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If it's something like electronic dance music that you're doing,
quantizing all of it is probably what you want. That stuff is machine
generated as it is.<br><br>
If it's a rock track played by real live humans, you probably don't want
to quantize it too much. Groove and good time feel is a mysterious thing,
and you can't always put a number on it and say "wow, that drummer's
snare is quantized about 70%". When it feels right, it is
right.<br><br>
Think of pitch corrected vocals as an analogy. Too much, and it sounds
robotic. A little, in the right places to correct more obvious problems,
and things still sound natural.<br><br>
At 10:02 AM 11/11/2015, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Hi guys,<br>
this time I don't really need any technical advice, but I'd be eager<br>
to know how you approach the concept of quantization. I know that
this<br>
is a general recording question and so if you think that this is not<br>
the right place to ask this, just ignore this message.<br>
So, from what I gather quantization is very common in today's<br>
recordings. I understand that it's more frequent in certain genres<br>
than others, but I guess that it's safe to say that everyone working<br>
with music has to know something about it. Quantization should be
used<br>
to fix timing issues, so that sloppy recordings don't sound sloppy
or<br>
so that they sound at least less sloppy if possible. So far so good.<br>
But the question is: how much to quantize?<br>
I know that this is subjective, just as everything, but the general<br>
opinion is not to overquantize. In other words, if I for example<br>
record something as MIDI and than make every note absolutely perfect<br>
(in terms of length and position), the result should sound robotic.<br>
But is this really so?<br>
Obviously, whether one perceives something as robotic or not depends<br>
on a number of factors, but I get the feeling that in some cases it<br>
makes no perceivable difference whether you quantize or not. Imagine
a<br>
recording of only 8th notes at 200 BPM for instance. Maybe it's only<br>
me and my unseasoned ears, but it seems to me that human ears have a<br>
tendency to perceive things as much more regular than what they<br>
actualy are - unless the recording is extremely sloppy they in my<br>
uneducated opinion seem to compensate for minor imperfections -
thanks<br>
to or because of their imperfect nature.<br>
My point is, if I slow down a fast recording, I'm able to tell how<br>
much it has been quantized. If it's too perfect I might say to my
self<br>
that this is too perfect to be a human, but does this really matter
in<br>
the end?<br>
Sorry for the essay. I started thinking more about quantization,<br>
because I'm finally working on my first recording and I quantized a<br>
part of it, but not because I thought it sounded bad, but because I<br>
had the chance to easily do it.<br>
So my personal conclusion is to quantize up to the point where you<br>
perceive something as perfect (to keep it human), but all in all
this<br>
topic still puzzles me.<br>
Currious to know what you think.<br>
Matej<br>
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