Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 34 - MIDI Quantization pt. 3 - Q-Strength;

hello this is music tech help guide
welcome to episode 34 of my Logic Pro 10
video tutorial series
in this episode we'll wrap up midi
quantization and I'll show you a few of
the advanced quantization features in
logic in the previous video I showed you
guys how you can click on a region and
quantize the entire region to just a one
MIDI quantization value which is why it
was called region based quantization
because it quantizes everything in the
region to the same value so I showed you
that you can select a region go up to
the region parameters here and if the
menu is not open you can open it up go
to the quanta quantize menu here and
choose whatever rhythmic value you want
so I'm going to choose a sixteenth note
for this and you'll see that all the
notes snap to the nearest sixteenth note
what I didn't show was some of the
parameters under this more menu when you
open this up toward the bottom there are
five advanced quantization features you
have cue strength cue range key flam cue
velocity Q length in logic nine there
was actually a separate menu just for
these five and it said advanced
quantization above it so that's been
kind of taken out in logic ten I'm not
going to go over all five of these and
actually believe it or not Q swing is
also considered an advanced quantization
feature but we talked about that in the
previous video already the I'm only
gonna go over three of the five of these
I'm gonna go over Q strengths Q range
and Q flam just because I feel that
those three are the most useful
functions q velocity and Q length I
don't really care for because they don't
really do anything that I need them to
do so they don't you'd think that with
cute velocity it makes all of your
velocities the same or queue length
makes all of your links the same that's
actually not what it does it does
something similar to that but it doesn't
actually do that so I'll show you how to
do how to do that in a later video so
for today we're just going to go over Q
strength Q range and Q Flamm so let
listen to what we've got going on here
so we've got a synth up here that's the
one we just quantized we've got a little
piano melody a bass that's already been
quantized and some drums that are
already quantized as well so let's take
just a look at our our piano melody here
I'm just going to mute everything else
out and just adjust my cycle range here
and let's open this up in the piano roll
and take a listen to it so this was
played in with a MIDI keyboard so just
like any other MIDI recording where you
actually play it in some of the notes
are off the grid you know so in this
case a lot of them are a little far off
the grid some are little are a little
closer than others but seems like the
whole recording is behind so we can
quantize this and it looks like my
quantization value but the best one is
going to be a sixteenth note so I'm
going to click on it go to the quantize
menu over here choose a sixteenth note
all the notes snap to their nearest
sixteenth so how do the advanced
quantization features come into play
well let's start with cue strength cue
strength essentially intentionally
unquantifiable one and a hundred right
now we've quantized all these notes at a
hundred percent which means they are
right on their intended target they're
perfectly quantized to the grid cue
strength let's just kind of roll down
the amount of quantization we have so we
can create something great equation
that's maybe a little more human you
know part of the the whole point of
having a recording that sounds like a
human plate it is that it's not perfect
you know so we can kind of make this
record this the quantization
you can move some of these notes
slightly off the grid so the cue
strength menu will basically be blank if
you click on it and pull down you'll see
that you're pulling down values from a
hundred percent so all the way up is
actually a hundred percent as you pull
down you are going to make these notes
slowly drift away from the grid you'll
see some of the notes are starting to
pull away from their intended targets on
the grid so if I pull down to something
like sixty percent there you go
59 percent networks you'll see that the
notes on the grid are again drifting
even further away from their intended
target so this can kind of give us a
more human feel where we you know want
notes that intentionally be to be
slightly off the grid the only thing I'm
going to do here is there's just this
little roll the beginning
it kind of just quantizing this kind of
messed this up so I'm just going to go
ahead and just manually edit this just
to make sure it's in place there we go
so let's listen to this
so it's on the it's close to the grade
but it's not perfectly on the grid but
it's better than it was before before I
quantized one quick thing I should
mention is that if you try to mess with
the advanced quantization parameters
down here without quantizing up here
first
nothing will happen for these to work
you have to make sure you choose a
quantization value then go mess with the
with the the quantity advanced
quantization parameters so I'm going to
roll the Q strength back up to 100%
there we go
you'll see everything is now perfectly
on the grid again the next advanced
causation parameters Q range Q range
basically lets you quantize notes within
or outside a set boundaries at range so
what you get our series of positive
values and negative values and a lot of
these look a lot like our quantization
parameters that we looked at back in the
first part of of this quantization
series which was episode 32 if you
choose a positive value like this like
let's choose positive one sixty-fourth
no now let's see what that does to the
notes you'll see that some of the notes
are perfectly on the grid still others
have basically unquantified of 1/64 note
away from their intended target will not
be quantized and notes that are within a
sixty-fourth note away from their
intended target will be quantized so you
can see here that this note this one and
this one are all perfectly on the grid
because they were already pretty close
to where they were supposed to be
located all of the other ones were were
further than a sixty-fourth note away
and therefore were unqualified
so now just just so we can see this
because I'm going to flip this to
negative 164 just so we can see this
better when I flip it to negative
sixty-four I'm going to pull the
Velocity's down just to give them a
different color and let's choose
negative 164 and by the way it also
shows you in ticks and in milliseconds
so what you'll see now is all of the
notes that were quantized before the
blue ones are now slightly off the grid
but you can see in most cases they're
really really close to the grid because
that's that's where they actually were
played all of the other notes that
weren't quantized before are now
quantized so basically what this does is
it does the opposite of what what we did
before notes that are within a 64th no
away from their intended target are not
quantized so the blue ones and notes
that are outside of a 64th node away
from their intended target are quantized
now looking this be used for practically
if you're working with the recording
where it's generally a good recording
everything is is pretty close to being
on the grid and you don't want too hard
quantize it to make it sound you know
robotic you'll still want to maintain
the human character to it which you can
do with cue range is you can up set it
to a negative value like I have here so
that notes that are really off notes
that are really really off will be
quantized and fixed but the notes that
are pretty close to the grid already
hence the blue ones will be left alone
because there's really no reason to
quantize them because they're already so
close to where they're supposed to be so
that's Q range again I don't really use
Q range much I'll be honest but the next
one I do I do use a lot Q flam Q flam is
really cool because what it does is it's
essentially offset quantization and to
show you what this does I actually have
a separate region over here so we just
open this up and all this is right now
are just some kind of you know just some
eighth note or actually quarter note
chords that are kind of played short so
it sounds like this
what we can do with cue flam is we can
offset a stacked cord like this meaning
you can take a stacked cord and you can
create arpeggios with it first we got it
we have to choose a quantization value
even though these are already perfectly
in time you still have to choose
quantization value so I'm going to
choose a quarter note because that's
where all the notes are go to cue flam
and you'll see that the list for cue
flam is a lot like cue range we get
these positive rhythmic values and
negative rhythmic values when you choose
a positive value say like a sixteenth
note you'll see that all of the notes in
your each chord now have been offset by
one sixteenth note and so we basically
have sixteenth note arpeggios now so
this is really cool this is something
that's like a functional thing that you
can use to kind of add to add to a chord
progression that you've that you've
played in likewise if I choose a
negative value I'll choose negative 1 16
what this is going to do isn't it's
going to do the same thing but instead
of going from down to up it's going from
up to down from highest to lowest now
the thing about cue flam that a lot of
people get confused about is cue flam is
not in our Peggy ater it's so you know
it's not like the arpeggiator plug-in
that we now have in Logic 10 we just you
know you plop the thing on there hold
the chord and it goes crazy
you can only arpeggiate upward or
downward with cue flam you can't do
up-and-down at least not easily you'd
have to like chop up the region and
start moving little Clips around and at
that point you might as well just use
the arpeggiator plug-in so that's the
the cue flam feature it's really cool
cue velocity queue length don't worry
about those I'll show you a better way
later on to complete those functions to
make velocities all the same and note
lengths all the same so I hope you
enjoyed the video and thanks for
watching