Hello, I was wondering if anyone can help with the recording “Quantize” function.  When recording drum track parts manually such as playing a snare hit on the 2nd and 4th beat of a measure, I try to use the Quantize function to make sure the beat is spot on but when I play it back it is totally off beat.  While recording, it sounds perfectly in time but when I play it back it is always off beat no matter what setting I try (sixteenth, eighth and quarter notes, etc.) but I must be doing something wrong because nothing is working right.  Any ideas out there on how to use this function properly?  Thank you very much.

When quantizing, the sequencer tries to move your note to the nearest “correct” location in the bar. Unfortunately, that location may not be the one you expected...which sounds like your problem.

For example, let’s say you try to record a kick drum on beats 1 and 3 and snare on 2 and 4 but your timing is off. If you set quantize for a quarter note (120) it will probably come out OK. But if you choose to quantize to sixteenth notes (30) it might drag the notes to either 1/16 before the beat or 1/16 after the beat. Does that make sense?

You can always open the edit screen and see what the actual time value your notes were recorded at...are they all early, are they all late or are there some early and some late? Knowing that will help you choose the proper quantize settings. If the result of the quantize sounds wrong, you have a couple of options:

-- Try again with a different quantize value

-- Edit the notes that sound way off manually

-- Record the part again!

Thank you for the reply meatballfulton.  Yes that sounds like the problem I am having.  I was under the assumption however, that the Quantize would select the closest note / bar that the drum part was actually played on (I know I wasn’t that far off to cause it to play at a completely different place, but it did anyway).  I am now having better luck not using Quantize at all but I can hear the subtle miss fires of the snare drum that probably no one else will really notice but I thought that’s what having the Quantize function was for.  Oh well.

Thanks again for the help.