Using audio and quantizing it

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edward0328

New member
Listening to music and all..i came to find that most of the music that we hear today are audio sources rather than MIDI sources.
But i was wondering how the composers/producers are able to get their audio in time without having to quantizing it..or are they?
Is it just that are they just professionals so that their takes are always in time?
Im asking this because everytime i want to record bass or piano using audio, when i quantize, it always distorts the audio..maybe im just doing it the wrong way?

So how do the professionals get their songs in time? Do they quantize? If they do..how?

Im sorry if this might not make any sense..just curious ><

-Thanks
 
Well....do you count/tap the tempo as you play?
Do you hear where the beats fall?

It's pretty simple...just play on time with the song's tempo.
 
edward0328 said:
Listening to music and all..i came to find that most of the music that we hear today are audio sources rather than MIDI sources.
Click to expand...

It depends on what music you listen to, doesn't it? If you turn on top 40 radio, most of the music on there is sampled, synthed, and sequenced. If you listen to the classic rock station, it's mostly recorded. If you're underground, it could be equal doses of both. To generalize on this level is difficult.

edward0328 said:
But i was wondering how the composers/producers are able to get their audio in time without having to quantizing it..or are they?
Is it just that are they just professionals so that their takes are always in time?
Click to expand...

Let's look at one potential scenario out of many. If you're a top producer or composer commissioned by a label to record an album, you're not going to waste your time with performers who are going to cost you time and money down the line. Ideally, you want someone who is going to nail the take in time. That's why the studio musicians who get the gigs continue to get the gigs.

Now, if you're talking about bands, there are many approaches. Some bands have players that can nail tracks first take. Travis Barker and Josh Freese have been known to nail entire albums perfectly in a few hours. Some bands require some quantizing and the large majority of it goes into the drums. There are also a million ways to do this but most of the time it's just by using tools like Beat Detective and Elastic Audio in Pro Tools or Group Editing and Audio Quantize in Cubase. They both work very well and you can get away with a lot. Basically these tools chop up the tracks at each hit and then shift the hits - in phase - into time based on a specified accuracy. Once you get the hang of it, it's actually very simple.

edward0328 said:
Im asking this because everytime i want to record bass or piano using audio, when i quantize, it always distorts the audio..maybe im just doing it the wrong way?
Click to expand...

Is distort the right word? Can you describe exactly what it sounds like to you? Quantization should not cause distortion, but rather a time-stretching/warbling effect (if you're using a cheap algorithm) and possibly clicks and pops where there are no crossfades.

Cheers :)
 
edward0328 said:
Well yes I do..but in just wondering about the situationsis whenaudio is off by a fraction of a beat
Click to expand...

The best midi programmed stuff is the stuff that is of by a fraction of a beat. When I was programming drums for dance music I would purposely put hits a fraction off beat to make it human. In fact on out albums most people thought we had a real drummer until they saw us live.

The other thing to remember about on the beat playing is that playing ahead and behind the beat changes the way the song feels, playing behind lays the feel back and adds tension, playing ahead drives the song and vibes it up. When the notes are out of time this may be the human feel you are trying to get, quantising the notes will kill the feel. In Fact I hate quantise.

However this said, when playing the parts in you need to play on time, with the feel you want.

Alan.
 
Is distort the right word? Can you describe exactly what it sounds like to you? Quantization should not cause distortion, but rather a time-stretching/warbling effect (if you're using a cheap algorithm) and possibly clicks and pops where there are no crossfades.

Cheers :)[/QUOTE]

Sorry, not distort..but it does mess up the sound a little bit. The audio does produce clicks and pops when i quantize..do u know how to get around that?
 
If you quantize all the tracks, the mix will sound rigid, sequenced and lifeless.
Leave the small fractions in there.....
 
The way to eliminate clicks and pops is to use small crossfades. In Cubase, it is built into the quantize feature.

It is normal when time stretching for there to be the odd tonal change here and there but in my experience you don't hear them unless the music at that point is very sparse and the instrument in question is the only one playing. Even then on a conventional home stereo it is difficult to pick it up. The answer is to use the best time stretch algorithm for that specific need and that doesn't always mean the best one available in you DAW. For instance, in Cubase, there are several types of algos that are designed for different scenarios. I've experimented with all of them and now have a good idea which ones are best for specific applications.

On the issue of quantizing to grid and losing the human feel, Cubase has a feature called "Iterative Quantize" and it allows you to specify a percentage that pertains to how close to the grid you want the audio to be quantized. This helps in retaining the human feel while tightening up the performance.

Cheers :)
 
I am glad I have Elastic Audio in ProTools 8.0.5. :)

But seriously, I never use it for my own recordings. I just keep going until I get the part right.
 
Just from the perspective of what I've seen of true professional musicians - they are simply that good. Give them a chart and let them hear a verse and a chorus beforehand, and they can play a song they've never heard before right the first time with almost perfect accuracy. Maybe a few punches here or there that most people wouldn't even notice, but mostly - they're that good. (My experience comes from seeing pros in action in Nashville studios).
 
Yeah, I've seen some studio guys full off some pretty amazing performances. Sometimes it's unreal, considering the time they get.

One guy in particular I worked with on a jazz album listened to the pre-prod of each song once through and completely nailed it. And I'm not talking simple rock, I'm talking syncopated, hectic latin samba, fast free jazz, african jazz, and a whole slew of other jazz styles without even blinking. If you look at the drum tracks for the most part it's all one take. No edits. That album got nominated for two South African Music Awards and I'm still proud of it. It was a good album for the mere fact that almost every big name studio muso in our little business over here was on it and they made it really easy to capture great performances.

The lesson there was that with engineering, it's all about what mike you're placing and where you're placing it. If you can get that right and work with top musos, you're in the money. They are going to make you look like the best engineer in the world.

It's easy to get down on your engineering skills when things don't sound right. Granted, it takes a long time to get to know your mikes, the room, and your monitoring, and that's still a huge part of it. But when you're hacking away at a mix and you can't get it to sound right, it's either 1. the performance, or 2. bad mike placement and/or 3. in a bad room. Those are the three things that will kill a recording faster than you can insert that new Izotope plug you just payed a lot of money for.

Cheers :)

PS. If you don't know what "muso" is, it's our slang here for musician. Like journalists are also called "journos".
 
They are called "recording artists" for a reason. There really is an "art" to recording great songs (or at least great performances). Intonation, tight playing, expression, attitude. It is all part of what makes the track rawk. If it was easy, many more people would have great sounding recordings. :)
 
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