, you could also be planning a possible set by walking the wheel, not just picking records off a list.

It filters one key at a time. The results show records for the key you've actually selected, not for the whole compatible group. The lit keys are showing you where you could go next, not widening what's on screen.

Records carry more than one key. A 12" with four tracks can easily hold two or three different keys, so each record lists all of them. Pick a key and you'll get any record with that key on it, even if it's only on the B-side. BPM works the same way, as a range across the record rather than a single number.

Narrow from there. The filters below the wheel — availability, price, picks, BPM — stack on top of whatever key you've chosen.

Then line them up. Once you've pulled a few candidates, add them to your compare tray and the Compare page will show you how they actually sit against each other, track by track.

The wheel is really just a way of asking one question — what else works with this? — and getting an answer you can do something with.

— JJ, Inklusv Records