Recording E-Drums – Quantization & Editing

Quantizing aligns MIDI notes or waveform transients to  a grid.  You can set time signatures and note subdivisions in your quantize settings, but the main purpose of quantization is to precisely put notes in time with the song.  

A lot of people say that quantization makes the drum track sound robotic.  The same people often manually edit their acoustic drums tightly to a grid and see nothing wrong with it.

The issue here, is that you shouldn’t be blanket-quantizing your track.  

Be selective.  Here are some things to watch out for:

• Quantizing for the proper note division: Make sure you’ve set the right note division in your quantization settings before you start.  Keep in mind that drummers (at least the ones that have something interesting to play) will switch it up and play off-beats, 1/8, 1/12, 1/16, 1/24 notes (you get the idea) and a blanket 16th note quantize will not be a good fit for an entire drum track.  Start by quantizing any straight repeating sections of your song.  Skip fills, transitions, and grooves that fall out of your song’s overall time signature.  Then when you finish, go back and quantize the alternate sections and fills with the correct quantize setting for those individual parts.
• Grooves:  There are musical genres that use quantization as part of their sound— urban, dubstep, and electronic genres are not naturally ‘live’ as their roots come from hardware sequencer technology.  One piece of hardware in specific (MPC range from Akai) has almost defined the feel of many types of hip-hop and R’n'B music.  It gained popularity due to the fact it has some pretty unique quantization settings. I sounds tight and punchy and has been the main choice of many urban producers.  Most sequencers come with a groove quantization setting where you can upload pre-made quantize settings, create your own, or analyze an existing track.  You can also vary the degree of swing and strength of your quantize.
• Quantization Strength:  Depending on the skill of the drummer, you may not need as much quantization.  For some drummers I set the strength to 50%, which means the quantize will only correct the note half way to the note division setting.  I find 50-75% (depending on the drummer) provides enough error correction for my taste, but leaves a good degree of realism and humanity in the track.  I prefer not to fix it if it isn’t broken.  Some people will quantize entire drum tracks that were otherwise perfectly played, just for the hell of it.  What this does is suck the life out of the track.  Music doesn’t have to be perfectly polished all the time!  Go for feel.  In some cases, you might want to change the feel, and an easy way to do this is to move the snare slightly ahead or slightly behind beats 2 and 4 .  Offsetting the snare forwards can give you a looser feel, while offsetting it backwards can give you a tighter snappier sound.
• You are not a squid:  Drummers (as far as I know) usually only have four useful appendages (unless you’re Tommy Lee or Rick Allen from Def Leopard).  What I mean to say is a drummer can only be hitting four notes at a single time.  A big mistake of drum editors with regards to midi and e-drums, is looping sections of cymbals over top of fills.  For example, you might hear the drummer pounding away at the high hat, and when he goes into a fill, the high hat keep going while he’s busy on the toms.  To some people this sticks out like a sore thumb.  You just have to be aware of what sections you’re looping (if you decide to do that), and that there should be no more than four notes at a time in your drum track.
• Accents & Expressions:  Don’t quantize flams unless you know how to set your sequencer to watch for them.  I actually skip quantizing and editing flams altogether unless they’re really out of place because they have their own expressions and timing nuances.  Sometimes a naturally played flam will help to real-ize your track.  If you have a fairly deep drum sample library, you might already have samples of flams, rolls, and other types of accents, so try them out and replace notes that you know the drummer was trying to hit but couldn’t because of the limitations of the e-drums.  It’s easy to manually add accents, double hits, leading notes, cymbal chokes, rim shots, flams, soft notes, fix rolls, and change velocities on any hits that sound the way they should.  Again, drum editing is not very hard, it’s just a time investment, so set a timmer for what you’re willing to spend on a drum track and cut yourself off when it goes off.  Drum editing is a black hole.