Hello people!
Well I've spent several days already thinking about a natural way to quantize the audio. Since almost all the options and programs that I tried, when quantizing the audio, it stretches and produces an ugly sound, not so much in a "solo" instrument such as a bass, kick, snare, etc" but in electric guitar and acoustics (especially acoustics) so I was looking at several options to simulate a quantization, well this sounds more like a punch and gives the sensation that it was quantized because "the punch it has is associated with the rhythm" I'll tell you what I did and I I would like your opinion.

This can work with any beat you want to do, no need to follow the drums like in this case.
But I used a cymbal rhythm, imitating the rhythm that I play on the guitar, of course not exactly all the beats, but where I want it to be marked, because otherwise it sounds all robotic. So that cymbal that is quantized I send it to a sidechain expander. namely. create a bus, put an expander activate the sidechain and send the signal from the cymbal (quantized in midi) to the expander where the guitar is, then every time the cymbal plays it is boosted a little in the parts that I want to "quantize"
I also tried it on a bass and it works much better, because it is monophonic.
Now, as I said before, it's not necessary for that saucer to be there afterwards, it's just the reference, then you render the audio and you're left with that paste similar to a quantization.
Anyway, I leave you a test of what I did to see how you listen to it and what you think.

 

There is a feature in Logic (and most other daws), called Groove Quantize; and it has a similar function. In the Channel Headers, you can designate one track as your Groove Track. All other tracks then have the option to turn it on, linking to Groove Track; or deselected and it will play back without any influence. Tracks that are linked to the Groove Track then follow it's timing and so on. Works great in the right situations.

 

yes I know, but it works well on drums and basses, or it sounds monophonic. But when it's a guitar rhythm, it stretches the audio to match the time and the sound is (for my taste) quite ugly, it's like the sound of a low quality mp3.

 

There is a third option: play precisely what you want with your guitar, and you 'll never have to bother yourself about audio quantize again.

If you wanna a really special rythmic effect, you can use for example a programmable gate (trance gate) + several synched ping pong delays, if you are smart you can obtain a special groove never heard before.

 

Stretching/warping/flexing/elastique audio in DAWs is a granular process, hence the destructive degradation of the audio. Every DAW has a different name for it (as mentioned above) yet the process is the same.
As mentioned, you also have groove quantize which granually pull things (transients) towards a reference file, audio or MIDI.

You can do manual cutting and offsetting of the waveform to offset the transients (which are the components to make things "tight") and then do regular crossfade between the offsetted audio events/clips. That way you don't get granular processing. Just make sure you offset enough to get a good phase-coherence (of the lower harmonics) across the crossfade.

"Groove" in itself is not making things perfect to the grid. Groove is rather the micro-differences in timing between elements. The pushing and pulling of stressed and late elements. Like a late bassguitar or a flam'ing cluster of claps coming in ahead of the beat. As a drummer I'm really sensitive to drummers who have a "stressed snare" and it makes me itch. I know when the snare is "in the pocket".
A guitar on it's own is rarely groovy. It needs another (or a few) other element to which it can be groovy with. Like Keith Richards alone would sound like drunk and high guy (d'oh!). He needs the steady (and contrasting) beat of Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. Just to take a semi-crappy example.

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2022

I have used this "technique" before, with the hi-hat track sidechaining FabFilter Pro-MB in expander mode. It works fine depending on the genre. In an acoustic trio setting it might not work.

 

It is true that natural sound is always best. But I don't like the idea of stopping and replaying what doesn't sync. I like to play the bass and the guitar in a row, without cuts, because I feel that it takes away that "magic" when he plays, maybe it's my idea, but a voice doesn't sound the same twice, and it also happens with the guitar. If I'm slowing down and cutting, in addition to being annoying, it takes away that "soul" that I use when recording. So I thought of something that would directly quantize the audio in a natural way. I don't like how the Daws do it or the Vsts like Melodyne or others. It's very good, yes. But it takes away the naturalness.



I've been thinking about what @triggerflipper said about using a dynamic eq with sidechain, but I still don't understand how to do it. But I think it's a good idea too and treating only those frequencies for example sending the bass in sidechain at 80hz, I guess that means