The Quantized Hi-Hat

guesswhosback wrote:i heard of peeps doing a quantize on the kick and snare and playing the hats live

like MPC4000XL would say "TRUST DAT!!!!!!!!"

i Always swing up or Not quantize my Hi-hats and Snares...
Kickdrum must B Basic.. but sometimes a lil swing.

btw ariesmale1, weird looking avantar

I always quantize hats, and most of the times I also quantize bassdrum and snare. However, I rarely quantize bass and samples and that's how I achieve the "human feel". I always find that non quantized drums are sloppy and harm the groove more than anything.

Also, some people will point at quantize as the culprit for the lack of swing of their beats when most of the times it's a question of sound choice and interaction with other elements of the beat.

To summarize a drummer can afford to be a little more sloppy than a drum machine because of expressiveness. A drum machine that's sloppy sounds like a broken robot.

I use a slightly different swing rate on all MPC drums. On most recordings I'll hit the sound stage and then add some real percussion (Shakers, Congas, Djembe, Cymbal etc..) Everything sounds a whole lot more "real" with just one piece of live percussion in the mix. I do the same thing with horns. I'm a pretty good sax player, so I'll build a synth (or sample) horn section on the MPC then back it up with a track of real sax. The end rresult sounds like a real horn section through and through.