Best way to quantize midi drums?

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derkoi
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January 02, 10 3:28 PM (permalink)

Best way to quantize midi drums?

I recently recorded a drummer playing my Alesis DM5 pro using midi out into Sonar.

He used his own double bass pedal and was pretty much in time to the song/metronome however when i played it back the timing wasn't good at all, like the Alesis had missed some notes and double some too.

There's lots of double bass on the track & i've tried quantizing it with Sonars tools, but it's not working.

Can anyone suggest a workflow that i can make these drums in time?

Thanks
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    bitflipper
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    Re:Best way to quantize midi drums? January 02, 10 4:10 PM (permalink)
    Best way is the hard way: by hand, one hit at a time. Try to determine which "off" hits were the hardware's fault and which ones are natural human imprecision - and do your best to keep the latter intact.


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    #2
    derkoi
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    Re:Best way to quantize midi drums? January 02, 10 5:06 PM (permalink)
    Wow, that'll take a long time on a 4 minute song, i guess i should try and break it down into song sections and i can then copy & paste the sections over once they're fixed.
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    Guitarhacker
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    Re:Best way to quantize midi drums? January 02, 10 6:03 PM (permalink)
    I have used the quantize feature with success.....

    I think you select the track and highlight it..... select the Quantize function. In the window that opens you can set the parameters you want... resolution of the notes... percentage dead on and so forth....

    I used this on a piano part I played manually. I selected the 16th note resolution and told it to get the notes 100% dead on the beat.  It did the whole song in about 2 seconds..... I thought it worked well.  I ended up deleting the track but the Quantize works well on any MIDI date.

    You can always use the undo function in EDIT if you don't like it.
    post edited by Guitarhacker - January 02, 10 6:04 PM

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    Garry Stubbs
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    Re:Best way to quantize midi drums? January 02, 10 6:42 PM (permalink)
    Next time, if he's a hard hitter, reduce the sensitivity of the pads in the DM5 brain. This will prevent crosstalk between pads and eliminate the double hits you got. I know from experience as I have the same kit.

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    Kalle Rantaaho
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    Re:Best way to quantize midi drums? January 02, 10 7:58 PM (permalink)
    Guitarhacker...I don't think you can fix a song full of double kick firing  with just tweaking the quantise automation (unless it's a relatively slow-tempo song, which seldom is the case when you talk about double kicks)!
    The beats are most likely so close to eachother that any automatic editing throws them here and there.
    Shooting something like 32's or 64's in a high tempo means there's inevitably notes that are more than 50% off.

    I agree with Bitflipper - you need to do it manually.

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    Goldtop56
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    Re:Best way to quantize midi drums? February 01, 10 2:30 AM (permalink)
    I over quantized once to the point that my live drummer started sounding like a drum machine.  I suggest being very careful with quantizing a finished live drum track.  I learned that lesson the hard way and also why I am not a drummer in real life.
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    SvenArne
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    Re:Best way to quantize midi drums? February 01, 10 3:02 AM (permalink)
    Use 32nd note resolution and don't use 100% strength when quantizing a real drum performance. At 50% or whatever, the track will be much tighter (provided it was played with reasonable skill and timing) and much of his personal groove and feel will be retained. Some nuances, like double-strokes and such will most probably be lost in the process so you'll have to dive in and repair those afterwards.

    Sven





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