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Anyone else not a fan of Quantization?
Watching YouTube and I feel like I've become a rare breed in this regard.
While I certainly appreciate the usefulness of quantizing, especially on drums, I haven't actually used it in years. When I first started playing, I found it useful on keys as my playing was subpar, but then I realized it can instantly take away the feeling and quite frankly often just sounds worse. Being a bit behind or off the beat is actually preferable in a lot situations and can add different feelings (groovy, laid back, etc.). But even for songs or genres where you need to be tight, having tiny bits of variance can still add color and character to the music that can instantly evaporate when quantized.
Any other quantizavoiders out there?
Comments
I agree for the most part. I have a lot more fun and get better results with out it when I can get away with out it. On the other hand, quantizing can be a big timesaver for fixing up the inevitable couple of flubbed notes. I'm not that great of a player.
Often though, it doesn't work to just fix one or two notes as then they stick out and you end up quantizing others, then it just cascades. I agree it's often best just to go back and do another take until I get it right.
Loopy Pro, with no midi and only audio, helped me break free of the quantization trap. It has been liberating. I have mixed feelings about the upcoming support for midi looping. It's great to have, but I have to force myself to resist the temptation to tweak things to death.
It also helps for parts such as hi-hats where sometimes I don't have the chops to play in faster sequences.
+1
As wim suggested, recording live instruments/audio is a totally different experience than working with midi (even if midi is recorded in real time) and it trains you to have a better internal clock (some people have absolute or relative pitch , others have perfect rhythm etc so taking into account everyone talent is different ofc) if you are rhythmically challenged. When I record piano with my midi controller I’m usually so close to being on the grid that when/if I try to quantize it’ll actually move it late or early.
For the sake of transparency, Drums are a different story for me because I am not a great finger drummer [despite being a tabla player (and in very odd time signatures too that would usually throw a western player off) ] so I use Octachron because even quantizing my finger drumming isn’t enough to fix it. I still have to manually edit, and I don’t like midi editing. I’d rather do ten takes over and over then one midi pass thru and edit. So I avoided it only because it seems I’m just too metrically gifted
(And what blasphemy wim! MIDI donuts are the hottest requested thing on the menu. Like I said I know a group of gear heads that never talk about software, but when LP came up, they came out the woodwork to tell me how excited they were to get midi looping - now mind you as I prefaced, a lot of guys love midi, especially for electronic music, because it isn’t really meant to have that human groove to it. (Generally speaking I mean, it’s usually 4/4 and always on beat)
I made some blanket statements but it’s all relative
I had a phase of using a Beatstep Pro with either Reaper or Bitwig for a while, and the recording quantization saved me a lot of headache because the BSP would NEVER send MIDI on time in Bitwig, no matter what I tried. The received notes would be off by a constant amount, and quantizing to the grid just cleaned it up nicely.
For live playing, I totally agree with you. The human feel is a large part of the sound in a lot of scenarios.
Yeh. And I'm absolutely loving most of what I'm seeing in the beta so far, and am using it all the time. But I do feel like it's helping me step backward from the freedom (and chops building) that having to stick to audio was bringing. I think I learned my lesson though and I don't think I'll backslide too far. 😉
Recently I have been staying away from quantizing and even “re-recording” the midi performance rather than fix the few off notes. I walk away feeling more satisfied.
I have my Loopy Pro template set up with retrospective record on left-swipe on a loop. Then I just play and play until I get it right, then swipe left on the loop and there it is. As long as I simply move on from there, the creative flow is pretty easy to keep up.
btw, if anyone is interested, Loopy's going to have some sweet non-destructive quantizing options that go way beyond just snapping to 16th notes. That's a case where quantization can actually become a musical tool beyond just fixing bad timing.
(btw. I haven't crossed any lines in terms of what we can disclose about the beta.)
Quantization has its place, but often a looser feel makes for more human-sounding music.
I am not a fan of Quantizing, even drums. I find it stifles the feel of riffs/songs. Often I right riffs that change time signature in the middle of them, albeit by accident but it has a feel.
I do suffer from bad timing I tend to rush and anticipate.
To help with that I will put the kick down and quantize that to 1/4,1/8, or 1/16 after that all bets are off!
I will record my riff straight from the keys, using that kick as my metronome. If I mess it up I just do it over and over and over.
Here is a modified technique I learned from Starsky Carr. Create a sound, record your riff. Create the same sound on another synth (no matter how hard you try it won’t be exact) and record that riff again- play it as close as you can but do not quantize either of them. Then pan one left and the other right. You will get a FAT tone.
Then I add the rest of the drums using a trigger pad and a sticks. I am no drummer so I have to do one at a time. First snare, then hats. Then Tom’s cymbals and percussion. There are some time when I can’t play the part and I have to program it.
Here’s a lesson I learned from working with my old drummer when I was in a band, he never wanted to play to a click. He hated them.
I wanted to use backing tracks for the keyboards live so I could be more of a front man when I layed down a click track and recorded my keys then he played along to the click, it sounded awful!
The songs just didn’t have the same vibe or feel to them, he refused to ever play to a click again.
Then I had an idea.
He and I went into the rehearsal room. I recorded my keys straight into the computer and I had one mic up in the middle of the room and we played the song together. Just he and I - drums and keyboards from beginning to end the same way we always did. One mic recoding the drums live.
Then we sat down and I set up a drum pad on a snare stand and had him record a midi “click” to his own live drums.
This solved everything!
Now the songs have the exact same feel that they should. They sounded correct. Would they line up on the grid? Probably not but he was a really good drummer so not too far off just micro timing changes and of course he always liked to speed up the outro of a song!
Best of all, now he didn’t mind playing to a click. I was able to put all the keys on the backing tracks, and become more of a front man which was better for the band.
It obviously totally depends on the music.
I love music that’s totally locked to the grid — straight up, no swing.
A lot of my music is very quantised/programmed because I like how that sounds.
I also like making soundtrack/orchestral-ish music that isn’t quantised at all.
And everything in between.
I’ll often ‘steal the feel’ for drums — make a groove quantise setting that I apply to other drums. The feel can come from a sampled loop, logic drummer pattern or my own midi playing.
If it needs quantising I quantise. If it doesn’t, I don’t. Synth bass? Quantised to the max. ‘Acoustic’ bass? Keep the feel. I’ll even quantise my guitar playing if that’s needed. Quantising audio is fun. Especially if you can coax some nasty artefacts out of it.
I always quantise. I never quantise. And everything in between.
When I record my own playing, it’s usually off grid, but I then love using and messing with random loops made with AudioModern apps put through fx. The way I get around them feeling too ‘on grid’, is with liberal use of tape fx lol.
I simply can’t keep a beat though, so playing drums is out of the question. So I do love apps that help put a more human feel into drums, but still make it possible for me to feel like I’m in some form of control of them.
I don’t tend to quantise my playing, but I have to do an awful lot of tweaking the midi! The amount of notes that just need a little tweak here or there are many and often it’s just as much sliding off grid as moving them on. I would guess I spend just as much time editing midi notes as actually recording them. Even when I’m using Logics players, I will often find something close to what I want and then convert to midi and move it about a bit.
I do wish that more hardware would do auto humanising by moving notes off grid in very small amounts. When I record hardware beats in, I always tend to use tape apps again with them to help get rid of that clinical machine feel. I’m sure that’s why a lot of eighties drum machines sounded fine in the mix because they recorded on tape - well that and other analog recording ‘things’ happening.
with music its the play with quantisation which is fun, in funk music often its when the band transitions from a loose feel
to a tight sound for a brief moment is when the band sound the funkiest or most quantised.
many times, in classical music to have the most accurate to the clock play is desired but obviously not all the time.
What i like about most DAW's and groove boxes nowadays is you can quantise what you play in real time but at only a certain percentage. I use that a lot.
I think it depends on the types of music you make, and your own unique way on the music journey path. When I write experimental piece or explicitly try to capture the "human" feels—errors and all—I never quantize at all. Why lock yourself with limited grids of 16th note, triplet, etc.? Why not embrace asynchronous attacks? But some other kinds of music demands machine-like precision. For these, not only I'd quantize rigorously and religiously, I'd even forgo round-robin for samples and using the very same electronic drum sample again and again.
I need to have quantize off always for anything musical or fx related. No quantize touch screen response on a low buffer size is magical to me. And even when I need to fix/correct a timing issue I will correct it without quantize.
koala fx, flytape, animoog, sitala, Gr16
and it’s good practice. your music will be better or at least more interesting or might go in unexpected directions.
sometimes I use bluetooth headphones, then try to comensate for the delay. Its fun.
Bowling with or without quantize.😃
I like "non-destructive" quantization where I can dial it in/out with swing and such. Also, mixing quantization in piano rolls for notes on 1/3 or 2/4 can sound pretty interesting based on what's happening in-between, unquantized.
Gave this some more thought. I guess the question is whether you allow software to quantize to a grid, but there are other ways to do it.
I am not a great drummer, but I can play to a click track really well if there are no complex fills, or use of the more difficult drum rudiments. Is that quantization?
Also, it’s not hard to lay down a piano part or a rhythm guitar part to a click track and then turn off the click track and play everything to the first recorded track. Is that quantization?
There’s probably more middle ground to this than came to mind when I first read the first post.
Personally I think you crossed the line on that one @wim and should immediately ban yourself 🙂
Never quantize and it shows. I do click track but don’t pay attention to it.
I tried to google search for a Quantizers Anonymous meeting I could start going to, but all I came up with was groups for ex QAnon followers. 😕
Step sequencers suck.
Almost like you, I like quantization when I can apply a percentage of it. Better if it can be set before hand (50% for example). I don't know what daw/sequencer can do this instantly after recording though
A certain well known Looper / DAW will be able to do this in an upcoming version.
Wow I wasn't expecting this to be implemented @wim . That's fire