Time-aligning guitar DI tracks

[Uladyne]

I was pondering the idea of snapping the transients of some guitar DI tracks to a grid. I'm just kind of curious if anyone does this regulary. I highly doubt I'll end up doing it, as I prefer natural tightness (and even a bit of 'un-tightness'), and don't even like the idea of manually gating guitars, but I was taking a shit the other day and was wondering how often such a technique is put to use.

 

[::XeS::]

I did it in my last work and it works pretty good and it's way more quick than a drums editing.
I used Elastic Audio in polyphonic mode

 

[Mikaël-ange]

Did it sometimes, work well but natural tightness is better

 

[Zack Uidl]

only done it in extreme cases. natural tightness is way better

 

[mick thompson]

I was taking a shit the other day and was wondering how often such a technique is put to use.

sometimes the best ideas turn up when your pooping... thats where i learned most of my music theory.

god bless the holy toilet in all its glory!

 

[A Midnight Requiem]

It really depends on the riff, but it can work wonders in certain situations. I don't do this on a regular basis, or on a guitar track throughout the whole song, but it can work great in a pinch if something isn't just right.

 

[Morgan C]

I tried this and the only way I could get it to work without artifacts was to cut it up, to allow the attack to be unstretched, then snap that to the grid and stretch the sustain to fit to the next grid point, repeat. I tried lots of cut/crossfading but you could always hear it, and straight stretching messed up the attack badly.

 

[deLuther]

With audio-warp feature in cubase-nuendo no need to cut/crossfade, results with plucked algorithm are usually good when correction is within few percent (i.e. amount of stretching is closer to unity).

 

[Uladyne]

Hrm... I've been recording rhythm guitars for pre-production all day and I've come to the conclusion that even natural tightness can be a bit too tight for my taste. I think if a band has only one guitarist it's cool to have super tight rhythm tracks, but if a band has two guitarists I think I prefer the tracks not to line up perfectly (within reason, of course, no slop) because when its really tight it almost sounds like one really wide guitar track. Luckily for me I'm not tight enough for this to be much of a problem, haha.

 

[beyond dead]

I have been thinking about the same thing lately dude. I have been listening to sybreeds latest album quite a bit lately, and I have always wondered if They edited the guitars this way, because they are just so unbelievably tight, for being quadtracked. If those riffs arent quantized, then drop must be very tight with his picking hand to be able to quad track those riffs that precise! either that, or he punches in alot.

I think its only really needed if the music requires precision. for some music it may be too sterile sounding.

 

[Philchef]

Is there an alternative using Elastic Audio ? I'd really like to check it out to quantifuck my guitars... and do the plugs have an algorhythm to randomize it a bit?

 

[Dexter_prog]

For Reaper users, what do you use to stretch audio?

 

[Metaltastic]

Alt+Shift+drag the edge of a region

 

[jet_dry]

I've used the "enhance timing" function in logic to fix some really shitty playing I've had to deal with. It does a fairly good job, sounds really artificial if it's overused though.

 

[beyond dead]

I've used the "enhance timing" function in logic to fix some really shitty playing I've had to deal with. It does a fairly good job, sounds really artificial if it's overused though.

in logic 9? for this type of stuff, I would be using flex mode set to monophonic to quantize. I never trust auto quantize functions ever, cuz a computer is unable to of listening critically to each edit. what may seem like the most hypothetical edit, may not be correct.

try using flex mode to quantize guitar d.i`s. it may be a pain in the ass to do it all by hand, but its the only way that works. If the edit sounds too unnatural, or artificial, then you need to capture a better performance. This is true with all editing tools like melodyne for instance.

edit: I use tools (flex/elastic audio, melodyne, beat detective) to add final polish, rather than to fix crappy performances. It took me awhile to figure out that trying to fix crapy performances is pointless. These tools are only effective for making tight performances tighter

 

[ATLA]

Alt+Shift+drag the edge of a region

Thanks dude been trying to figure that one out! been trying out the trial version of reaper for a couple days seems pretty sweet for 60$!

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah man, I'm still loving it!

 

[kass]

Alt+Shift+drag the edge of a region

region = the white selected part?

lol

 

[Metaltastic]

Ugghh, excuse me, ITEM - god forbid all these goddamn DAW manufacturers could agree on their terminology

 

[jet_dry]

I'm still using Logic 8, so enhance timing is the most cutting-edge technology I have at the moment. Upgrading soon hopefully.