Double Time and Quantize

Putter wrote:The thing I think you all are overlooking is that you CANNOT, I repeat CANNOT increase the resolution of a machine with a fixed resolution.

The MPC has a resolution of 96 PPQ no matter what!

If you record at 80 BPM or 160 BPM, you are still going to have the SAME RESOLUTION of 96 PPQ. It will be 96 PPQ if you record at 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32.

... and the thing you are overlooking is that the point of doubling the BPM is not to actually double the BPM of your beat, but to give you more ticks to work with. One bar of a 90 BPM beat will need to be spread over 2 bars if recorded at 180 BPM. 2 bars will have double the ticks of 1 bar. Really, it's just that simple.

I'm really open to this whole thing of double time resolution thing but I think mechanically & mathematically there is a deception of what's actually going on.

You say: "One bar of a 90 BPM beat will need to be spread over 2 bars if recorded at 180 BPM. 2 bars will have double the ticks of 1 bar."

You also say: "the point of doubling the BPM is not to actually double the BPM of your beat, but to give you more ticks to work with."

Well, mecanically & mathematically that is not possible. There are the same number of ticks in one bar at 180BPM as there are at 90BPM. The ticks are not stretched over two bars if you double the BPM, just as they are not halved if you decrease the BPM to 45BPM from 90BPM.

What actually changes is the rate at which the ticks are generated. The key is the tempo. The tempo dictates what happens & when, just as in the time signature. You cannot add to it or take from it. If you want to make a change to a measure / bar in a time signature, you must use the appropriate notation in order to complete the measure / bar. (rest, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64 notes etc...)

This same principal applies to the maximum resolution, it is fixed, there is no work-around. It sounds good but the doubling thing is not really happening. The ticks are what they are based on the tempo, they don't stay stagnant based on the tempo, they are tempo based, meaning they shift with the rate of the tempo. Hence, Pulse per quarter-note.

IE: A note on 0:00:48 at 180BPM is the same note on 00:00:48 at 90BPM. The resolution did not double of halve itself, depending on which way you go. The tempo caused that note on 0:00:48 at 180BPM to arrive twice as fast than the note on 0:00:48 at 90BPM. This is all simple mathematics, the resolution is not stretched or compressed based on the tempo, it remains at the same 96 PPQ no matter the what the tempo is set to. The tick is either going to come sooner or later, not double up or halve itself just because you increased / decreased it's rate.

If I understand you correctly, you are stating the following:
A note on 0:00:48 at 90BPM is the same note on 0:00:24 at 180BPM.
Is that correct? If so, then you have two different notes at two different times. I've read people state that they double the Res by doubling the tempo, therebye stretching out the number of ticks over several bars. Yet no one has actually shown any proof of this actually occuring. If you do this, please provide some solid, conclusive evidence of it actually occuring.

Please enlighten me & show me the errors in my ways. I'm a simple hombre & sometimes I need help with matters. If I'm wrong, then so be it, but please show me where & how so I may truly understand. Muchos gracias!

^^^ i think you are missing a very specific piece of the puzzle. i learned this from one of jacpot's helpful posts: when you double the bpm, you also need to double the number of beats per bar.

turn on your mpc. turn up the BPM to 180. try recording with clicks (metronome) on and listen to how quickly the bars go by. now go to the time signature in the main window (looks like this: 4/4). hit your [WINDOW] button. then adjust it until it says: 8/4. now listen to how each bar takes exactly as long to pass as 90 BPM, but with more clicks.

ok, final proof and then i then i think we can quit this part of the thread and move on to discussing techniques for recording in double time (although it's pretty straight forward). go into step edit and manually record a pad at any spot in the sequence. click the "edit" function and then the "move" function (or however you move step edit notes on your mpc). start scrolling to find possible positions for the note. remember that mpc's (besides the 4k only, i think) have 96 part per quarter note (ppqn) resolution. you'll notice you still have 96 ppqn, but now you have 8 quarter notes to work with in each bar, effectively doubling the resolution from 384 notes per bar to 768 notes per bar.

but for anyone who doesn't double the beats per bar value in their time signatures- doubling the BPM is useless, and very hard to record a sequence in.

Putter wrote:
As it has been stated several times already

"if you record with quantize on, in double time, at 1/16, you are giving yourself exactly as many ticks between lines, or note spaces, as you are at normal time in 1/32, period. it makes no difference whatsoever."

This is not correct! No matter the tempo, 1/16 timing will not give you 1/32 timing. The same amount of space will ALWAYS be fixed. 160BPM may be someones Normal tempo as is 80BPM for someone else.

You are incorrect... you aren't thinking it through. What is confusing is that you have to redo your math for everything once you doulbe the tempo. Remember that 2 bars is actually 1 and timming corrections are halfed because of this.

Putter wrote:I'm really open to this whole thing of double time resolution thing but I think mechanically & mathematically there is a deception of what's actually going on.

It's pretty simple, just think that at twice the tempo, twice as many ticks go through. So play one bar... 96 ticks went through. Now play 2 bars at double the previous tempo... 192 ticks went through in the same exact time. Thats all there is to it.

Putter wrote:Well, mecanically & mathematically that is not possible. There are the same number of ticks in one bar at 180BPM as there are at 90BPM. The ticks are not stretched over two bars if you double the BPM, just as they are not halved if you decrease the BPM to 45BPM from 90BPM.

There is no math involved there. The mpc plays 96 ticks/bar at 30 BPM and 96/bar ticks at 300 BPM. It does stretch out the ticks at different speeds. If you change the time signature in your head and record 1 bar in 2 bars, you now have 192 ticks/bar. If you have a song in 30BPM and crank it to 300 and record over 10 bars, you'd have 960 ticks/bar. Sure, thats unlikely, but it still applies

Putter wrote:This same principal applies to the maximum resolution, it is fixed, there is no work-around. It sounds good but the doubling thing is not really happening. The ticks are what they are based on the tempo, they don't stay stagnant based on the tempo, they are tempo based, meaning they shift with the rate of the tempo. Hence, Pulse per quarter-note.

What you are forgetting is that the machine's resolution is still the same, you are just spreading the same info over twice the amount of space.

Putter wrote:If I understand you correctly, you are stating the following:
A note on 0:00:48 at 90BPM is the same note on 0:00:24 at 180BPM.
Is that correct? If so, then you have two different notes at two different times. I've read people state that they double the Res by doubling the tempo, therebye stretching out the number of ticks over several bars. Yet no one has actually shown any proof of this actually occuring. If you do this, please provide some solid, conclusive evidence of it actually occuring.

This is where your math is off, but close. You halfed instead of doubled which would actually make it worse. 0:00:24 at 90BPM would be 0:00:48 at 180BPM... remember its going through ticks twice as fast. That actually is the proof right there, you just had it backwards.

Not trying to rag on you... I actually am not a fan of this method and think its too much work (and confusing) personally, I just wanted to clear up any myths. I do a lot of work that is above 150BPM anyway, and that is the limit for this technique. If you need the extra resolution a lot, its probably easier to go with a 4000, or just record whatever you are doing live into your DAW where the resolution is now going by sample frequency rate (44,100+).

I guess it is what it is.

Thanks for the info fellas.

you guys make rocket science out of microwavable pizzas ...
http://pianonanny.com/12.html
read and learn ... this will explain alot to those of you confused about timing on the MPC .. and dont be stingy with your time .. theres alot of
knowledge here about timing

Its a fact that doubling the bpm and bars does double the ppqn resolution.
A way to test this is to turn quantizing off then set your bars to 1bar then insert a hihat every milli second with step edit. To do this you press the arrow under play/rec to the right of the locate key then hit insert every time you hit the arrow [for mpc60 users]. Then double your bpm then press play.

This is the biggest golden shovel I've seen online

well you can also use double time to create half bars: 5 bars double time is 2.5 bars if you're programming in at half the tempo. i guess technically you can create smaller subdivisions of bars if you're programming in a low enough tempo to work in triple or quadruple time i.e. setting to 300 BPM for triple time and then programming 4 bars in at a 100 bpm tempo would effectively give you a 1 1/3 bar loop of a 100 BPM sequence when playing back at 300 BPM.

i dunno, i actually like & listen to a lot of weird or nonsensical electronic music like that, so it's a trick/tip that always made sense to me. not really sure how to apply it outside of more experimental music.