Quantization

[TheStatusQuao]

Hello, I'm not new to music, but I am new to using DAW software. I prefer to play in my chord progressions, melodies, etc b/c I have a hard time coming up with ideas using the note editor(mostly cause I'm just not use to it), anyway, I find when I use quantization to clean up my notes I kind of lose the sound I originally was shooting for. Some notes are fine but others are cut much sooner than I wanted them to be. How do I deal with this? Is it just my playing or??? This has really thrown a monkey wrench into my ability to complete a project.

[Stromkraft]

Hello, I'm not new to music, but I am new to using DAW software. I prefer to play in my chord progressions, melodies, etc b/c I have a hard time coming up with ideas using the note editor(mostly cause I'm just not use to it), anyway, I find when I use quantization to clean up my notes I kind of lose the sound I originally was shooting for.

This is natural, as quantization removes imperfections that may be important to your timing, which is central to a 'sound'. The native "grid" of the musical idea you're playing and recording may not be best referenced to a strict grid.

There are a number of options to know about.

First of all there are multiple types of quantization in Live and it's not clear which type you seem to have issues with. There's

• Record quantization that fixes notes to the grid as they are played. This is destructive as you can't get back how you actually played. Which is natural as that wasn't what you heard anyway.
• Clip Note quantization that quantizes selected notes that are in the clip. Also destructive, but can be applied with a percentage, to not remove all the original timing.
• Groove quantization which is non-destructive and applied to an existing clip. As the name reveals you can use a groove with a timing that changes in every bar up to the length and variation of the applied groove file. Live comes with multiple groove files in the groove pool and you can also extract grooves from audio material.
  
  Groove Quantization work on two levels, normal grid quantization applied in percentages followed by groove timing quantization. The first affects the latter.
  
  This type can be used when searching for the best clean-up level and then applied to the clip (a destructive action), which fixes the current settings to the notes of the clip including velocity (also set in percentages).
  
  The big backside is that Note Offs are also quantized which affects note length. Therefore you may need to edit lengths back to your liking after having applied the settings.
  
  I use Groove Quantize in all my songs. I love it despite it being somewhat of a mistreated problem child of Ableton Live.

Which type were you using?

[TheStatusQuao]

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[TheStatusQuao]

Hello, I'm not new to music, but I am new to using DAW software. I prefer to play in my chord progressions, melodies, etc b/c I have a hard time coming up with ideas using the note editor(mostly cause I'm just not use to it), anyway, I find when I use quantization to clean up my notes I kind of lose the sound I originally was shooting for.

This is natural, as quantization removes imperfections that may be important to your timing, which is central to a 'sound'. The native "grid" of the musical idea you're playing and recording may not be best referenced to a strict grid.

There are a number of options to know about.

First of all there are multiple types of quantization in Live and it's not clear which type you seem to have issues with. There's

• Record quantization that fixes notes to the grid as they are played. This is destructive as you can't get back how you actually played. Which is natural as that wasn't what you heard anyway.
• Clip Note quantization that quantizes selected notes that are in the clip. Also destructive, but can be applied with a percentage, to not remove all the original timing.
• Groove quantization which is non-destructive and applied to an existing clip. As the name reveals you can use a groove with a timing that changes in every bar up to the length and variation of the applied groove file. Live comes with multiple groove files in the groove pool and you can also extract grooves from audio material.
  
  Groove Quantization work on two levels, normal grid quantization applied in percentages followed by groove timing quantization. The first affects the latter.
  
  This type can be used when searching for the best clean-up level and then applied to the clip (a destructive action), which fixes the current settings to the notes of the clip including velocity (also set in percentages).
  
  The big backside is that Note Offs are also quantized which affects note length. Therefore you may need to edit lengths back to your liking after having applied the settings.
  
  I use Groove Quantize in all my songs. I love it despite it being somewhat of a mistreated problem child of Ableton Live.

Which type were you using?

I was using record quantization. Are you saying groove quantization would be more suitable for my purposes?

[Stromkraft]

I was using record quantization. Are you saying groove quantization would be more suitable for my purposes?

I don't know actually as this would depend quite a bit on the musical idea and your style of playing it. I remember my first encounters with this issue when I started real time recording drum machine patterns and what I recorded didn't play back as I had played it which was really frustrating.

You said initially that

"Some notes are fine but others are cut much sooner than I wanted them to be"

which I take as meaning the length of the notes. record quantization does not affect length to the best of my knowledge, so I'm not sure about the need to abandon this method.

I guess you have two options at least:

• Increase resolution of the record quantization to double the line you're playing, which allows for a more nuanced pattern.
• Turn off record quantization and record your clips just how you play it, then apply
  • Clip Quantization
  • Groove quantization
  • Or just edit notes

Try multiple methods and see what works best. Maybe it's a combination.

[su]

I've had the best luck by only quantizing after the fact and adjusting the quantization percentage. I often set that pretty low between 40 and 60 percent. Percent is set to 100 as default. Of course your results will vary based on playing accuracy and kind of material. I've also found that it's difficult to quantize material that mixes triplets with regular quarters, eighths etc. because Live quantizes to its grid and only allows one "type" of grid at a time. For example the default grid is regular note values. If you quantize triplets to a "regular" grid the result is often not desirable.

[Stromkraft]

I've also found that it's difficult to quantize material that mixes triplets with regular quarters, eighths etc. because Live quantizes to its grid and only allows one "type" of grid at a time.

This is not true. You can mix 8ths and 16ths with their respective triplets.

The Quantize Settings Dialogue Window (Cmd-Shift-U and Ctrl-Shift-U):

What I like most about the alternative groove quantization is that you can build your own grids that can be different in each bar as long as the format allows (at least 8 bars) and that it isn't destructive. The big back side is you cannot target note ons only to avoid the length being affected. This matter very little for drums or other one-shot sounds though.

[Khazul]

After recording, find the bar(s) with the best timing, manually tweak a few notes here and there if needed to get it exactly as you like, then make a clip with just the bar(s) you tweaked and drop that onto the groove window. You can use that groove to quantise the rest of what you recorded - best of both worlds - timing as rigid or sloppy as like to your groove.

[Stromkraft]

The big back side is you cannot target note ons only to avoid the length being affected.

Well, to be clear here this is not a totally truthful statement either. With the groove pool you can also apply normal quantizing before applying the groove quantizing (Timing), which actually means Live moves the notes in two steps if you have non-zero values for Quantization and Timing:

• First, according to the normal grid resolution as set in the Base Value (1/16, 1/8 and so on) and with a percentage of that. This step does not affect note length as far as I can see.
• Secondly, according to the groove timing, also set in percentages and the Base Value resolution, as well as the actual new note placement in the previous step. This step affects note length as note offs are affected by note ons in the groove timing. It's not spot on as far as I can tell, but it is changed, whereas with only Quantize it's not.

So for non-destructive quantization on existing clips setting the Timing percentage to zero seemingly protects you from affecting note length. At least in a quick test I just made.


You can do this with any groove just by changing Timing to zero, but there are a few Quantize only presets to be found in the core library.


Sometimes it's good to see on the name what it does.

[Stromkraft]

After recording, find the bar(s) with the best timing, manually tweak a few notes here and there if needed to get it exactly as you like, then make a clip with just the bar(s) you tweaked and drop that onto the groove window. You can use that groove to quantise the rest of what you recorded - best of both worlds - timing as rigid or sloppy as like to your groove.

Still, this would affect the length of notes, so you'll need to keep that in mind, if this is important. I also note that as far as I can tell, groove timing quantization does not look at the length of notes in the groove used.