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Question for you midi swingers!
Midi swing, say 0 to 50% should shift odd notes in time to delay them.
So 0% = no shift, 50% the note should start playing 50% of step-time interval later (i.e. half-way through where it would be if swing=0%)
So swing shifts the note start, but should it shift the note off (i.e. does it keep the same note length but just shift the whole timeframe)?
If it does, then more than likely the notes overlap & many synths (mono patches anyway) don't play nicely with overlapping notes.
Anyone have thoughts on this? keeping the note off at the end of a step sounds better - but what really is swing?
Comments
This is where the 'legato' switch on mono-synths come to play.
With legato turned off the new note will 'cut off' the old one so it should be quite safe shift the note start and send a note off before the next step starts to avoid having the previous note cut off the new one if they are sent on the same key. When adding swing in logic the events overlap.
For mono synths us usually enough to disable legato and accept that the previous note will be 'cut off' when a new one is triggered. I've never bumped into issues with shifted note offs affecting the end result.
Only cases where things might get wonky if is the gate-time per step overlaps multiple steps.
(Ie. 1/4th notes triggered at 1/16th intervals) and then only if it's the same not that is triggered.
Just try it and see what happens
Samu I think @midiSequencer means the swing function found on a lot of drum apps..is that right ?
If so then swing will shift the hits slightly ahead or behind a hard quantised grid.. to help give the beat some feel.
The beats are usually left hard quantised (steps 1-5-9-13 on a drum grid) and the 16th’s (or steps 2-4-6-8-10-12 and 14) are usually pushed forward off the grid..
0% swing is like you say no swing. But 100% swing will be the furthest the hits will go, which could be upto a 64th of a bar. And this creates a problem.
Different developers may well use different implementations of swing..for example 50% swing in DM1 could amount to 35% swing in SeekBeats or 40% in Gadget.
It certainly seems that synths handle legato/voice handling differently, sometimes with irregular results.
I have never been able to get a swing parameter to work in a way I felt was natural. Swing, with the usual meaning of irregular timing of select beats, well I had long played rock and some jazz and didn't think to much about that. Whoever wrote the song, or if it was a cover, you felt it and just intuited it. Since, I've done a lot of recording live or to a click and in the editing process, I've noticed there is no one swing. There are parts where all but one note might be tight on the grid. Things that swing forward rather than back. And yes, there are those like described above. The biggest revelation to me was initially thinking these were mistakes, correcting them, listening back and omg...just killed the groove.
My default now for fixing live drums etc. is just to tighten any 1s to the grid. So I take that approach with the iPad too. Just record most things unquantized until I figure out the particular swing pattern of the song.
Definitely, otherwise most notes would start sounding weird. Note length is an important property of the note and its sound when played by a synth or other sound source.
Why? Monosynths will do exactly what they're set to do:
Either they play the next note legato-style, or trigger a new note, or do nothing (some monosynths have lower/higher note priority settings and, for example, won't play anything if lower note prio is set and a higher note comes next).
wise words - quantisation can kill the human playing. But yes its all about the groove (alas wish I was a drummer sometimes)
you would think so, but the result is often non-deterministic probably due to internal synth voicing, some due to pitch-bending. I haven't got a handle on it yet as each synth seems different.
I reckon that's up to the target synth and officially not your problem.
Q should just swing the notes and that should include the note offs. That is, if I enter a specific step length for step 9 and set it to swing, I would expect that set note length to sound—not the set step length minus the swing offset from note on.
@syrupcore well thats what you've got
My question was to see if we needed a mode that only moved the note on.
Do we have to put our midi keys in the pot?
not sure I follow?
I think it works fine to just move the note. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have another option.
Regarding human feel, I think if it matters, then play it with swing. I see the swing function in sequencers as a useful machine effect, not a humanization effect.
I guess this is the point where you start running into bugs of some synths that have never been fixed because either only few people have noticed yet or the respective developer doesn't agree that it's a bug, although I don't think there's much room for discussion when it comes to note handling
Why not make it a simple switch (Swing affects note-off timing) for now?
The user is then free to fine-tune note durations where they're problematic.
Yep and that's the way I like it. And the way God says it's supposed to be, last I heard from them.
Wouldn't argue against an option if that helps it "sound right" in some synths that are popular yet doing it wrong but I got me a list of other Q things I'd rather see first, selfishly.
yeah and swing leads to groove patterns that we discussed before - I'd already made a start on those.
English joke on the word ‘Swingers’
yep showing our age eh!
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