A Good Guide/Tips to Quantize / snap to beat wave pattern.

[Matt Darcy]

Hi all,

I've just recorded a bass guitar track for a demo I'm working on. Most of it is fine, there are a few bits where I am moments early/late on the beat.

I believe there is a technique called "quantize" where you can snap the start/end of the wave of notes played to the start/end of beats.

I've got the pro-tools for dummies book that I'm using as an introduction along with another book of a higher calibre, however I can't find the information on how to get started or do this.

Any guide/help/tips would be most appriciated.

thanks,

Matt

[cneal92]

What version of PT are you using?

In 7.4 there is elastic audio which can do this. For previous versions you can use Beat Detective (which can be tricky for a new user to get the desired results), or just slip audio via editing (which I find often yields the best results regarding the "feel" of the song).

[Matt Darcy]

I'm on 7.4,

I'm googling elastic audio.

Do you have any more info or a beginners guide.

[Scott Goldberg]

Hi Matt,

Not up to 7.4 yet so I've not and experience with how well that works. I can tell you this though. I've found nothing that time stretches or compresses better than Serato Pitch. Just slice the tail end off the note you wish to make longer and it usually works with no artifacts. To compress, do the same, slice at the end and drag the smart tool, (set to TCE) and drag it back. It does take longer than things like elastic audio but I never seen any algorithms that can do the whole line (let's say four words or notes) on the fly. It really depends how sensitive your ears are, and how good you want to edit. Some clients, it just doesn't matter as they couldn't hit the broad side of a bard with a 440 note, but for those projects that really matter, Serato, or Melodyne seem to be the picks.If you have Serato, go into preferences and change to default from the pro tools default to Serato.

[audiogeekzine]

without using elastic audio
tab to transient,
A (trim start to cursor)
Click to highlight the region
Ctrl/Command+Numpad 0
That will snap the start to the nearest grid line
Trim the left side of the region out again to the original start.

That will at least get you the first note in time and if you're consistantly off it will work well.

[Matt Darcy]

great tips,

I'll be trying these out today.

thank you

[Stig Eliassen]

Elastic audio (monophonic algorithm) is perfect for bass. Use it on the bass track, in real-time processing. When you instantiate EA on a track the regions grey out while the audio gets analyzed. When it's done, switch to analysis view to check that the event markers are where they should be throughout the song. Let's say they are, so...

1. Select all bass regions, and open the quantize window. Make sure it's set to quantize elastic audio events.
2. Set the strength slider to 1%, and quantize. Now, the bass will hardly shift towards the grid at all, but by quantizing with 1% you're turning all event markers into warp markers
3. Switch to warp view, and listen through the song. Grab and move the warp markers needed.

There's about 30 pages describing the elastic audio features in the manual, so just dig in.

Good luck.