Q-Range Quantizing to keep that FEEL

Hey everyone,

I have been struggling with this for a while and would really appreciate any help with it. It's honestly the only thing holding me back from releasing my music at the minute.

Im having difficulty getting a tight/natural feel to my drums. I play them in relatively well to a click on my Alesis Nitro Drum Kit. I want to tighten up the recording without losing most of its feel completely.

I have played around with the Q-Strength - when I use too much it obviously sounds tight but I lose my ghost notes from the performance etc, and when I lower the Strength I keep the ghost notes but it sounds a bit messy..

I have tried using Q-Flam to keep some of the ghost notes but it doesn't keep all of them and makes them sound robotic.

I think this can be achieved with Q-Range?

Although I'm not sure how to go about using it. I have tried lowering it to -5 and I think I'm on the right track by lowering it?

Can you tighten a groove by using both Q-Strength and Q-Range?

Im aware the answer to my problem may well be = get better at drumming! I would seriously appreciate any help with this!

Thanks

Have you considered experimenting with Groove track?

BTW, are you using regular or smart quantization?

I think its important to get the "Swing" value right too...

Sometimes it helps to hard quantize first (Q-Strength 100) and then just mess with the swing value until you get something that is the closest approximation to the feel of the original beat. It might be that you are better off changing the Quantize setting itself to a different setting, especially off you have a heavily swung groove.

Once I've got it kinda close that's when I'll mess with Strength and Range. I find Range values between -5 and -10 most helpful and a Strength of around 80 to 88 for a tighter sound. It's a delicate balance though and depends on how tight the performance is in the first place.

I find turning the quantization off and using undo/redo to compare before and after can be helpful, so you can also consider trying that yourself.

Then there are Groove Tracks. I find this helpful when you already have a solid groove and what to lock everything to that. In that case you'll want to work with tighter parameters so the performance doesn't sound too "sloppy"

Hey guys,

Thanks a lot for getting back to me.

I just realised what I may be doing wrong. I read here that Logic will Quantize the region from wherever the first note starts in the Region. So Logic was Quantizing my MIDI Drums from where the first note started, which was a few ticks away from the starting point of the Region (as I played it in manually)

So, I moved the whole MIDI recording to the very start of the Bar/Region, and I think I may be on to something by doing that?

I read this here: viewtopic.php?t=50627

This makes the Drums sound better even I use something like 10% Strength, although it still does not keep the ghost notes sounding good at all, Smart Quantize can make them sound a bit better but it really doesn't cut it.

All I want to do is tighten up my MIDI Drums by a bit and to keep the ghost notes sounding as natural as they did when played. I have messed around with using 1/32 and 1/64 notes and I think its better on 1/64.

And yes I have also found that a percentage of -5 to -10 does give it a nice feel to it, thats what I had been using now for a while and I was sure that was the right way to do it. I saw on Apple's website it says to use a value of 1/4 and then play around with the Q-Range after, and it sounds good when you apply the lowest percentage of Q-Range on 1/4

I am beyond frustrated with this and Im now considering finding someone I could pay to teach me how to do it..

IIRW, I think one can apply quantization only to selected notes...

Have you tried different quantization settings to ghost and non ghost notes?

Yeah I think I will have better luck trying it that way, rather than Quantizing by the Region all by one percentage.

I think the best way to do it is to play it in and then move around each hit to get the right feel of the groove.

Thanks!

Yeah I forgot to specify that I don't use Smart Quantise, I generally use the Classic mode "most" of the time. The Strength I suggested of around 80 or so is to keep things locked in with hard quantised electronic tracks. If I were say, working on jazz, the quantisation would be much lower, 10 maybe 30%. So it helps to know the context.

I tend to go for an overall region quantise setting and then hand tighten anything that falls out of line. Well, that was in the past, I've lately discovered that it faster to set a tighter quantise for notes and apply it where I need to. I've noticed that also tightening the notes either side of the offending note it can actually be more transparent, in my opinion.