Quantizing program? Whats the deal?

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jakenauta

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Hey all

I am just about to undertake a new album...and am wondering, once i have the seperate snare, bass and tom tracks - what is a good quantizing program to keep it all tight...

Would appreciate some help

Thanks heaps

Jake
 
jakenauta said:
I am just about to undertake a new album...and am wondering, once i have the seperate snare, bass and tom tracks - what is a good quantizing program to keep it all tight...
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Musicianship, timing? You don't get musical ability from a s/w program.............
 
its called human error -

sure we could deal with a drum sound that is not 100% tight - but we are aiming for perfection and a 'pop' feel in some of our songs...
 
I can't stress enough, Practice, Practice, Practice!!!

Short of that you need something that can seek out the peaks in your file, split the file at that peaks and then quantize. Logic can do it (via Groove Quantize function), but Logic is Mac only now, and according to my Sweetwater rep, Emagic went as far as to buy back as many unsold PC copies as they could in order to secure more Mac sales (Retarded if you ask me...). Not using this practice myself, I don't know of any other software that'll do what your looking for, automatically.
 
there's Beat Detective in Pro Tools. helps align parts up pretty well for me. although I wouldn't buy the program just so you can use BD.
 
To my knowlege, there is no program that does this automaticly worth a damn. You have to manually cut across all the drum tracks every time the drummer hits something. Once you have cut it all up, you have to line the pieces up to the grid (make sure you know what he was trying to play or you will alter the parts and be in a world of hurt) and cross fade everything. If the drummer is too far off, you still won't be able to fix it.
 
Farview said:
To my knowlege, there is no program that does this automaticly worth a damn. You have to manually cut across all the drum tracks every time the drummer hits something. Once you have cut it all up, you have to line the pieces up to the grid (make sure you know what he was trying to play or you will alter the parts and be in a world of hurt) and cross fade everything. If the drummer is too far off, you still won't be able to fix it.
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i agree
only use such plugins if there is one bar where the drummer fell out of time or his foot slipped on the kick drum and he hit it early. if it's the entire song, either re-track it or get a new drummer
 
If you have to manually quantize every single beat of a drum track, you'd be better off getting yourself some good samples, and programming your drums. Because that's basically what you'd be doing anyways, and at least you could save the the time of having to track the drums. Don't mean to be harsh, but I am a drummer first and foremost, and quantizing is evil. And I'm an evil person who likes evil things. But quantizing is a whole other level of evil.
 
I guess you could record a metronome (or use one including with whatever software you're usuing), I've done that a few times. A lot of people might think you lose groove that way, but unless you want your songs to speed up/slow down, it shouldn't be a problem
 
You don't loose the groove if you are good at it. It is just like anything else, it take practice. If you are trying to quantize a tune that was not played to a click, save yourself some time and check yourself into a mental institution now instead of later.
 
if you have to quantize analog drum recordings you can do it in Sonar, but like others here have said, it works better in spots and not over a complete recording. i'm sure there programs have similar workings.

take (for instance) a four measure section of the hats that you like. do a process-->audio-->remove silence operation to split the individual hat hits into separate audio elements in the track.

now do the same thing for the part you don't like.

now, copy the good section [the four measures of hat] so that its in the clipboard, and do a groove-quantize on the offending section using the clipboard. i use 75% for the quantization time strength.

since the start point of the wave your quantizing wont be quite the same as the start point of the wave you are using as the groove template, and the groove strength is set to 75% you've still got some good feel in the track.
 
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