Working with Midi and Quantising help needed...

Howdy,

For years I have recorded Music, namely Drums by the old fashioned way of having a Drummer play a real Kit. Until I get to that point I often have just drawn in notes/beats or played in using a Midi Keyboard very basic drum beats etc. Basic so I can get a drummer to play and not be too influenced by my bad drum programming. The whole purpose, just to be able to write demo songs and do the pre production before going into another studio to record live drums. However, now I have a Roland V Kit and it’s a wonderful writing tool.

I was writing some Music with a drummer the other day and what I am now wondering is the best way to work with played in Drum Midi parts. I guess the first initial problem is regardless of whether the drummer has played to a click/Metronome, or without one there is always a small amount of latency and therefore how can I copy and loop parts of the drum performance when the parts are not in line with the grid? I mean, as soon I move say, the first beat, a Kick Drum, onto the bar it obviously messes with the feel of the drummer’s playing. I’ve never really had to look into Quantising before and wondering if anyone can point me into the right direction. Having a drummer play a V Kit with a great sample library brings song writing to life rather than Mouse Clicking and Keyboard tapping so I am also wondering whether Quantising is going to completely mess with the feel.

Thanks

Jono

If, regardless of how it looks against the grid in Cubase, it sounds right, then I would use either the TimeWarp Tool, or the MIDI function “Merge Tempo from Tapping”, to align the grid up with those recorded MIDI events, rather than the other way round. (then you can Loop, copy/paste etc. without problem :wink: )
Both those functions are well documented, both in the manual, and in these forums (don’t forget there’s still a lot of good info in the Cubase 7 forum :wink: )
Don’t hesitate if you need more info :wink:.

I shall look into the time warp tool! I’ve never used it! :slight_smile: