quantizing guitars?
- Thread starter hsinn3r
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Tym_ex
Tymon
greyskull
Member
- Mar 22, 2006
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kaomao
Member
I usually do it even on the distorted guitar track, not just on the DI, but working on DI is really better.
Anyway it's just as cheating as using beat detective on drums, I don't see any difference
Genius Gone Insane
http://www.¯\(°_o)/¯.com
Anyway it's just as cheating as using beat detective on drums, I don't see any difference
I suppose you're right. But guitarists have the ability to punch in whereas drummers have less choice there (usually, in my experience at least). If you can't punch it in then you shouldn't be recording it.
Torniojaws
They call me Juha
kaomao
Member
Usually I do as you say: punchin' in, but if I recorded the clip a month ago and I can't reamp for any reason or it's just a power cord slightly not on time I move it by hand instead of recording it again.
ok, thread resurrection 
so, i'm currently tracking some modern death metal stuff....now, guitar tracks are pretty tight, although not 100%....kinda think cannibal corpse in terms of tightness. it's tight overall, but there are some mistakes here and there.
now, 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?
moreover, how would one go about quantizing guitars in reaper? is it the same procedure as with drums, basically?
so, i'm currently tracking some modern death metal stuff....now, guitar tracks are pretty tight, although not 100%....kinda think cannibal corpse in terms of tightness. it's tight overall, but there are some mistakes here and there.
now, 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?
moreover, how would one go about quantizing guitars in reaper? is it the same procedure as with drums, basically?
Machinated
Member
i never edit so its 100% on the grid and everything on top of each other.
have it so the drums are coming first, then guitars and bass a couple of ms later, and then have the vocals so they groove nicely with the music.
having it with all the transients on top of each other can really kill the groove and bigness of the songs.
have it so the drums are coming first, then guitars and bass a couple of ms later, and then have the vocals so they groove nicely with the music.
having it with all the transients on top of each other can really kill the groove and bigness of the songs.
Erkan
mr-walker.bandcamp
There's nothing wrong with sliding notes over on any track really... anything to make the overall production a little better right?
I would never consider splitting up an entire fuckin' guitar track note by note though... fuck, that would be sad and pointless. Might as well play a distorted synth then
I would never consider splitting up an entire fuckin' guitar track note by note though... fuck, that would be sad and pointless. Might as well play a distorted synth then
i gotta say, i'm not a big fan of the whole machine like thing myself...i prefer stuff (even extreme death metal) to sound like it's played by humans, with all the imperfections that come with it.
the thing is, it just seems to be part of the genres sound.....the faceless are really a prime example of that. their stuff just has a ridiculous amount of impact, and quite a lot of that comes from everything being absolutely SPOT ON, to a degree that no human could possibly achieve imho.
and as much as i like music to have a human feel, i'm not quite sure whether one should consider going that route if a genre sort of calls for it. i guess it could turn out either way.....either people will say it sounds fresh due it being NOT overproduced, or they might as well talk about the stuff just sounding weird for the genre as people are kinda used to that mechanical sound.
the thing is, it just seems to be part of the genres sound.....the faceless are really a prime example of that. their stuff just has a ridiculous amount of impact, and quite a lot of that comes from everything being absolutely SPOT ON, to a degree that no human could possibly achieve imho.
and as much as i like music to have a human feel, i'm not quite sure whether one should consider going that route if a genre sort of calls for it. i guess it could turn out either way.....either people will say it sounds fresh due it being NOT overproduced, or they might as well talk about the stuff just sounding weird for the genre as people are kinda used to that mechanical sound.
lolzgreg
Cereal Shipping Sneapster
so, i tried the "important quantizing tip for reaper" thing on guitars, and for some reason it doesn't really work out too well.
i'm using it on DI tracks, so the transients should be more obvious than on real mic'ed gtr tracks, but then again it's still not as defined as on drum tracks, so consequently i'm getting a lot of mistriggers in the quantizing process.
i'm using dynamic split function in reaper.....i disabled the gate thing and one checked split on transients or whatever it's called, set to anywhere from 5 to 20ms.
so far it seems to work best on tremolo picked stuff, but i had little to no success for the machine gun like triplet stuff.
any pointers?
i'm not necessarily trying to use that technique all the time, but i'd at least like to be able to use it at all another trick for the bag you know....
i'm using it on DI tracks, so the transients should be more obvious than on real mic'ed gtr tracks, but then again it's still not as defined as on drum tracks, so consequently i'm getting a lot of mistriggers in the quantizing process.
i'm using dynamic split function in reaper.....i disabled the gate thing and one checked split on transients or whatever it's called, set to anywhere from 5 to 20ms.
so far it seems to work best on tremolo picked stuff, but i had little to no success for the machine gun like triplet stuff.
any pointers?
i'm not necessarily trying to use that technique all the time, but i'd at least like to be able to use it at all
another trick for the bag you know....Hey, you guys that are quantizing guitars 100%, do you find that it will affect the stereo width if both (or all 4 if quadtracked) guitar tracks are lined up exactly to each other? The stereo width comes from the guitar tracks not sounding exactly the same, all having different nuances and variations. So it seems like it would lose that width, unless you don't quantize to 100%.
That's a good point KKuff, but I think the fact that it's very rare that a note will be struck exactly the same way (same point on the string, same angle of the pick, same degree of force, etc.) is enough, cuz there are definitely players out there who can play tight enough that they might as well be quantized, and it still works for them!
Aaron Smith
Envisage Audio
I've been tediously quad-tracking all the rhythms for my full length (muggy and in the mid 90s this whole week = SUCK), and I've done some nudging here and there. What I've found though when experimenting, is that if I take the time to perfectly line up every last transient, it really doesn't sound any different. That's likely a testimony to my playing more than a testimony against having perfectly lined up tracks...but, when I zoom in a ways there is definitely some variation between the four tracks on transients here and there, but the overall spread of guitars doesn't lose any definition over it. 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 have VocAlign. It's a nice tool for doubling vocals, but it doesn't really catch every transient in guitar DI tracks unless the transients are very obvious looking. Slow picked clean guitar type stuff it does alright on, but you also have to be pretty dang spot on with the performance anyway, or else it will create artifacts that sound a little to obvious.
I have VocAlign. It's a nice tool for doubling vocals, but it doesn't really catch every transient in guitar DI tracks unless the transients are very obvious looking. Slow picked clean guitar type stuff it does alright on, but you also have to be pretty dang spot on with the performance anyway, or else it will create artifacts that sound a little to obvious.
Aaron Smith
Envisage Audio
darthjujuu
Member
ok, thread resurrection
so, i'm currently tracking some modern death metal stuff....now, guitar tracks are pretty tight, although not 100%....kinda think cannibal corpse in terms of tightness. it's tight overall, but there are some mistakes here and there.
now, 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?
moreover, how would one go about quantizing guitars in reaper? is it the same procedure as with drums, basically?
i'm in reaper working on a metalcore project right now and it's quadtracked DI guitar. i've just been going through any chuggy/breakdowny parts where chugs need to be locked in with the kick and splitting at transients and alt+dragging to the grid. it's a little time consuming, but once you get the hang of it you can whip through a song relatively quickly. i think it's definitely worth it.
I really wish joey would chime in on this thread
DaWolf
Mojito Maniac
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 ?
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 ?
