cubase sx3

hiya ekt peeps.

ok, i'm doing a remix of a more traditional track for someone... bass, drums, synth, coupla guitar parts and a coupla vox.

now the track was recorded to a click, but is a human performance, and thus, the timing 'breathes' slightly... meaning i can't quite get the tempo to match exactly all of the way through the track. the vocal sounds fine, but the drum track drifts in and out, so i can't get any midi quantised parts to sync perfectly, and it's doing my nut in.

question is, do you think i'd be better detecting the hitpoints of the beat, slicing and quantising it to the internal midi clock, or is there a way i can get cubase to map the quantise to the groove of the existing beat?

please help.

thanks in advance.

i would use ableton live to time correct that shit i guess, not sure what SX3s time stretchy/correcty things are like for that as i've not had a go with those. in live i'd just set the thingy warp points throughout and it usually sorts things out without sounding tooo horrible but i'm wary of its timestretch quality for these things.

well, timestretching parts can take a while and end up ruining the feel of the beat as a whole. You'd have to work out where the beat is slowing/speeding slightly and then carefully timestretch bits of these to bring them into time.

This isn't too hard I guess but you do have to be carefull to preserve the little intriciscies (lit.) that a human drummer gives to a rhythm, as these intricisies are often what makes it sound good!

Provided you're happy with the grove on its own, ie you dont feel that it needs to be moved around to be a good, tight beat in general, then it's quite easy to get a quantize map out of cubase using hitpoints.

its as simple as setting you're hitpoints how you like them (in the audio editor), right clicking on the part once you're happy and going to advanced>create groove qunatise. It adds the beats quantise feel to you're list in the top right of the project window, ie, where it normally says 1/16, 1/32 dot. or whatever, thats how i'd do it!

you could feasably have an entire drum track, export the quantise for the whole thing and write you're track around that, switching back to normal quantise values whenever you needed them

owen

i'd go the hitpoints route with minor drum stretching

I think there is a correctional vsti which can smooth out these types of live preformances in sync with host. Also you could use a tap tempo setup to get the sequences in sync also. I dont understnad what you mean though, it does it keep with the clicks at all?

it more or less keeps with the clicks, and it only drifts very slightly, possibly such a tiny amount that no-one but me would really notice, but the sequenced bass part i added in the first chorus seems to 'rush', because the beat sits a fraction after the actual measure... i have tidied it up by manually moving notes around, and i'm about as happy with it as i'm going to get...

might have an attempt at the whole 'create groove quantize' thing.

question re that, can i select the audio channel that is the bounced drum parts, detect hitpoints, and then right click and create a groove quantize without having to adjust all the hitpoints manually myself? basically so that everything else in the track can be quantised to the drum part despite it drifting out of time with the sequencer?

(i know, laziness)

can we hear this song? please

can't, sorry... contractual obligations.

  loganfive said:

question re that, can i select the audio channel that is the bounced drum parts, detect hitpoints, and then right click and create a groove quantize without having to adjust all the hitpoints manually myself? basically so that everything else in the track can be quantised to the drum part despite it drifting out of time with the sequencer?

yeah, thats the the process i was describing! double cliock on bounced audio part, set auto detect hit points, move the few that might be out into the right place. then right click on the part, extract groove quantise and the quantisatyion of you're track will automaticly default to matych with the hitpoints you selected.

you can still use the normal settings as well, you can have as many presets as you want so you can fiddle around a bit. It takes a second after you've got you're hitpoints in the right place!

i never use the hitpoint thing, its too rigid and intimidating.

i just do the shit by hand. thats always the way to get it precisely how you want it. chop it up by hand, extend everything so theres no silence, trial and errror, trial and errorr.

yes, but i'd rather use the groove of the original drummer, than start putting everything bang in time, because it has a nice feel to it... speeds up slightly for the choruses etc..

so i'd rather sequence anything i'm doing in time with the original, than fucking about trying to get the original perfectly in time, and losing the nuance.