Note transition

[.onelove.]

Bit of a noob question here, but I bought a MIDI keyboard recently and I noticed my melodies come out a lot more natural than if I placed the notes myself on the piano roll. However, as it's recorded and I'm not a skilled musician some of the notes are out of time, so when I edit them manually afterwards to fit them into a bar they lose the natural transition.

Does that make any sense?

[factory presets]

So only edit them back half way. You can probably do it automatically. Its called Iterative Quantise in Cubase, but I'm sure all the other DAWs will have a similar feature.

[paravrais]

Switch off the snap/quantise feature and move them into place by hand. If it doesn't sound right then you've moved it the wrong way/too far. Just a case of keep moving them till they have the same groove you had before but are properly in time. It's one of the many things in production that becomes much easier to do quickly the more you practice.

[.onelove.]

I'm in FL Studio 9, how what do I access this quantise feature? I see under tools on the piano roll is a 'Quantize' option, but do I use this before or after I have recorded the notes? Whats its purpose?

Appreciate the responses, and I know it's supposedly basic stuff...

[3za]

I'm in FL Studio 9, how what do I access this quantise feature? I see under tools on the piano roll is a 'Quantize' option, but do I use this before or after I have recorded the notes? Whats its purpose?

Appreciate the responses, and I know it's supposedly basic stuff...

After.

Pick a groove template, then play with the start time, and sensitivity till it sound how you like. Also rtm.

[Aquathesis]

I'm in FL Studio 9, how what do I access this quantise feature? I see under tools on the piano roll is a 'Quantize' option, but do I use this before or after I have recorded the notes? Whats its purpose?

Appreciate the responses, and I know it's supposedly basic stuff...

Its a picture of a magnet in fl9, and in fl8-older its a picture of a grid, up by the razorblade/select/paintbrush/pencil buttons. Turn it to none while you move things around, or to cell/step/ect. for on time patterns. The 'quantize' in the tools is a tool that takes a bunch of already recorded notes and moves them too the nearest grid block, youll lose your groove even more if you play with that, you just want too move a few notes, subtley, not snap all them to the grid.

[nowaysj]

Just hold down alt and you can move notes around w/o quantize. That is changing in 9.8 beta and above. I wish they would switch it back (without actually trying the beta myself, I'm just scared of change - that is a joke, I think it works perfectly now, great feature).

But that is no really what you're talking about here. You're talking about the way the end of the last note affects the beginning of the first note in the bar. Well, if there is an important interaction happening there, just draw out your clip on the playlist, and make the clip longer, and put the next clip where it should be. You will get your note interaction that way. It looks a tad bit sloppy on the play list, but take the hit it is worth it.

Also some notes to the quantization issue - alt q will bring up the quantize menu. Study that pop up. Lots of power there. That's fruity's draw back btw, they've got fuck loads of power, but they don't advertise it, and sometimes it is buried away on a little pop up. At the top part of the quant menu, you can select templates to quantize to. VERY POWERFUL. You can set up your MPC quantize templates, you can make your own templates. Like if you really liked your melody, but you fucked up the timing, make the melody your quantization template, and quantize everything else of relevance to the melody. HOLY SHIT, NOW YOU GOT GROOVE BABY.

But what I'm really trying to point out, is the little drop down in the bottom panel, "Leave Duration" I think is the default, switch it to leave end time. This will pull the front of the note in the direction you are quantizing, but leave the tail end where it is.

If I fuck up my timing when I record notes in (imagine that?) I manually move the notes into place. It's the only way I'm satisfied. So I just start at the beginning of the clip, and just start listening. If the note is a little early (I rush my recordings, always have, I'm a bit high strung) I just hold alt down, and drag the note a LITTLE later, listen to it again, still feels to early, drag it a little later again, and we are talking in very small increments. I change the ppq of the project so I can zoom way the fuck in for this process. Not zoom in visually, but zoom in so I can place the note just where I want it. Once I got it where I want it, then I adjust the end of the note, usually it is too long now, and maybe causing problems with the note behind, like if I've got glide or portamento on. So I adjust the back edge to where it cuts off right, w/o fucking up the following note. The back sides of notes are VERY important. Space inbetween notes is just as if not more important than the notes themselves.

If all this kinda sounds like a bitch, it is. I got like latency spikes in my brain every now and again, and it fucks up my playing. Sucks. But it means, that I spend a lot of time nudging notes around.

If you want to change your ppq, parts per quarter, go to main menu Options -> PROJECT general settings, not just general settings, and adjust the ppq. It defaults to 96, like a lot of standard external midi sequencers. WARNING. Turning up your ppq will double, triple, quadruple your cpu usage. Which SUCKS A D!CK. This is a new 9 thing. I hate it. Anyway, I boost it up to 960. Now you will find you can zoom way the fuck into your piano roll AND your playlist for like, chopping up audio, and automation and shit. But ultimately I have to turn that shit back down to 96 to work. But, I recommend getting used to that, cause I'm constantly jumping it up to do some edits, then jumping it back down so my shit don't crash.

PEACE OUT

[JBE]

I think this is some of the stuff that a lot of people that bash on FL never get to. There really is a lot of great things in FL, the problem is people just don't know it's there due to bad advertising of it, as well as user perception that gets drilled into people's heads by FL Haters that seem to reside everywhere now a days. Although I think the perception is changing slightly, or at least isn't so rampant as it was not to long ago.

Noways really hit the head on the nail here. Really read what he was saying in that post as he explained it rather well, and just try those different things to see how they work. You might not catch on it right away, but after you play with it for awhile you'll get it. Just save a seperate copy of the project so if you mess anything up you can always revert back to it before you changed anything. These things are definitely the more tedious and difficult portions of the technical side of producing that you'll find yourself getting involved with more and more as you go. It's a good place to start.

[.onelove.]

Wow, I haven't had a chance to read through this thread yet as I'm swamped with Uni work, but looks fantastically indepth for what was a naive query.

Really appreciate the replies, will let you know how it's helped once I've got a chance to read through then test out.

Cheers!