Groove Quantize (or not)

[Johnbee58]

Admin, please forgive my double post, but I first tried to post this on the Q&A part and I'm really hoping for an answer on this soon.  It seems as if most of the activity is here so I don't know how much the general population of the forum is yet into the concept of a separate Q&A area, but it seems pretty sparse over there, so I'll try putting it here.  My question is the type that over on the old forum I would've gotten an answer in about a half hour, (but maybe not).  Feel free to send me some hate mail threatening to whip my a$$ with a wet noodle if I offended you. (Mercy though?)

My question:

I'm working on a piece that has a piano intro which I'm making in EZ Keys.  I don't want the intro too stiff time wise, but rather "breathe" like a human player would.  Would I use Groove Quantize for that?  I tried it but it only seems to make the velocity louder, which I DO NOT want.  I mainly just want the timing to flow a bit.  What's the best way to accomplish that?

Thanks

?John B.

 

[Larry Jones]

Isn't there a bundled MIDI plugin with CbB called "Randomize" or something? Not at the DAW right now, but that might help you.

[David Baay]

Based on your description,  I'm guessing the intro needs to be played with rubato - varying tempo significantly both from bar to bar, and within bars. You're not likely to get the desired effect just by randomizing note timings against a fixed tempo grid, and it's very difficult to 'program' natural-feeling rubato.  Ideally you should find someone who plays keys to record it as MIDI, but if you want to try 'programming' it, I suggest you start by drawing tempo changes in the Tempo view.

[Grem]

John, I saw your post in the other section. I wanted to help so I went to try out Groove Quantize with a Blues clip from EZK.  Using the default setting all I got was what you described. Also tried some of the presets. Did you try them? Nothing really seemed to be useful.

 

I have used the Groove Quantize to good effect before. But it was Grooves that I captured from another clip. And it's been so long since I had a need for it that I haven't used it in a long while. But the key to getting good results from the GQ is the Goove File.

 

I then got off on another whim and started working with Catanya. Great product! I played with that for a few hours! : )

Work around 1: Convert the clip ( or just a section of the clip) into the Step Sequencer clip and use the swig and timing parameters in the SS to get the desired feel.

2: Convert to audio and a): Use Audio Snap to adjust the feel of it, b): Use Melodyne to do the same thing.

 

I have worked with Audio snap and you can select three or more transients and grab one and slide it forward or backward and the rest of the selected transients will adjust to equal the time out between all selected transients. I have had excellent results using this method. Takes a little practice, but once you get it....  : )

 

HTH

[David Baay]

Following on my previous post, here's what a tempo map for a rubato performance looks like. The recording was real time without a click, and the tempo map was made by setting every eighth triplet using Set Measure/Beat At Now. Note how that tempos increase and decrease in a periodic way (what goes up must come down). The flat line is where the piece moves into a steady tempo, and I could just set a fixed tempo for those several measures until it changes again to follow a quickie rubato ending I threw in. You can hear it here: 

Edited January 24, 2019 by David Baay

[Christian Jones]

Some time ago I think I heard about an "extract timing" method where you basically extract the timing/feel etc from an audio performance, like audio from a piano performance on a CD you extracted into the daw, and then apply that data to a midi performance.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I've never tried this myself, but I heard about it in Cakewalk back when I was using Pro Audio 9. Is this a Legit method/feature in Cakewalk and could it help the OP? 

[David Baay]

Audionsnap has Extract and Apply Groove functions that work with both audio and MIDI. But I still don't think this is going to get the OP what he's looking for in terms of a 'flowing intro'.

[chris.r]

Unless he's got another matching material from which he can extract groove and apply it to the intro.

[Christian Jones]

That's what I was thinking, find a similar performance and try it. 

[John Sandlin]

So Alt-Shift-5 pulls up the Tempo curve. You could redraw (very carefully) the curve on the intro to give it a rubato mapping.

[Antonio Nero]

On 1/25/2019 at 12:05 AM, Christian Jones said:

Some time ago I think I heard about an "extract timing" method where you basically extract the timing/feel etc from an audio performance, like audio from a piano performance on a CD you extracted into the daw, and then apply that data to a midi performance.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I've never tried this myself, but I heard about it in Cakewalk back when I was using Pro Audio 9. Is this a Legit method/feature in Cakewalk and could it help the OP? 

I don't know if I'll be wrong, but have you tried to select the desired part of the clip from Contruction Loop? From there you should be able to change the duration of a specific tempo.