Quantize Advice

[Subby32]

ok well im tryin to get my pocket on my beats as tight as possible...
im of the philosophy that perfect timing is what creates groove, not this randomize or "humanize" stuff that is done without any logic other than that human drummers dont play perfect. (Im sure if they had the ability to play a perfect groove and loop it throughout a performance they would.)
the right swing settings. the right sounds, ADSR, and velocity settings are all thats needed imo
anyway my problem is that i quantize midi notes which trigger samples in Nuendo through DR-008.
The problem im coming across is with the starting point of my samples. the groove of the midi notes is perfect, but because the samples being triggered have slightly different starting times my groove is being killed by small millisecond inconsistencies
I have the midi tracks split by drum type so that i can use the track delay to compensate for this change in attack times, but Im looking for a solution that will almost quantize the samples as well so that all the transients hit at the exact same time.
Then from there I can delay the individual tracks to develop my pocket and know exactly the distance the samples's transients are hitting in relation to one another.
Is the only solution to just manually edit all my samples so that say their highest peak transient occurs at a set millisecond mark? or is there some better way??

Basically in a less confusing sense, I want to ensure that all the samples are being triggered ultra tight according to the locations of the midi notes that are triggering them

thanks. hope its not too confusing

[beat you down]

not sure if this is what you mean but...
have you tried to record everything and then (re) align the audio by hand?

[bgrotto]

I don't wanna split hairs, but quantizing your beat to a grid will actually eliminate the "pocket".

I understand your philosophy about repetition, but that can be accomplished without losing the consistency of a (unquantized) groove from bar to bar. Most non-computer-generated groove-oriented music is built around this concept.



Anyway, to answer your question: you'll probably have to go in by hand and edit the timing in a DAW. Just remember, the highest peak on a drum isn't always the perceived transient, so as always, use your ears.

[Stitch333]

Originally Posted by bgrotto

quantizing your beat to a grid will actually eliminate the "pocket".

I think quantizing parts of the beat to grid actually helps.
Kicks on the 1, snares sometimes. Also, a lot of the rave influence (4 on the floor kinda stuff) benefits a lot for being on the grid.
Hats and percussion always seem to need some 'swerve'.

Recycle is a GREAT tool to trim samples for accurate use...

Ultimately tho, the pockets is ALL in the ears, feel and vibe.

[bgrotto]

Originally Posted by Stitch333

I think quantizing parts of the beat to grid actually helps.
Kicks on the 1, snares sometimes. Also, a lot of the rave influence (4 on the floor kinda stuff) benefits a lot for being on the grid.
Hats and percussion always seem to need some 'swerve'.

Recycle is a GREAT tool to trim samples for accurate use...

Ultimately tho, the pockets is ALL in the ears, feel and vibe.

Maybe I'm just too sensitive because I'm a drummer, but when snares land right on the 2-and-4 of the grid, it's just so lifeless to me. All those classic funk drummers played waaay behind the beat. The jazz guys (at least, my favorite ones, other than Art Blakey and occasionally Elvin Jones) tended to push the beat a little (or a lot...Tony Williams, anyone?), and let's not even get into the crazy madness of shit like Afro-Cuban clave or other Latin-American rhythm styles. That shit is DEEP.

Anyway, this is all coming from a guy that hates on ?uestlove's drumming, so I'm hardly the arbiter of drum machine taste. I'll leave you guys alone now.

[kasprouch]

Try out FXpansion's Guru. The sequencer is the tightest Ive tried up to now...

[8tracks]

I just wanted to add that even thou sequencers are suppose to play perfectly on time. Most of them don't. As the bars go on the timing starts to move off slightly. Take the MPC 3000 as a example most people prefer the swing and groove because is has nearly perfect timing. Now this might be a very subtle difference in a groove of a track but through my experience just changing any one thing in a groove no matter how small can have a big impact on outcome of the track.

[DEZEA]

Originally Posted by Subby32

The problem im coming across is with the starting point of my samples. the groove of the midi notes is perfect, but because the samples being triggered have slightly different starting times my groove is being killed by small millisecond inconsistencies

I'm pretty sure you could batch process all your samples using Adobe Audition's scripting tools (so it will cut any silence at the actual wave start) I remember doing that a few times with my library just for the same reason.. it sucks when you have a perfect groove but which becomes inacurrate because of the sloppy way the samples were cut.

[Subby32]

i do use the mpc3000 templates as well as ones ive made straight off my mpd 32,
and i agree that hitting strictly on the grid is a boring feel, but i was just looking for a way to initially apply the groove template on my midi track and have peace of mind knowing that my samples are all locked ultra tight to the grid. and by that i dont mean the starting point but rather the perceived peak of the sample so that technically all the audio is quantized to the right groove...
from there as i said i could use the individual track delay to get my own feel. i usully bump up the kick and hats and delay the snare depending on the feel im going for....believe me i hate a straight 16th note grid

I think the best way to do it is what beat you down recommended; im going to try recording a 4 beat loop in which all the drums hit at the same time and also with each part on its own track and then manually line the peaks up. I guess i could calculate how much i had to shift each track, and then apply that amount to the timing delay of each midi track...great idea man thanks!

[jedilaw]

You need to edit the samples themselves to adjust the starting point. A lot of apps will let you do that directly. Not sure if DR-008 does, but Guru does and they're made by the same folks so I wouldn't be surprised to see DR-008 with that ability.

Depending on your DAW, you may be able to drag your MIDI notes slightly to give the groove more feel. Pull the snares a little behind the beat, etc.

[Karloff70]

Use hardware like MPC or any other hardware sequencer or even an Atari ST. Stops you having to go for the trackdelay again and again and again....once will do. Daw's are just not as good like that, even if your midi interface actually IS a good one (most are not...). F*** knows why, but that's how it is.....

[Jermaine]

DONT USE QUANTIZE!!!

thats all i can say. i am a drummer myself. i hate techno and dance music, so if you like that style of music, forget what i say.. i am a funk, jazz, soul, rock guy. music must breathe! its a like a picture. there is no straight line. music isnt perfect.

and come on.. i learned many many years to play guitar, bass and keys. like any musician. when you dont play an instrument, at least you learn how to play a simple hip hop rhythme!!! its just 4/4!!!

music isnt perfect. learn do play a simple boom bap (that doesnt take years!!!) and make music. be respectful to music.

a daw is like fast food. everyone can make music with it. you can overleap the "learning-phase", and thats a problem and an other topic..


and btw straight on beat is boring and sound not like a good drummer. there is no great drummer, who play exact on beat. just feel the music!

peace

..and sorry for the techno guys! i hate the music, but i dont hate the people.

[jsrockit]

Originally Posted by Jermaine

a daw is like fast food. everyone can make music with it. you can overleap the "learning-phase", and thats a problem and an other topic..

dfegad

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by Jermaine

DONT USE QUANTIZE!!!

thats all i can say. i am a drummer myself. i hate techno and dance music, so if you like that style of music, forget what i say.. i am a funk, jazz, soul, rock guy. music must breathe! its a like a picture. there is no straight line. music isnt perfect.

and come on.. i learned many many years to play guitar, bass and keys. like any musician. when you dont play an instrument, at least you learn how to play a simple hip hop rhythme!!! its just 4/4!!!

music isnt perfect. learn do play a simple boom bap (that doesnt take years!!!) and make music. be respectful to music.

a daw is like fast food. everyone can make music with it. you can overleap the "learning-phase", and thats a problem and an other topic..


and btw straight on beat is boring and sound not like a good drummer. there is no great drummer, who play exact on beat. just feel the music!

peace

..and sorry for the techno guys! i hate the music, but i dont hate the people.

I agree for played music, BUT I also like dance/techno/deephouse...etc type music, and to achieve the abstract strictness that it thrives on you do need quantize, and to get that particular thing swinging in its computerised tightness your best bet is hardware or an Atari.

Just a different thing. And the OP obviously isn't doing 'live' music.......

[phillysoulman]

Originally Posted by bgrotto

Maybe I'm just too sensitive because I'm a drummer, but when snares land right on the 2-and-4 of the grid, it's just so lifeless to me. All those classic funk drummers played waaay behind the beat. The jazz guys (at least, my favorite ones, other than Art Blakey and occasionally Elvin Jones) tended to push the beat a little (or a lot...Tony Williams, anyone?), and let's not even get into the crazy madness of shit like Afro-Cuban clave or other Latin-American rhythm styles. That shit is DEEP.

Anyway, this is all coming from a guy that hates on ?uestlove's drumming, so I'm hardly the arbiter of drum machine taste. I'll leave you guys alone now.

Yeah..he sure aint no Al Jackson..capice???

[g22]

It really shouldn't make a big difference. If you chop a snare for example, and trigger its midi note on every 2 and 4, even if you left a little air in the front of the sample, it will make all of your snares off by the same amount.

Sort of pushing the beat back. If you want it forward a little more, slide them forward a little as a group so they are the same distance, if thats what you want.

Personally, I think when ppl talk about being "off" as a good thing, that doesn't mean sloppy, or really even off-beat - nobody likes an offbeat song. Its just another way of saying non-quantized. I think its been proven by all the great drummers in the world that you can play a beat in time manually without quantizing and sound great, and not sloppy, its all in your rhythm.

quantizing is fun to get ideas down quick, but after a while when you've tried just about every pattern there is, and your sick of that same timing, playing your own rhythms (non-quantized) will open up an infinite amount of new possible beats/songs.

You also can try programs with autochop, or just use some stock drums and tweak to your liking, those all seem to be chopped perfect.

[viewingstuff]

Originally Posted by Subby32

ok well im tryin to get my pocket on my beats as tight as possible...
im of the philosophy that perfect timing is what creates groove, not this randomize or "humanize" stuff that is done without any logic other than that human drummers dont play perfect. (Im sure if they had the ability to play a perfect groove and loop it throughout a performance they would.)
the right swing settings. the right sounds, ADSR, and velocity settings are all thats needed imo
anyway my problem is that i quantize midi notes which trigger samples in Nuendo through DR-008.
The problem im coming across is with the starting point of my samples. the groove of the midi notes is perfect, but because the samples being triggered have slightly different starting times my groove is being killed by small millisecond inconsistencies
I have the midi tracks split by drum type so that i can use the track delay to compensate for this change in attack times, but Im looking for a solution that will almost quantize the samples as well so that all the transients hit at the exact same time.
Then from there I can delay the individual tracks to develop my pocket and know exactly the distance the samples's transients are hitting in relation to one another.
Is the only solution to just manually edit all my samples so that say their highest peak transient occurs at a set millisecond mark? or is there some better way??

Basically in a less confusing sense, I want to ensure that all the samples are being triggered ultra tight according to the locations of the midi notes that are triggering them

thanks. hope its not too confusing

The best way to do it instead of all of these technical things is just plain old fashioned 'keep doing it 'til you get it right'. Each take should be lightning quick; retake, retake, then retake over and over until, bam! Sometimes it happens on your first take. A good sequencer and interface is designed this way to allow you to retake in a split second. Once you hear yourself lay down a tight rhythm with no quantize you will be sold on what I'm saying. I mean, you could crawl under the hood of your car and manually inspect the engine as it's running for optimal efficiency, or you could just sit in the drivers seat and ride. That's what it was made for. One

[kasprouch]

If you make sure that every sample you use & record is tight, taking a tiny bit of time to edit all of them (chop/tighten/save) you can amass a library of sounds that you know for sure are ready - for whenever you need something quick. One loose sound, as easy as a sloppy snare can ruin the feel of the whole groove. You might not notice until a couple of hours later... At this point you cant even tell its the snare anymore, so you have to hunt the bitch down. You catch my drift.

Housekeeping and good groundwork has been the key for me to a sweet groove

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by kasprouch

If you make sure that every sample you use & record is tight, taking a tiny bit of time to edit all of them (chop/tighten/save) you can amass a library of sounds that you know for sure are ready - for whenever you need something quick. One loose sound, as easy as a sloppy snare can ruin the feel of the whole groove. You might not notice until a couple of hours later... At this point you cant even tell its the snare anymore, so you have to hunt the bitch down. You catch my drift.

Housekeeping and good groundwork has been the key for me to a sweet groove

I'm sorry but if it takes you two hours to notice that your snare isn't truncated properly the difference between hardware and DAW tightness is irrelevant anyway.....

[Lipps]

Originally Posted by Jermaine

DONT USE QUANTIZE!!!

Double

[phillysoulman]

Here's the deal..
If you want your shit to sound natural you must think like a drummer.
So much of hip hop music drum music is rigid because alot of the patterns are not normal patterns that a real drummer would play and you would need three or four hands to play the parts with.
So LISTEN carefully to alot of records which are recorded by real "old school" and jazz drumers and you will get the picture.

IMHO, most hip hop drum beats are very boring and amateur sounding because of the lack of real drumming knowledge..

[kasprouch]

Originally Posted by Karloff70

I'm sorry but if it takes you two hours to notice that your snare isn't truncated properly the difference between hardware and DAW tightness is irrelevant anyway.....

Right... If you drag everything out of its context, you can make statements like the one above all day long.

Let me explain it more thoroughly,

You start a track with just a beat... everything sounds fine. You start adding, adding, adding, and adding elements... Two hours later after adding and adding and adding, it doesnt sound so fine anymore. The culprit: the sound that seemed fine at the beginning, but now is too loose to fit in your much tighter arrangement.

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by phillysoulman

Here's the deal..
If you want your shit to sound natural you must think like a drummer.
So much of hip hop music drum music is rigid because alot of the patterns are not normal patterns that a real drummer would play and you would need three or four hands to play the parts with.
So LISTEN carefully to alot of records which are recorded by real "old school" and jazz drumers and you will get the picture.

IMHO, most hip hop drum beats are very boring and amateur sounding because of the lack of real drumming knowledge..

Fair thought indeed, but then I'd hazard a guess that 'natural' isn't a buzzword for your average aspiring beatmaker.....another case of disconnection from the place it came from.....

Still, I wouldn't necessarily rate a drumgroove on its possible playability by one human being with 4 limbs.....just needs to have space to breathe, which if you think like a drummer happens automatically....well, if you think like a tasty drummer anyway.....

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by kasprouch

Right... If you drag everything out of its context, you can make statements like the one above all day long.

Let me explain it more thoroughly, just for you

You start a track with just a beat... everything sounds fine. You start adding, adding, adding, and adding elements... Two hours later after adding and adding and adding, it doesnt sound so fine anymore. The culprit: the sound that seemed fine at the beginning, but now is too loose to fit in your much tighter arrangement.

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, been there.....so two hours later you feck around with the balance, trackdelays, envelopes etc to get the new fuller context to keep grooving.......still, if your samples aren't truncated tight you're going to have problems regardless how tight your sequencer/fast your midi is.....which was my point.

[kasprouch]

Originally Posted by Karloff70

...if your samples aren't truncated tight you're going to have problems regardless how tight your sequencer/fast your midi is.....which was my point.

Exactly mine too... Housekeeping and groundwork (dont just throw anything in - make sure its right) so you dont have to frick with anything 2 hours later

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by kasprouch

Exactly mine too... Housekeeping and groundwork (dont just throw anything in - make sure its right) so you dont have to frick with anything 2 hours later

Except when the OP was wondering what best to do about his timing issue I kind of assumed (maybe wrongly) that proper truncating of sample starts was a given. After which the difference in stability of hardware sequencing makes a massive difference to what he describes as his problem.

And I've never programmed anything where 'you don't have to frick with anything two hours later'......envelopes always change until mixdown for one. But with hardware you get to stop fecking with trackdelay pretty instantly as opposed to goosechasing throughout.....

[kasprouch]

Right, agreed. My statements are very generalised, but

Originally Posted by Subby32

Is the only solution to just manually edit all my samples so that say their highest peak transient occurs at a set millisecond mark?

I dont think you can really get around this, in terms of truncating correctly... which is what both of us are saying.

Originally Posted by Karloff70

But with hardware you get to stop fecking with trackdelay pretty instantly as opposed to goosechasing throughout.....

Since moving to Guru, not really missing hardware anymore. The reaction speed is very fast, and maybe the tightest Ive heard...

[Subby32]

yea i mean as far as unquantized shit goes ive got that down and ill agree no amount of quantized programming will match it, but its not always the best option when going for certain styles, particularly current hip-pop stuff.
For example out of a few songs currently hitting hard on the radio like david banners get like me, t.i. - whatever you like, rick ross' here i am, etc... are any of these tracks unquantized? they could be bapped out live on the pads and then looped but i doubt it?

Im a drummer myself, but i still believe i can do all i need for the groove with quantization + swing templates and fine tuning with the track delay settings...my original question was just to see if there was a way to ensure the samples were hitting perfectly on the groove so i could adjust from there and eliminate alot of guess work in the precise timing of the samples that is hard to hear accurately.
say ive got a snare and a clap on two separate tracks triggering together, which basically "stacks" the samples....the smallest ms differences in when these samples hits totally affects the resulting sound.

to karloff and anyone else with atari st experience...how is it that they are tighter than a computer? ive got a mac pro 8 core and there is still gonna be inconsistency and delay from when my sampler (dr-008) sees the midi note and then actually plays back the sample? is there really a difference between soft sampler response times? im gonna have to look into a hardware setup for my drums if thats the case

also to anyone with experience with guru...can it read incoming midi from the arrange window in nuendo or does the sequencing need to be done in the guru arrange window? i hate having another screen to **** around in

thanks for the help so far guys

[blayz2002]

To the OP, you need to truncate man...even if you don't sit there and do all your samples in one session, you should be able to feel if you are playing a kick or snare and it's not starting right, you go in right there and edit it before you record the part. No point in laying down a super tight drum part if the hit point of the samples are all over the place, you never gonna get a tight groove. And to me when you start messing with the groove (delaying and pulling forward) after you layered up your sounds you can never get it to feel just right.

As other guys have mentioned you have to gt the drums right first.

[blayz2002]

Originally Posted by Subby32

ive got a mac pro 8 core and there is still gonna be inconsistency and delay from when my sampler (dr-008) sees the midi note and then actually plays back the sample? is there really a difference between soft sampler response times? im gonna have to look into a hardware setup for my drums if thats the case

also to anyone with experience with guru...can it read incoming midi from the arrange window in nuendo or does the sequencing need to be done in the guru arrange window? i hate having another screen to **** around in

thanks for the help so far guys

I just did a quick experiment, as I always lay parts with the quantize on, as I know the latency in my interface causes what I play on the keyboard to be out slightly all the time...I use Logic and a midi keyboard with Battery or EXS drum samples, Right now I have the Duet and I usually record at 64 or 128 buffer, and I just tried lowering the buffer to 32 and see if if the parts recorded tighter ....and they did. So that's something else to check.

In logic you have a quantize strength control ...so I use that to back down till I can hear the groove I played but it's still tight. Works for me.

Ps...you can trigger the samples from your sequencer, in Guru without using it's sequencer.