Musical Odyssey: Quantization and MIDI ByNESTOR GULA
involved a complicated step-writing system, whereby you enter the notes one a t a time according t o the beat count. This system is good for programming rhythms f r o m existing music scores o r creating very complex patterns. The quantize function works differently in both instances. In the real-time method, the quantize function corrects you i f your timing is off. If you set your quantize filter at oneeighth note, all the notes that you hit will be moved to the nearest eighth note. Having the quantize set to one-eighth note also means that you cannot have more than eight beats in a 4/4 time bar. Slight syncopation and beat irregularities will be achieved i f you set the quantize threshold to a lower level such as 1/32 or 1/48. By setting the quantize level a t 1/192 (on some machines this setting is simply labeled as turning quantize off) my drum machine would record the patterns exactly as I entered them. By fooling around with the quantize threshold, you could alter the feeling of the rhythms. A high quantize setting produced a mechanical/industrial rhythm with very little life or move-
When learning about MIDI, there are a lot o f new phrases and concepts t o learn. This i s occasionally frustrating for musicians, as i t seems to be more technical than creative. It is not called MIDI programming for nothing. Perhaps one o f the strangest and initially most baffling phrases is the term quantize. Basically it means, that the rhythmic values - the duration of a played note - of the MIDI information are rounded off to a set value, be it whole notes, sixteenth notes, dotted notes, whatever. Consequently, this system usually then "corrects" all the rhythmic information in a given performance to have all the notes line up evenly. Let me explain with a personal experience. My first encounters with the term quantize came when I bought a drum machine. There were two ways to program rhythms in this machine - this is true of most drum machines. In the simplest method, you could write a one- to 99-bar rhythm pattern live in real time by tapping on the different drum keys at appropriate times. The second method
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quantize level. This gets to be quite confusing, but the beauty o f this is that when you do it properly you will have all the elements o f the rhythm pattern falling exactly where you want them to. The drawback with the whole quantize system of ordering notes is that it makes the music itself lifeless by playing identical patters of seemingly equal and well mannered notes consistently without fail. This is what is sometimes unaffectionately known as the "MIDI sound" and w h y many traditional musicians steer a clear path away from MIDI. It is also why many MIDI experts seek to find a way to make MIDI sound more human. A simple way to do this is to set the quantize level o f your MIDI recording device, w h e t h e r d r u m m a c h i n e , sequencer or computer program, to the 1/192 level and then record the pattern live. If you are recording a drum pattern that will be repeated often in a song, try to record it as several beats long instead of one beat. Recording several versions of the same pattern and mixing them in a random fashion will also get rid of the structured quantized MIDI sound. • r"
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ment. A low quantize setting will give a more lively and real-sounding rhythm pattern. In the step-writing method, the user enters the note according to the quantized time. Let's say you want to program one bar of a 4/4-time pattern. To enter a 1/16 snare note on every second 1/16 beat, you would set quantize at 1/16 and program the note on every second beat. I f you want two quarter note high-hats to sound twice i n the pattern, y o u must leave the pattern, select the quantize level at one-quarter and then re-enter the program to enter the new information according to the new quantize threshold. The fact that the first snare drum was inputted a t 1/16 will not affect any new information being programmed nor will it itself be affected b y a change o f quantize level. The function of quantize is to let you structure your notes i n a precise and pre-ordered manner. A drawback of the step-writing method i s that you can only enter 1/16 notes when in the 1/16 quantize level. To enter notes of different duration you have to set a different
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