Key & harmony
Open Key
Open Key is a second notation for the same wheel Camelot describes. It numbers the positions differently — C major is 1d rather than 8B — and uses m and d for minor and major, but the mixing rules are identical.
Measured in our catalog
The most crowded position in the catalog is 8A in Camelot — 1m in Open Key, A Minor — with 37,833 of 470,448 tracks that carry a detected key, 8.0% of them.
The two notations disagree about nothing except where the numbering starts, so the crowding is identical under both. The table below is the full conversion, sized by what we actually hold in each position — which is the part a conversion chart never tells you.
| Camelot | Open Key | Musical key | Tracks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8A | 1m | A Minor | 37,833 |
| 6A | 11m | G Minor | 30,643 |
| 7A | 12m | D Minor | 28,844 |
| 4A | 9m | F Minor | 28,330 |
| 9A | 2m | E Minor | 28,059 |
| 5A | 10m | C Minor | 26,615 |
| 7B | 12d | F Major | 24,761 |
| 9B | 2d | G Major | 21,878 |
| 11A | 4m | F♯ Minor | 19,893 |
| 2A | 7m | E♭ Minor | 19,742 |
| 10B | 3d | D Major | 19,478 |
| 10A | 3m | B Minor | 18,768 |
| 3A | 8m | B♭ Minor | 18,432 |
| 8B | 1d | C Major | 17,774 |
| 11B | 4d | A Major | 17,239 |
| 12B | 5d | E Major | 16,545 |
| 1A | 6m | A♭ Minor | 16,116 |
| 5B | 10d | E♭ Major | 14,488 |
| 12A | 5m | C♯ Minor | 13,867 |
| 2B | 7d | F♯ Major | 12,262 |
| 4B | 9d | A♭ Major | 12,076 |
| 6B | 11d | B♭ Major | 10,905 |
| 3B | 8d | D♭ Major | 8,124 |
| 1B | 6d | B Major | 7,776 |
Measured on 11 August 2026 across public tracks with a detected Camelot key, converted position by position.
Why it matters
You will meet both, because different software picked different sides. Traktor and Mixed In Key write Open Key; Rekordbox and most online charts write Camelot. A library assembled from more than one source ends up carrying both, and they do not sort together.
Converting between them is one subtraction — Open Key sits seven positions behind Camelot — but it is worth doing once, properly, rather than every time you look at a track. Get it wrong by even one position and every harmonic decision you make afterwards is wrong in the same direction.
In Mixgraph
Every track page shows the Camelot code, and the key converter takes Open Key in either direction.
Frequently asked
How do you convert Open Key to Camelot?+
Add seven to the Open Key number, wrapping past twelve, and swap m for A or d for B. Open Key 1m is Camelot 8A; Open Key 6m is Camelot 1A.
What is 8A in Open Key?+
Camelot 8A — A Minor — is 1m in Open Key. It is the most common key in our catalog under either name.
Is Open Key better than Camelot?+
Neither is better; they describe the same wheel. Open Key puts C major at 1, which some people find easier to reason about. What matters is that your whole library uses one of them.
Related terms
Camelot key
Camelot notation renames every musical key as a number from 1 to 12 plus a letter — A for minor, B for major. 8A is A minor. Codes next to each other on the wheel share most of their notes.
Harmonic mixing
Harmonic mixing means choosing the next track by key as well as tempo — staying on the same Camelot code, moving one step around the wheel, or swapping between the major and minor of the same number.
Relative major and minor
Relative major and minor are two keys built from the same notes — A minor and C major, for instance. On the Camelot wheel they share a number and differ only by letter, which is why moving between them always works.
Explore: Key converter · Tracks in 8A · The Camelot wheel · All DJ terms