can any of my musical friends explain this to me.... I downloaded a MIDI file of a song which sounds great when you play it through synths....
I always thought quantizing your notes to perfection was always best for electronic music - I don't want that "humanized" feel.
The note map below shows the vertical lines set to 32nd's - and yet still notes do not fall directly on the 32nd's - and you can tell they aren't even aligned at the 64th or anything!
If you quantize them to perfect 32nd's they sound wrong... even 32nd triplets sound wrong....
so my question is - why? this is discouraging to me as I can't play that well so I quantize everything - but are there cases you shouldn't quantize?
I get the humanizing aspect, but usually if you take a "humanized" MIDI track and quantize it, it sounds more "perfect"... but this DOESN'T!?!?!?
What is going on here?
 

Hi 
 
Do you have a link to that MIDI file?

alewgro
can any of my musical friends explain this to me.... I downloaded a MIDI file of a song which sounds great when you play it through synths....
I always thought quantizing your notes to perfection was always best for electronic music - I don't want that "humanized" feel.
The note map below shows the vertical lines set to 32nd's - and yet still notes do not fall directly on the 32nd's - and you can tell they aren't even aligned at the 64th or anything!
If you quantize them to perfect 32nd's they sound wrong... even 32nd triplets sound wrong....
so my question is - why? this is discouraging to me as I can't play that well so I quantize everything - but are there cases you shouldn't quantize?
I get the humanizing aspect, but usually if you take a "humanized" MIDI track and quantize it, it sounds more "perfect"... but this DOESN'T!?!?!?
What is going on here?
 

Is your ruler showing Measures:Beats above?

In my case, if the quantized notes aren't going where i hoped they would, then I've played so badly that the notes were closer to where I didn't want them than where i wanted them. Try a slower tempo for playing the parts in?

why would anyone want to listen to robotic music?
i guess that's why i don't care for electronic stuff,
just feels too stiff.
 

You say they sound wrong, when you quantize them.
How does the PRV look after quantizing? Can you actually see, that the quantizing has moved the notes to
positions you know are wrong?
IMO, of all the 8 notes in you PRV capture 4 notes are definately closer to 64ths (close to the middle of space between the 32nd lines) than 32nds, and 3 are exactly on 32nd lines (so matching 64ths),
so I guess this should be quantized to 64ths.
 
Anyway, that looks so accurately played that I wouldn't quantize anything. Btw, when I quantize, I never quantize
100 %. My keyboard playing is quite bad, so I usually move the worst mis-hits manually, and then quantize something like 70-90% by portion, some bars looser, some bars more strictly.  To build a certain feel I often quantize, say, kick drum early or late.

The OP confuses me greatly. You say the song sounds great (as is), yet because you can "see" misalignment, now it doesn't? I assume this is around 140 BPM, so splitting hairs on 64th notes is baffling me.

If it sounds great, but looks terrible, I would shut off my video monitor to solve the issue.

batsbrew
just feels too stiff.

 
Not all electronic music "feels too stiff..."
 
In my electronic musicians opinion of course 

synkrotron
Hi 
 
Do you have a link to that MIDI file?

sure - here it is:
 
http://www.onges-erasure-page.co.uk/wp-content/downloads/waiting.mid
 
the first track is the one - i think it's called "PIPE"

Brando

alewgro
can any of my musical friends explain this to me.... I downloaded a MIDI file of a song which sounds great when you play it through synths....
I always thought quantizing your notes to perfection was always best for electronic music - I don't want that "humanized" feel.
The note map below shows the vertical lines set to 32nd's - and yet still notes do not fall directly on the 32nd's - and you can tell they aren't even aligned at the 64th or anything!
If you quantize them to perfect 32nd's they sound wrong... even 32nd triplets sound wrong....
so my question is - why? this is discouraging to me as I can't play that well so I quantize everything - but are there cases you shouldn't quantize?
I get the humanizing aspect, but usually if you take a "humanized" MIDI track and quantize it, it sounds more "perfect"... but this DOESN'T!?!?!?
What is going on here?
 

Is your ruler showing Measures:Beats above?

 
yes it is