Ableton Forum

djadonis206 wrote:We're obviously not talking about techno (I don't think) I love swing and whatnot but to not quantize a dance track is like setting yourself to not get any play at a club

Unless, like stated before you are absolutley talented in the art of playing in time, all the time every time

There's some good abstract techno out there but anyone who's mixed a well pressed super tight techno track with another feels my joy

A

Ummm... I agree about techno, and electro is pretty straight too... and 99.99% of house music isn't rigidly quantized (though it has groove). But, breaks? No, danceable, unquantized music is certainly possible, and hittin. You just have to be tight.

My advice? Record midi clips in half time, then double 'em. It's a good performance tool too, it sounds kinda cool when that slow roller bassline suddenly starts jumping around. You just have to be internally consistent in your own timing, even if it isn't on "rigid" 16th notes.

That said, check my sig for better quantization options (cause not all of us are George Clinton calibre Funkatrons), if only Ableton would get around to implementing them...

yesssssssss......groove quantize based on a user groove......lock tight to your own grid just like the J.B.'s......

Q&A wrote:There is a big difference between playing against a live band versus playing against a computer time code.

They are two diffrent species. If you listen to a completely organic rythmn, (70's funk band) it will sound like the timing is perfect. It actually may be perfect too, just not against an exact grid, like you find in a computer. It is just that the band's timing is tight within itself because they are syncing to eachother.

This sort of voids that pompus argument that people use "I dont quantize because Im so talented HA" (Im not saying that people who don't quantize are pompus, just the ones who say/do it to imply that they have infallable timing.)

One last thing. A trick Ive liked to use is to keep the steady grooves quantized to the grid then sometimes allow tension sections and fills to play un-fixed.

It always ends up a matter of taste.

take care suckas.

If you can play tight and groovy, you can play tight and groovy to a click or a band, it's no different

There are loads of really good technoey tracks out there with really sofisticated feels to them - they just still have all or most of their downbeats in the right place

Thats one of the reasons I love live. I used to record midi, then edit the midi, but editing the midi (quantizing) always killed the feel.

no, I hve my clips quantized, but im recording audio into them, so, inside a clip, its all groove.

and ya, playing to a perfect click is damn tough.

ok once again we are talking about record quantise not actually triggering clips with no quantise.

and what you're saying about techno... I personally think the highhats could use this method of no quantise when recording. the kick and snare perfect in time but the high hats swinging. alot of underworld tends to do this. if the high hats are too perfect in time then the whole track sounds stiff.

Chris J wrote: If you can play tight and groovy, you can play tight and groovy to a click or a band, it's no different

*deep breathe*...yes it is.

however I dont think we are talking about about the excact same context. I'm gonna try to make a model of what I mean.

Lets say you have a 5 min track, which keeps one tempo, that was produced by a five piece rock band. zero click track, computer syncing, etc. Take that file and load it into Live.
then figure out the aprox bpm and set the tempo as such. put against five minutes the song will have strayed from sync with the computer's time grid.

When you hear a live band play from it's own tempo, the fact is that, if put against a true digital grid time code, they will stray from eachother. Its not that they have bad timing. The reason that we dont notice is that those humanistic variations on rythmn are anticipated by a skilled band. If the tempo strays off by a fraction, the band compensates by syncing up with eachother in a gracefull way that is hardly noticable. That almost always adds or subtracts at least a fraction of a beat that would throw a computer out of sync.

So yes you are correct, if you can play tight and groovy with a band you will likely be able to groove with a metronome too, but it is a different species when recording to a computer's grid. Especially when playing all the parts yourself with overdubs.

I've never been in a band but isn't the drummer the one who keeps everyone else in time

If your drummers tight, the rest of your band should be rock solid

correct? or False?

A

Johnisfaster wrote: and what you're saying about techno... I personally think the highhats could use this method of no quantise when recording. the kick and snare perfect in time but the high hats swinging. alot of underworld tends to do this. if the high hats are too perfect in time then the whole track sounds stiff.

I totally hear that. Im gonna try that.

One thing ive found with that hi hat issue is to pay special attention to how they are phrased with the rest of the mix.

Sometimes messing with velocities and or pitching or any other nuance you can apply helps the hihats not sound so static.

If I lay down simple rythmn patterns in the early stages of composing, I then edit them to sort of talk to the rest of the mix in a more expressve way later on.

If the rythmns are among the last parts recorded, they usually don't need much editing because I can feel the phrases that fit the mix really clearly, right off the bat.

Q&A wrote:

Chris J wrote: If you can play tight and groovy, you can play tight and groovy to a click or a band, it's no different

*deep breathe*...yes it is.

however I dont think we are talking about about the excact same context. I'm gonna try to make a model of what I mean.

Lets say you have a 5 min track, which keeps one tempo, that was produced by a five piece rock band. zero click track, computer syncing, etc. Take that file and load it into Live.
then figure out the aprox bpm and set the tempo as such. put against five minutes the song will have strayed from sync with the computer's time grid.

When you hear a live band play from it's own tempo, the fact is that, if put against a true digital grid time code, they will stray from eachother. Its not that they have bad timing. The reason that we dont notice is that those humanistic variations on rythmn are anticipated by a skilled band. If the tempo strays off by a fraction, the band compensates by syncing up with eachother in a gracefull way that is hardly noticable. That almost always adds or subtracts at least a fraction of a beat that would throw a computer out of sync.

So yes you are correct, if you can play tight and groovy with a band you will likely be able to groove with a metronome too, but it is a different species when recording to a computer's grid. Especially when playing all the parts yourself with overdubs.

I really don't understand where you're getting at.

djadonis206 wrote:I've never been in a band but isn't the drummer the one who keeps everyone else in time

If your drummers tight, the rest of your band should be rock solid

correct? or False?

A

false. if everybody else plays all over the place you wouldn't even know the drummer is good

if your playing to a clicktrack, its a good idea to have the click be on 2 and 4, or 1 and 3, but not an annoying "Click clock clock clock Click..." every beat. Use it as a grid marker, not as something setting the groove.

Hi, I'm not a drummer,



... but I'd like to tell you all about Iterative Quantize

I wish we had it!

in situations where you have a set of clips that you need to just tighten up just a little - 'Iterative Quantize' nudges everything towards the nearest beat.

of course if we had 'goove quantize' too it would nudge the beat toward the nearest groovy beat offset.
Currently we have a choice of , er 'swing' something that was grossly under-specified on the drum machines of the 1980s still persists 25 years later, I can only think there aren't enough drummers on the ableton team.

RE: 'I am so talented I dont need quantize'
but that's just weird when you are working within an app that works with rigidly defined bar lengths and "timestretches" using 16 segments in a bar.
You may not need quantizing - but Ableton is gonna make a mess of your audio clip if you try and warp it and you are off what IT considers the beat. Just try setting a warp marker slightly before or after a slurred beat and hear your attacks disapear!

That's why we need Live to understand the groove! it is based on robot quantize even if you aren't

totally aggreed friend. quite a long time ago I recorded a live drummer where we discovered he was playing too stiffly to a click track that was on every count so we cut it in half and he played much more fluidly.

Can you change Live's metronome to every other beat?