quantizing guitars?

[ParsonsMatt]

If I wanted 100% perfection I'd just use a VSTi...

 

[exoslime]

.....As long as you play each take consciously listening to the click, and pay just as much attention to the way each take felt when played as how it sounded, I would say quantizing guitars is overdoing it when the tracks sound fine to begin with.

i second that.

 

[darthjujuu]

Quick question about bass :
Quite often I have it that the bass takes a bit longer than guitars to be mute. So do you guys cut the bass at the end to be in line with the gits, or do you leave it as is, which sounds raw/natural but not as tight ?

if itt'l sound better, i tighten it up. or in some cases stretch it out if the bass has no sustain.

i think "editing" is a better term than "quantizing". AFAIK there's no sure fire automated method of guitar quantizing, ya just gotta get in there and slice em up and get your hands dirty.

obviously if it sounds fine the way it is it shouldn't be touched. but with ...well, specifically metalcore especially, or anything else with cheezball breakdowns (and let's admit it, these are the easiest clients to acquire/make happy) it's pretty necessary to drag every guitar transient to 10 ms or so after the click. sloppy imperfect chugga chuggas just make ME look bad, regardless of the band. imo. we can't all get musically gifted clients all the time =[

 

[Taurean]

if itt'l sound better, i tighten it up. or in some cases stretch it out if the bass has no sustain.

i think "editing" is a better term than "quantizing". AFAIK there's no sure fire automated method of guitar quantizing, ya just gotta get in there and slice em up and get your hands dirty.

obviously if it sounds fine the way it is it shouldn't be touched. but with ...well, specifically metalcore especially, or anything else with cheezball breakdowns (and let's admit it, these are the easiest clients to acquire/make happy) it's pretty necessary to drag every guitar transient to 10 ms or so after the click. sloppy imperfect chugga chuggas just make ME look bad, regardless of the band. imo. we can't all get musically gifted clients all the time =[

I second the term "editing" as well... Quantizing is a strange obsession in modern audio. I mean, we worked hard for years to get MIDI to sound right and not only in the sonics department but that "human feel" aspect as well. It seems self defeating to go the extent of quantizing. I would take good editing, where as mentioned, you get your hands dirty so to speak over quanitization.

 

[ParsonsMatt]

if itt'l sound better, i tighten it up. or in some cases stretch it out if the bass has no sustain.

i think "editing" is a better term than "quantizing". AFAIK there's no sure fire automated method of guitar quantizing, ya just gotta get in there and slice em up and get your hands dirty.

obviously if it sounds fine the way it is it shouldn't be touched. but with ...well, specifically metalcore especially, or anything else with cheezball breakdowns (and let's admit it, these are the easiest clients to acquire/make happy) it's pretty necessary to drag every guitar transient to 10 ms or so after the click. sloppy imperfect chugga chuggas just make ME look bad, regardless of the band. imo. we can't all get musically gifted clients all the time =[

Whenever I listen to music and the musicianship is bad, I don't blame the engineer... I blame the musicians.

Does anyone really think, "Wow, that guitar part was sloppy, the guy who recorded it must really suck!"

 

[Uncle Junior]

Ok, here's what I noticed when I used quantizing on DI tracks. I recorded two tracks which were the same riff and they weren't perfectly thight but still had that deep strong sound, but when I used quantize function on them they were tight as fuck, the tones were like I copy - pasted one track, but the sound of the tracks lost all the despth and low end and power. So NO quantize man. Punch in, rerecord until perfect dude.

 

[joeymusicguy]

Wow, this is all very interesting. Didn't realize how many cheaters there are here!

didnt realize?

where the hell have you been in the last 5 years haha

 

[joeymusicguy]

i slip-edit here and there, re-record if something is terrible

usually never edit within a stream of sound, only edit within gaps

i always cut to time to grid (like every note has a specified amount of length, just like if you had to score the song or tab it out, you'd have to say how long a plam mute was. same goes for editing).

i dont quad track (2 on left, 2 on right) anymore, because it just sounds like shit to me. one guitar per guitar part, unless its a rthm, then you double and pan (1 left, 1 right)

thats about it boys! if something is retardedly complex, record it in peices!

 

[KKuff]

i slip-edit here and there, re-record if something is terrible

usually never edit within a stream of sound, only edit within gaps

i always cut to time to grid (like every note has a specified amount of length, just like if you had to score the song or tab it out, you'd have to say how long a plam mute was. same goes for editing).

i dont quad track (2 on left, 2 on right) anymore, because it just sounds like shit to me. one guitar per guitar part, unless its a rthm, then you double and pan (1 left, 1 right)

thats about it boys! if something is retardedly complex, record it in peices!

So, being that you never edit within a stream of sound, but you also cut to time to grid, then you only cut to grid during a pause or rest? So if there are consecutive notes that are not in perfect time, then you would retrack that part as opposed to trying to edit it?

 

[joeymusicguy]

So, being that you never edit within a stream of sound, but you also cut to time to grid, then you only cut to grid during a pause or rest? So if there are consecutive notes that are not in perfect time, then you would retrack that part as opposed to trying to edit it?

correct

so those chomb breakdowns (palm mutes that hold out)

those are really annoying to record unless the guitar player has good timing.

but i did say almost never, there are times when i do...... only when absolutely necessary

 

[Ermz]

I record a lot of faster, thrashy material so sometimes cutting within the stream is passable. I treat it essentially the same as drums with BD. Cut at transients, slip the note around (by hand) and then fade back over itself. If the move is minor enough it can sound natural through a fast progression, and can really tighten up very quick chuggachugga parts when the guitarist is less than capable. Tracking it in time from scratch almost always sounds better, but sometimes this is the best compromise.

 

[Full_Tilt]

ok, thread resurrection

seeing how this is modern death metal, there are lotsa bands (the faceless for example) who quantize guitars/bass/everything 100%, and i guess it´s just part of that signature modern sound...with every transient of every instrument perfectly in time. creates a lot of impact, and the expense of sounding, well, mechanical.

so, what do you guys prefer? do you try to stay as organic as possible, or would you be fine with going the mechanical way IF the genre just kinda demands it?

Before about 6 months ago I might have said that absolutely tight rhythm and drums bass etc would be the optimum way to deliver total impact but I was in the studio quite recently where all the guitar attacks and phrasings where lined up and stretched / squashed until it just sounded quite weird frankly.
In a similar way a machine sounds weird compared to a real drummer but I would say that probably a good proportion of professional production sound is down to tightness, things like EQ just balance out the mix after the performance has been nailed.