I had a midi drum track I recorded with parts up to 32 notes and was having a lot of problems getting good quantization. the downbeat would often be on one side or another of the correct spot. I got the idea of warping the main downbeats. Each warp would take a couple of seconds. I then went through, over 1000 measures and then quantized different parts at different rates, 8th, 16th, 32nd, depending on what was needed. Finally after hours on several days, I reached the end and was ready to do the ‘set definition from tempo’ in the advanced audio menu. But it is grayed out and I realized because there is no audio. there is a tempo track with all the fluctuations. then I though I would just create an empty audio track and drag to the end, but it is still grayed out. This is about 46 minutes of track. Any suggestions on how to proceed? I thought that if I played the whole midi track and recorded it, would it relate the same way to the warping, and would that work. Is there a better solution?
Food for thought: Audio warping is a tool to make audio as easily editable as midi is by default.
Does it sound good unquantized? Not being exactly on the beat/grid is part of what makes a real drummer sound real.
I notice if the 32nd notes are not accurate, as well as other things. I wanted to print a score exactly as I intend it to be completely understandable. a few measures have a very noticeable stretch that is disconcerting, soundwise. I had to delete so many false triggers and the highhat goes to open sound and scoring if it is not completely closed tight, so I had to move a whole lot to avoid the unwanted sound and look of open HH. Quantization often made parts worse than when played. If notes were a little ahead or behind the beats, it would not score correctly It would be a nightmare to try to go to the original track and start all over. These were difficult coordination exercises.
Some of the quantization, maybe due to the warping was way off like moving a bass drum that was already quantized to eight notes to jump out of alignment when quantized in conjunction with other parts to 16ths.
Look for example if I quantize the top line which is exactly on 8ths, to 16ths. Makes no sense so I had to avoid including that top line when I only needed whole measures to be 16ths.
