let's talk quantize strength usage

in anticipation of the coming addition of QUANTIZE STRENGTH, a feature request i'd been very very excited about, i want to talk with folks who used it before.



what we have here is a pre-recording setting of quantize strength, similar to the SWING parameter. this is not an applied-after item, which i would have settled for.

when you guys use quantize strength, how do you do it?
i imagine i will set it to a very very low percentage, like 25% or something. typically i'm very much on time anyway, but i often need that little nudge in the right direction just to save me editing time later. also, i figure it will be better for the groove in general, since EDITING it into place is rarely as good as PLAYING it into place to begin with - for the simple reason that the mind (my mind, anyway) tends to gravitate toward certain "round" numbers like 48, 64, 72, etc when nudging notes. i have to consciously think of the in between, drop it there, listen to it, and then nudge again. quantize strength will take some of that aspect away from it.

maybe this thread is just me being excited about quantize strength, but what might i be missing about it? in my opinion this is a crucially potent function that ought to have been common to MPCs since the beginning. like others, i expect it'll be something that i'll learn more tricks as i use it.

when im making beats i usually play without quantize, and make little adjustments as needed.
what id most like to do is to incorporate some record mode layering into my live sets and think quantize strength will offer a good compromise: i wont lose the feel of my playing, but it should also tighten the little inconsistencies that can sound irritating when looped over and over... hopefully subtle enough for no one to notice!haha

also when using the mpc's current shift timing feature, it shifts in relation to an exact quantize. i.e. it quantizes to the beat and then shiftss a few ticks before or after. when i used cubase to sequence, i would often play live and then experiment shifting groups of notes around a few ticks- this would change the feel of the groove, but also keep the subtle timing differences between the moved notes.I see quantize strength as a way of approaching a similar end result: A creative tool as well as corrective one.

also .. do you reckon the strength will be related to the swing? so it will move towards the exact swing values or move towards the exact straight values?

exciting stuff , I use this feature all the time in cubase. It helps me keep my human groove but tidys it up a bit without sounding totally quantized.

also .. do you reckon the strength will be related to the swing? so it will move towards the exact swing values or move towards the exact straight values?

it has to follow your TC setting - if swing is on it'll move towards your swung values

quantize strength for those hi-hats...and drum fills like timbales or hand drums..ooh i cyan wait

as it is now i quantize mostly everything pretty strictly , and i'm always wanting something in-between bang-on the grid or all around it. my DAW has it since like 1994...

Nym,

I used to write songs on a Triton, and used the quantize strength parameter all the time. The strength setting I used was more like 70 - 80 percent, no swing (usually), and quantizing to 1/16 notes. I used this a lot actually!

Quantizing w/ strength on 75% would make the notes basically quantized, but left enough of my original feel to not really seem quantized.

damn i'm excited about this.
it'll save me so much editing time.

What would be fantastic (and I would imagine very easy to implement) would be to save a "set" of quantizations mapped accross pads in the same vein as the grid patterns in OS2 work. This would be very useful given the huge range of variability in quantization with XL. It'd work like this:

I have my Kick on A1 its quantized at 60% swing and 75% strenght
Hat on A2 its quantized at 50% swing and 25%
Snare on A3 its quantized at x and y etc...

Now, I can save the amounts of swing quant and strength used on each pad in an os2xl-specific file (like the line patterns in os2) called, say, a "groove map." Later this map can be loaded into memory and applied to tracks in other projects so that my swing and strength from my kick, hat, and snare on my project that i saved the "groove map" from will be applied to pads in my current project.

Maybe there'd be a menu available for using this (a [mode] perhaps) which would go something like this after loading a saved groove map.

Groove Map: [name of map file]
A: 60% swing 75% strength - Assign to: (and you'd twirl here to the pad to assign this to)
B: 50% swing 25% strength - Assign to: (...)
C: x% swing y% strength.. and so on.

Perhaps you could also change the swing and strength value of A,B,C, etc. within a loaded map and save that as a new one as well...

A global "strength" over the entire groove map would make it possible to loosen up or tighten up the entire map relative to the map's given parameters.

And the you've got editable GROOVE TEMPLATES!

It'd be a hell of a lot like the regroove feature in Reason 4 (one of the few features of that program that is a real mind-blower compared to other software).

Can I get a hell-yeah on this? It seems so possible and code-light that I don't know if I could handle it if something similar weren't implemented.

I'm crazy about this idea.

truth be told, i can't see myself using this feature much if at all. i always record my beats strictly quantized & then warp the hell out of them in GPE. i really don't have much need to 'tighten' my beats up as they are locked tight to the grid from the get go.

BUT... what i would like to do from time to time is 'humanize' my beats: to bump them off the grid just a little bit. if this 'quantize strength' feature could do that then i would use it a lot.

i'm thinking as a possible feature... if you dialed in a NEGATIVE number for the quantize strength setting then it would move the notes AWAY from the grid instead of towards it. this would loosen up your timing instead of tightening it.

"humanize"? "de-quantize"?

--->
tho one possible (ab)use of quantize strength i can think of:

1. make a sequence.
2. copy it.
3. quantize the copy by a very small amount (maybe 10% strength?).
4. simult sequence the copy with the original.

could get some pretty interesting variable phasing of your drum hits with this.

yeah, i know simult sequence already phases a bit if you simult 2 identical sequences together (i use that a lot), but with quantize strength on one of the copies you'd probably get a stronger effect.

tho one possible (ab)use of quantize strength i can think of:

1. make a sequence.
2. copy it.
3. quantize the copy by a very small amount (maybe 10% strength?).
4. simult sequence the copy with the original.

could get some pretty interesting variable phasing of your drum hits with this.

ho lee crap, i like it.

The idea for me was less about tightening beats, but being able to build a little library of grooves for use with beats that (in my case) I'd play by hand w/o quant. Then I could go back and experiment with different timings with that beat. The beat would essentially be the same, but you'd be applying small variations in timing on each sample with each different map you load. And the effect would be as subtle or as mechanical as you want b/c of the new quant strenght options.

I'm just thinking about playing a beat I dig sounds that I dig where something just doesn't seem right and trying out a bunch of different grooves that are pre-existing to re-shape (b/c its changing timing, but not f'ing with the hits) its timing.

Nym wrote:

tho one possible (ab)use of quantize strength i can think of:

1. make a sequence.
2. copy it.
3. quantize the copy by a very small amount (maybe 10% strength?).
4. simult sequence the copy with the original.

could get some pretty interesting variable phasing of your drum hits with this.

ho lee ****, i like it.

co-sign!

Which OS is quantize strength coming out in, 2, or the XL one?

I was really surprised to find out my MPC1k didn't have it when I bought it initially... programming wise, it's really easy to implement.

its coming out in the OS2 XL release this december tim.

this feature has been in the MV-8000 series for awhile... I really like it, especially when using 1/16 quantization with no swing. Loosen up the quantize amount to retain the human feel, but still have it locked in pretty tight. In the MV at least, the quantization is non-destructive so that you can adjust the % live

If JJOS adds this feature and keeps it non-destructive (kinda like a TEMPO TRACK in software DAWs) then I'm all about it