quantizing

i watched a tutorial video today and the guy does quantizing to a hip hop beat he jammed. adding the quantizing made the beat 10x better i swear.

so about this technique, do you quantize one drum hit, or are all the beat quantized together? what do you set it to? there's different amounts right? thanks alot if you can help me. i think i've never used that feature but after hearing those beats i need to know how.

some of your questions really relate to which software you use.

quantize simple takes notes (or beats) that you play on a controller or synth and mathematically places them in more precise positions, based on your settings. for example... you may be grooving with your controller in a recording session with a kit and one or two or maybe even more notes might be slightly off in terms of their timing. quantizing aims at fixing this, aligning your key presses to standard deviations....

you can select a group of notes (in most software offering this feature) and quantize them, or you can quantize everything.

more than that would depend on the software you are using.

let me know if you have more specific questions about a piece of software or the quantize feature of that software...

cheers,

eric

Quantizing lines up midi notes to a grid - meaning, if you played something sloppy, it can snap them perfectly into 8th notes, 16th notes or whatever you sent your quantize settings to. The downside of this is that quantizing might make a part sound too stiff.

In most software you can use groove templates to quantize, based on looser rhythms with more groove or swing. For example, I use Akai MPC-60 groove template all the time, since I like the feel/swing of the MPC-60 sampler/sequencer. Rather than syncing my midi notes to a perfect grid, when I quantize with the groove template, it moves the notes according to the swing of that piece of gear.

I've probably confused you more than helped you, but hopefully you get the general idea.

I recently made a tune with very quantized drums.

I think drums sound better a bit off kilter.

quantize kicks and snares, but leave the high hats alone... mmm mmmm

As to whether or not you should use quantize, I think it's all dependent on the nature of the music, if it's got to be super tight and accurate (modern dance music or electronic music, for example) it might be worth quantizing your playing, or at the very least your beats. If the music is trying to approximate the feel of an actual band/orchestra/group of players I wouldn't use it at all. Instead, I've found it's much more rewarding in the long run to practice your performance skills and simply be able to play your instrument competently and as focused as possible.

post quantizing is fun

my beatz r so quantized man, WORD

I like the robotic, but loose beats you get when you quantize straight beats to an 8th note swing.

i quantize heavily - i have a hardware sequencer and love recording a really loose pattern into it where all the notes are fucked and way off (basically just press anything at random lol), then selecting some hard quantisation setting and applying it and seeing what the fuck comes out the other end....get some very cool riffs this way...

i say fuck quantize.

quantisation isn't all about 4/4 exact beats you know - you can get some very odd, off key, half step kind of patterns using it - just depends what settings you employ. it is basically essential if you're not a professional keyboard player/drummer and don't want your tracks to sound like they were put together by a complete fool - for ambient/noise tracks, i agree - no quantisation is necessary if you don't really need it, but for tracks with beats and riffs that you want to actually be in time with each other (even if the time signatures are different or whatever, you still want the different elements of a tune to sync together).

people who say "fuck quantisation" usually do not understand how it works or what it does - i have a mate like this who's got a load of gear and to be honest, doesn't know what he's doing with most of it. he says "fuck quantisation" and I listen to a track of his and it all sounds amateur and out of sync. like a bad drummer jamming with a novice keyboard player. not a good sound.

i understand it, i just like placing things according to my own tempii.

fair enough, but you still want them to all be in sync with each other yeah? like, you don't one beat at 132.7bpm and another overlapping one at 123.4bpm that both trigger and loop at different times (actually this sounds quite cool, but you know what I mean). an analogy might be you think up a cool violin arpeggio in your head and write it down on music paper - you might start by vaguely writing the notes in the approximate locations and play around with the sequence on a piano until you find something you like, then you'd "ink in" the finished sequence (as it were) and place the notes exactly where you wanted them on the correct step/staff/bar or whatever. i see this effectively as quantization - i will bugger about on my keyboard playing riffs and chords and that until i come up with something i like, then record that riff into my sequencer as well as I can play it live (with the aid of a basic beat usually) and then listen back. as i'm not a professional keyboard player, inevitably there are often some timing errors and some notes are slightly out of sync with the beat, so i use quantization to sort the notes into the relevant time signature. if i did this by going through the sequence by hand and manually moving or placing each note i'd still effectively be quantizing it - just not using a pre programmed grid to do so. the advantage of using automatic quantization is that is quicker - you just record a sequence, quantize it with whatever parameters you wish and if there is the odd note out of place you can change it manually anyway...

it sounds very useful and i can see the appeal of quantizing melodies not just drums. how much do you usually quantize ?... quarter notes eighth notes etc

i usually quantize to the quarter note to start with

that's what Mom always said ^

Quantizing can also be useful to loosen up beats. If you step sequence something, it will be really stiff. But you can apply a groove template and quantize it to be looser.

I usually waste a ton of time to quantize things by hand...

Well, it's not really a waste, I don't think. A lot of the time if I use automatic quantization the song loses the rhythm that I wanted for it, so I just work by hand. Plus, I think doing it that way can teach you more about sequencing drum loops and such, because you notice what types of rhythms and hits sound good for whatever sound you're going for.

And like people said, there is really no point of quantizing ambient tracks. Pretty much anything with a long attack will sound better not quantized (in my opinion), I really love the sound of a chord coming in with each key being slightly off, and quantizing that would ruin it...

But yeah, applying a groove is a really great way to play around with anything that is "stiff" sounding, I do love the straight sound of earlier electronic music, but grooves are always fun to bring in...

fuck quantization

edit: fuck anything that lets you record something then hit a button and magically make the notes line up, if you want it to sound right fucking record it right

  beneboi said:

fuck quantization

 

edit: fuck anything that lets you record something then hit a button and magically make the notes line up, if you want it to sound right fucking record it right

No.

i just draw stuff in :confused:

  beneboi said:

fuck quantization

 

edit: fuck anything that lets you record something then hit a button and magically make the notes line up, if you want it to sound right fucking record it right

what? you may as well say fuck using a reverb unit as it "magically" applies reverb to something just by pressing a button and you should fucking well go into a big room and record with mics if you want reverb. you seem to think that quantization is somehow cheating or unmusical - i.e. you don't know what you're talking about (or you're just being a troll as usual). all quantization is, is a way of adding groove to a grooveless sequence or accuracy to a inaccurate sequence - it's not permanent either - you can still change the notes around and make them slightly out of sync or whatever if you really want to...

anyway, why would you come into a perfectly innocent thread asking about quantizing and start being all "fuck that, record it properly or not at all you fuck" - what are you not allowed to make tracks if you can't play a keyboard live, perfectly in time 100% of the time? piss off you fucking trolling twat.

  BCM said:

  beneboi said:

fuck quantization

 

edit: fuck anything that lets you record something then hit a button and magically make the notes line up, if you want it to sound right fucking record it right

 

piss off you fucking trolling twat.

lol, id loved to hear your unquanitized perfectly performed music beneboi do you care posting some of it for us to hear how perfectly in time it is.

  Awepittance said:

  BCM said:

  beneboi said:

fuck quantization

 

edit: fuck anything that lets you record something then hit a button and magically make the notes line up, if you want it to sound right fucking record it right

 

piss off you fucking trolling twat.

 

 

lol, id loved to hear your unquanitized perfectly performed music beneboi do you care posting some of it for us to hear how perfectly in time it is.

check my sig, also i post quite a bit in ylc

  BCM said:

  beneboi said:

fuck quantization

 

edit: fuck anything that lets you record something then hit a button and magically make the notes line up, if you want it to sound right fucking record it right

 

what? you may as well say fuck using a reverb unit as it "magically" applies reverb to something just by pressing a button and you should fucking well go into a big room and record with mics if you want reverb. you seem to think that quantization is somehow cheating or unmusical - i.e. you don't know what you're talking about (or you're just being a troll as usual). all quantization is, is a way of adding groove to a grooveless sequence or accuracy to a inaccurate sequence - it's not permanent either - you can still change the notes around and make them slightly out of sync or whatever if you really want to...

 

anyway, why would you come into a perfectly innocent thread asking about quantizing and start being all "fuck that, record it properly or not at all you fuck" - what are you not allowed to make tracks if you can't play a keyboard live, perfectly in time 100% of the time? piss off you fucking trolling twat.

jesus what crawled up your minge? i actually do kind of feel like its cheating for music that is supposed to sound live like a band or something.