MPC Quantize Swing

Whats up everyone, here's the problem I'm having: So I just made a beat the other day and I feel like the sequences are nice and arranged. I go to lay my drums down with THE QUANTIZE OFF, and I get a pattern going.I upload it for a few of my friends to hear and almost all of them said that the drums were sounding off and that I should turn the quantize off, I do agree they are off sounding. Now I've never really messed with the quantize function on the mpc but I've heard it might be best to lay the kick down without quantizing and then quantize the snare and the hats,If anyone has any tips on some techniques I would love to hear them. Oh and Ill post the beat up so you can hear it (I'm not really looking for feedback on it because I know this version sucks, it's just for an example of the drums.) THANKS

http://www.zshare.net/audio/56563597ed786607/

i quantize my kicks and snares and turn quantize off the the hats. your timing correction might be off too. sometimes that makes things sound "off" from the way you want them.

TheFrozenOne wrote:i quantize my kicks and snares and turn quantize off the the hats. your timing correction might be off too. sometimes that makes things sound "off" from the way you want them.

Ok so I'm tryin to understand this I thought if like for example I turn the TC on and I record my kick then I go to my next track and I turn the TC off and record my snare, Is the TC for my kick still being applied or did me turning the TC off change it?

im pretty sure timing correction is actually recording the fixed note.. theres no way to "undo" or take it off after you recorded with tc on.. i think the term would be "destructive edit"?

but yea you can use it on one track and then turn it off for another.. it's not like a global setting

I usually keep my TC on 1/16. If im laying down a complex pattern, and the TC is on 1/8, it wont sound like I intended it to. Sometimes when you do a note repeat on 1/8, and you lay down something else on another track, the TC will still be on 1/8 when u needed it on 1/16.

do u knot find that 1/16 makes drums sound stiff

jpeg wrote:do u knot find that 1/16 makes drums sound stiff

well ive only had my MPC for a couple months so I really havent experimented with much other than 1/16. but to answer your question, drums dont really sound stiff to me in 1/16 except may the hh's.

just turn t.c. off and play the drums in time

jpeg wrote:do u knot find that 1/16 makes drums sound stiff

Not if you turn the strength way down.

not all MPC's have a quantize strength though...if you worried about stiff robotic sounding drums, then mess with the swing %, it really helps your beats kick and swing, but dont go crazy with it

Timing also depend on chopping samples. If you dont trim at the exact start of the sample it will sound a little off (wich can sound very nice in some situations).

peace

i3obby lFingers wrote:

jpeg wrote:do u knot find that 1/16 makes drums sound stiff

Not if you turn the strength way down.

what do u mean strength im assuming u mean set swing to 50% I tend to use 1/32 (3) or no quantise but obviously one of the main attractions of the mpc is the swing so i need to experiment with other settings some more.

LunaticBastard wrote:just turn t.c. off and play the drums in time

+1

Dilla quantized.

It's a great tool and one of the few reasons left to still use an MPC vs software....Like every tool - you gotta use it right.

I tend to use a combination of quantized sequence material and "live" musicians and drums...