Do You Simply Trust Quantizing

[Richard Strickland]

I have quantized a track, but even after freezing it the audio sounds like it wasn't stretched properly and transients sound like they were placed in the wrong places on part of the track. If I disable the questionable transient markers it throws off surrounding transients. It's a simple, moderate tempo guitar track with eighth notes, so it should be easily quantized. 

Should I trust that quantizing will work once the final mixdown has been done despite the fact that freezing the track hasn't given me good results?

 

[Byron Dickens]

The short answer is no.

 

The best answer is - and please don't take this the wrong way - is  play in time  so quantization isn't necessary in the first place. 

 

Barring that, expect to spend a whole lot of hours doing a whole lot of manual editing to get something that sounds decent. 

[Sonarman]

I don't know what your exact scenario is but in my experience most people recording audio in DAW think it is required to play everything in impeccable timing or quantize it. In reality your recording will sound much better with a natural timing. I have quantized several tracks and end up choosing the original recording always. Although there will be some two to three notes that need editing, in my case .

[Richard Strickland]

What is a scenario in which quantizing is actually useful?

[Grem]

10 minutes ago, Richard Strickland said:

What is a scenario in which quantizing is actually useful?

 

EDM

[marcL]

Over the last years I have been working a lot with quantizing audio and alike (drum replacers, ...). I noticed that the major problem with all the tools that I have used is the recognition of transients. Most of the time they have even problems detecting simple audio transients of drums and piano correctly. And there begins a lot of manual work! 'Cos first you have to fix all the invalid transient detections before you can start the quantization.

The things get even more weird with instruments like vocals, solo guitar, and so on, because there you have several possibilities to set the transients and that changes the whole rhythmic sound! E.g. if a lead guitarist is cropping some notes aggressively, they are all a little bit in advance of the proper tempo and if you correct this too much, then the solo sounds poor and lame. Also the proper transient detection of guitar slides, pull-offs/ons is really a challenge.

Quantizing rock/pop/rap vocals can make you really crazy, because the tools always tend to align the transients to vowel starts, but good vocalists play a lot with moving accented consonants in front of the vowels, i.e. the transient is moved to the consonant in such cases. Or they even accent the middle of an 's' consonant or such. First I thought, oh my God that is all out of rhythm, trusted in the tools and tampered with great vocal performances. In the meantime I have learned a lot in that area and I have found out that often it is better to trust more in the musicians than in the tools, i.e. I assume that the transients are near the proper clocks, so I search and set them there to cause only minor movements.

Marc

[Notes_Norton]

I'm an anti-quantizing person for most forms of music (some electronic dance music and disco songs need it). I believe that along with auto-tune, they are tools better to be left alone.

IMHO quantizing takes the soul out of the music. It takes the breath out of it. It makes it sterile.

The rhythm section needs to groove. Sometimes the 2s and 4s need to be a hair ahead of the beat, some times behind. Same for eighth notes. Big triplets need to be dragged in most cases. Melodies often drag part of a phrase and then rush to catch up or vice versa. Sometimes a certain beat of a song needs to be rushed or dragged for emphasis. In many Latin American forms of music the congas need to be played laid back behind the beat. Sometimes in jazz the ride cymbals need to be a hair pushed. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I've played professionally since the 1960s in a variety of genres and venues. When I started sequencing MIDI back in the Atari/DOS/MotorolaMac days I tried quantizing and hated the sound. Where's the groove? Where's the soul? Where's the vox humana? I realized I had to play the parts in live, in real time, and use the feel that I'm used to by playing with some of the finest musicians I've ever heard.

Of course there are many exceptions. And although you can generalize about certain things like 2&4s being laid back in the blues, the reality is no two songs are alike. If you know the song well, play it like you feel it.

One more thing, as I mentioned earlier, some "dance" forms of music and/or individual songs from the disco era on need to be quantized as that is their sound.

Of course, there is more than one right way to make music. My way may not be best for you.

Insights and incites by Notes

[William W. Saunders, Jr.]

Some performers would benefit from some mild or even moderate to severe quantizing of audio.  I have a friend/client that I have played, written and recorded music with nearly 50 years whose timing is awful (he knows it), but who is a very creative songwriter and musician.   Unfortunately, almost all my audio quantizing efforts have had inaccurate results and/or unusable artifacts. 

My solution is to have him do multiple takes, often a section at a time, then choose the best sections and make a composite track out of them.  But even then, the best takes may still need a lot of work which I do manually, cutting, pasting and sliding small sections, one at a time.  This is much easier with vocals, drums, bass and lead guitar than with polyphonic keyboard or rhythm guitar parts.  But I can sometimes get good results manually sliding polyphonic notes/chords in Melodyne.  I DON'T try to hit every beat 100%, but I like to get close enough that it sounds right.

Is this a big waste of time - yes, but I love his music and the results we get, so I persevere.  I won't tell you how much time I spend fixing my own sloppy musicianship.

Good luck,

Bill

[msmcleod]

I've no issues with quantising, depending on the part being played.

If the track is not prominent (e.g. a simple synth pad), then I find no issues with it and IMO it can benefit the song.

Some drum tracks sound better quantised, however I tend to focus on the kick, sometimes the snare, but leave the hats & cymbals alone (with the exception of crashes on the 1st beat).

Bass parts, as long as they're in time with the kick on the 1st beat tend to be fine when quantised, but only if the part is simple. More complex bass lines sound better left alone.

For instruments like piano, I find the variations in velocity to be far more important than whether it's been quantised or not, but again if it's a prominent part then it's best left alone.

[Notes_Norton]

I guess I'm old school. Practice until I get the timing right, and play it live in real time. IMO there are no short cuts to practice until right.

But then, I'm only recording myself, and unlike Bill BRainbow, I don't have clients to accommodate.

I have my personal pride to satisfy.

Instead I make backing tracks to play behind my duo, and I want the backing tracks to sound as close to a real band as possible. If it's difficult, it might take me a few days to work up the backing track, to get the timing right, to get the notes right, to get the groove right and to get it as good as my current skills allow. But if I'm lucky, I'll get to play that song thousands of times in front of an appreciative audience and I'll be inspired to sing or play my best on top of the track.

If I knew I could do it better, it would haunt me every time I play the song.

But like I always say, there is more than one right way to make music.

Insights and incites by Notes

[Byron Dickens]

I generally record several takes and comp the best parts of each. I have a nasty habit of playing the first downbeat of a phrase early -- especially on drums -- that I am fighting mightily to overcome.

"Practice until I get it right" is of course my preferred option. I have even gone so far as to simplify parts to make them easier to play. 

 

But sometimes I just have to cut my losses and swallow my pride.   So I often end up doing SOME editing with AudioSnap but I try to keep it to a minimum.

 

I find I get much better results doing everything manually.  Also, splitting up sections into smaller chunks helps. 

[Notes_Norton]

Since I tend to record MIDI, what I end up fixing mostly is erasing slop notes - the kind where I went for that D and brushed the C# on the way.

Since I sequence all the parts and practice each one first, on a new song, I'm still prone to that occasional wrong note. if the feel and the timing is right and the rest of the track is good, in MIDI that's a simple fix. When playing/entering the most attention is on timing. In my situation wrong notes can be fixed (as long as they are uncommon - if there are a bunch, get back Notes and practice some more before recording again).

Insights and incites by notes

[chris.r]

I usually try not to use quantize unless it feels necessary. And even then I rather stay under 50% strength, just to get the timing good enough to go. Once I reach for quantize I know there's much work to be done, some notes that fall out of window are snapped to the wrong side, I have to undo and correct just the notes and try again, use the best resolution for each song part, and so. Also groove quantizing rules.

Had not much experience with quantizing audio but I'd expect similar affliction .

[Royal Yaksman]

With less percussive sounds you will likely find that you will have to manually place some, if not all of the markers to get a good result. With guitar you may also find that having the transients begin slightly before (or after, song style dependant) the beat marker, makes it flow better with the rhythm.

[Steev]

Not at all a fan of using quantification and if I do it's in very small sections phrases or scale fragments of the timeline and typically under one bar. But ONLY if it's an easy fix when a new take or punch in performance isn't feasible.

I spent decades trying to humanize and knock the machine feel out of MIDI and I'm not about to intentionally quantize it back into human performances.

 I have a friend and long time collaborator who composes predominantly in MIDI with Reason and programming drums and perc with a step sequencer, usually creating music about 4 bars at a time, and STILL insists on quantizing all the parts he performs from a MIDI keyboard before moving on to the next 4 measures!

 Drives me crazy, as he's one of the best performing keyboard players I ever met, and he's jamming along with a step sequencer!?!?

 And when he's finished He'll pass it on to me  for collaboration which always starts with a first session of me having to apply MIDI "Swing" editing on my part to get as close I CAN to try re-humanizing his performances with reverse engineering to apply all the human sounding error that makes him so good to translate back into his own natural expressions and feelings.

One of my favorites and profound "Quotes" of all times is by Ray Davies of the Kinks when he said;

"If you knock all the flaws out of Rock and Roll, then it's not Rock & Roll anymore."

[Grem]

Great comments in this thread.

 

Practice is number one. I learned the hard way the most all of the songs I write ebb and flow, it's never the same! I haven't found a drum program able to follow along and allow me to 'feel' like I am playin with a real drummer. Jamstix 4 gets real close though. But at times it too can not keep up with the feel.

 

I mostly do sections at a time of playing my guitar, bass,  and vocals. But After I have the drums all fleshed out I will record a rough guide of each instrument/vocal to get the feeling down before it slips away (this can be done many different ways, thinking too much, trying to get it too exact, too loose,  too perfect.....). Later I'll add the parts I want after much practicing. 

 

For me, nothing beats getting it done right in the first set of takes. However, I have gotten great results at the last few takes of a twenty take session! So again,  as they say, there are no rules. That's why I love rock-n- roll!!

[John Sandlin]

I think that unless you're going to create sheet music from recorded MIDI (or converted audio) that it is best to not quantize at all. You can use Tempo mapping to get the transients and nudge things that need help, but mostly just leave it when you can so it still sounds human.

 

[bitman]

Yes, unless it sounds bad.

[Notes_Norton]

20 hours ago, bitman said:

Yes, unless it sounds bad.

IMO if it sounds bad, quantizing won't help. Practice usually will.

But perhaps I'm just too old-fashioned.

Insights and incites by Notes

[Gswitz]

Quantization is something i avoid.