Have you ever wondered how modern rock bands get that really tight sound? The rhythms sometimes sound too perfect for even the best musicians to pull off. With today’s technology it is possible to easily quantize your audio tracks. This tutorial will teach you how to start correcting your timing by using beat detective and elastic audio in Digidesign’s Pro Tools software.
How to Quantize Audio in Pro Tools Using Beat Detective and Elastic Audio
Oct 7th in Mixing & Mastering, Pro Tools by Bryan McAnulty
Check out the sample file I recorded for an example of some quantized audio.
Example of quantization
Step 1
To become comfortable with the beat correcting process, it is best to a start off with a guitar track because it has many large transients and peaks within the waveform. If you cannot play guitar or do not have any guitar tracks available, bass and vocal tracks will also work fine. Drums are great too, assuming they are on multiple tracks.
It will also help a good amount if your track has breaks or rests similar to the screenshot below. Start off creating a session as normal, and set up either a click track or a drum machine plug in. It is important to play along with this steady rhythm so that you will hear the effect of beat detecting during playback. Lastly, make sure that the “Tab to Transients” and “Keyboard Focus” buttons are checked. These two functions will be helpful throughout the process.
Step 2
First, we will quantize using beat detective, which is a bit more complex than elastic time. Once you have an audio track ready to be quantized, make sure the timeline is set to “Grid” mode and use the hand or selection tool to pick a part of the region you want to beat detect.
After you have the region selected, press the “E” key on your keyboard to get a zoomed in view of the waveform. You will need to closely watch the timeline marker and beat markers on the transients while beat detecting. Now go to “Event > Beat Detective” in the menu bar.
Step 3
Now we have to create the beat markers so beat detective knows where audio should be on the grid. In the first section of beat detective, check to make sure that the start and end beat matches the area of the region you selected. If it does not you will have to click the “Capture Selection” button or type in the numbers manually.
In the drop down list labeled “Contains,” select the quickest note value that occurs in the region you are quantizing. If there is even one note shorter than the “Contains” settings specify, the beat markers will not pick it up.
Step 4
At the end of the window you will see two drop down menus. Depending on what version of Pro Tools you have (M Powered, LE, or HD) you may or may not see the first drop down labeled “Normal” in the screenshot below. The first menu should be left at “Normal” if it exists, and make sure the second menu has “Enhanced Resolution” selected.
Now click “Analyze” and drag the sensitivity slider until you see beat markers placed against all of the notes in the waveform. Check that “Resolution” is set to Sub-Beats. If beat detective makes extra markers in the waveform these can be deleted. You can edit the beat markers by using the hand tool. Double clicking will create a new beat marker, and Option (Alt on a PC) clicking a beat marker will delete it. Also, by clicking and dragging you can move a beat marker, if you feel it is in the wrong place.
Getting the markers right is the most time consuming part of beat detective. Critical listening is required in order to make sure markers are in the right locations. It is sometimes helpful to play the track back at half speed to hear and to see when the timeline hits a spot in the waveform. Half speed playback can be accomplished by holding shift and pressing the spacebar.
Step 5
The next section on the left of the beat detective window called Groove Template Extraction is mainly for extracting a groove from an audio track and applying it to midi data. We do not need this for quantizing, so let’s skip to the section after that called Region Separation. All you need to do here is click the button labeled “Separate” at the bottom right hand corner.
This will spilt the region into many parts based on where the beat markers exist. Now go to the next section called Region Conform. To hear the full effect of the quantization check off “Strength” and drag the slider to 100%. “Exclude Within” and “Swing” should be left unchecked, but these settings can be adjusted later in order to get the feel you want.
After this, click “Conform” in the bottom right and you should see the regions move slightly. If they move too far you may want to go back and check your beat markers.
Step 6
The audio track has now been quantized, but we aren’t done yet. We have to make sure that there are no region gaps (unwanted silent spaces), clicks, or pops in the audio. To prevent these things from happening, go to the last section called Edit Smoothing. In this section there are only two options, Fill Gaps or Fill and Crossfade.
Fill and Crossfade yields the best results for clean audio so select that and leave the Crossfade Length at the default 5ms. After you have it selected, simply click the “Smooth” button at the bottom right. Now it’s time to listen to your fully quantized track!
If everything was done right, the track should have a very tight and possibly, ‘almost too perfect’ sound. Remember that if any part sounds off, just hit undo a few times to get back to before the regions were separated. Then you will be able to edit the beat markers again. Repeat these steps on as many tracks as you wish to correct. Use “Tab to Transients” to assist in selecting within a region, and remember to hit the E key to zoom in on your selection.
Once you go through this process a few times it becomes a very simple and relatively quick way of quantizing audio. Go on to Step 7 to learn a much easier way of quantizing!
Step 7
With Pro Tools version 7.4 it is possible to quantize tracks using elastic audio. Elastic audio will generate markers for you without any work. To enable elastic audio click the arrow button at the bottom of the track and select Polyphonic in the list (bottom arrow shown in screenshot). Wait a couple seconds for the warp markers to generate and then click the waveform button and switch it to warp view (top arrow in screenshot).
Step 8
Here comes the cool part. Use the hand tool to select a region in the warped track and go to Event > Event Operations > Quantize. The window that you see below will appear. Set the quantize grid to the note value you need and leave all the other settings alone. Click apply and just like that your track has been quantized!
Ironically elastic audio seems to have a better algorithm for automatically detecting beats. So why not use elastic audio all the time? Well, for one reason: having many warped tracks can eat up cpu cycles, though minimal in comparison to heavy plug-ins. Also, there are some tracks where elastic audio will not be accurate, and it becomes necessary to use beat detective in order to make sure tracks quantize the way you want.
More often than not though, elastic audio is a great way to quickly quantize your audio tracks.
Step 9
You have now fully quantized your track using elastic audio, but if something does not sound right you will need to know how to edit warp markers. Editing warp markers is very similar to editing beat markers in beat detective.
Use the hand tool to click and drag a marker into a new position, and option (alt on a PC) click a marker to delete it. A marker can be unlocked by double clicking with the hand tool. A new marker can be created with a click from the pencil tool. Experiment with these different options to create the effect you are looking for. Now you have learned how to quantize audio using both beat detective and elastic audio. No more recording dozens of takes until you get it right. Have fun quantizing!
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Apple2k October 8th
is it possible with logic to make something like this?
( )Dima August 1st
logic 9, yes
( )pg-13 October 8th
it is possible, but i havent had that much luck doing it.
( )Roshan October 9th
I am not sure about these things because Never tried for audio.
What should I do?
Roshan
( )Freelance Developer
http://www.instantshift.com
Eric Shafer October 9th
Roshan,
If you don’t have any audio software, applying any of the techniques outlined on this site will be rather difficult (if not impossible). Generally AudioTUTS tries to outline various professional audio and composition techniques, using a particular digital audio workstation (DAW), although the techniques can be replicated in most audio softwares.
If you do have audio software, you can try to browse through the available tutorials to find one that matches your particular software, in order to help learn the techniques. The basics are generally overlooked as it is assumed that many readers already have basic knowledge of their particular software. If you’re looking for the exact basics, searching your particular software’s site should reveal a “Getting Started” tutorial on the subject.
Hope this helped.
( )insic2.0 October 10th
Nice tutorial.
( )revy October 10th
Very cool. Can this be applied to bootleg genres such as mashups in order to get that higher production quality sound? By that I mean acapellas that have been ripped.
( )Bryan McAnulty October 10th
Hi Revy. Yes, this can be applied to any style of music. You can use elastic audio to change the tempo of a track or loop so that it matches the tempo of your session. This way you can quickly remix something without having to worry about adhering to its original tempo. In the future I will make another tutorial focusing on remixing.
( )Roshan October 10th
Yes I am trying to understand things but these are way over my head. I never tried in audio filed but I want to learn and try few things listed here.
You can call me a noob for this. And I dont really have any idea from where I start.
Do you guys know any website have tutorials for persons like me. or for a guys who want to start from zero.
Thank you for your help.
Roshan
( )Freelance Developer
http://www.instantshift.com
Bryan McAnulty October 10th
Hello Roshan. If you have no musical background it would help to study some basic music theory and practice an instrument.
Here are links to some of the most popular digital audio workstation software:
http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/
http://www.propellerheads.se/
http://www.ableton.com/
http://www.digidesign.com/
http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/musicproduction/cubase4_product
Hope this helps you.
( )Conrad Gorny October 10th
Thanks for the list above ^ Ive made my own music before (Techno) but that was with an easy program… nothing special. This is way too over my head i guess
Conrad Gorny
( )Freelance Graphic Designer
http://www.conradgorny.com
Roshan October 12th
Thanks a lot Brian, for the links. I have been trying on google but most i could find is guitar or piano lessons. lol
I will be browsing through the links you posted and will ask if I need more help somewhere.
Thank again for references. You are really very helpful.
Roshan
( )Freelance Developer
http://www.instantshift.com
Martin Harp October 18th
thats a nice list but its just full of the most expensive software and not the most popular. you can do amazing things with FL Studio… besides, the end result should have more to do with skill than what program you use.
Thanks for tutorial! this is actually the only thing I use Pro tools for. ha!
( )Bryan McAnulty October 19th
Hi Martin, you’re right. The software I listed is very expensive for someone just starting out. My list was intended to show popular software that producers use. Not many top musicians use fruity loops as it does not offer as many features as the DAWS I mentioned.
FL Studio is a good program for beginners to learn sequencing on. Also audacity is an awesome free program for recording audio, but you’ll need a cheap audio interface. (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) I recommend this for anyone who is just getting into recording and does not want to throw down a lot of money.
Like Martin said, in the end it comes down to skill. It doesn’t matter what you use to record your music. A talented musician can make good music with whatever is available to them.
( )joe mix plus October 24th
to Apple2K, It’s not quite the same when talking about quantize audio in Logic Pro 7 or higher (i’m not sure about Express version and don’t you use the sample editing quantize function in Logic, It sucks!), you can quantize audio regions in Logic without having to separate them but the catch is that the audio file (region) must comes from recording within the Logic Project itself. Just select region you want to quantize and go to the tool box on the top left corner where you see the quantize setting there. That’s it. It works more or less like Garageband software when creating your own loop from recording within the software. But sadly for me i use TDM and Logic won’t allow me to quantize those audio files recording from TDM hardware. So, i turned to Pro Tools beat detective for tightening up my tracks. Anyway, the Logic manual says it all.
Great beat detective tutorial by the way.
( )Matthew Broady January 3rd
Hello:
New to Pro tools and I love it. I have been using Sonar 5 but switched due to most studios having pro tools, thus allowing me to bring my tracks into a studio to be mixed with out having to transfer my wave files.
If I record guitar tracks with out a click and then want to map/grid these tracks, does beat doctor allow me to set up a tempo/click/measures to the audio with out quantizing the audio.
I am very good at keeping a steady beat but find that playing with a click can sometimes ruin the vibe of a take. Also most of the time I record the guitar and vocals then send it to others to lay down there tracks. This would help if I could learn how to do this.
thanks for your help
( )Bryan McAnulty January 20th
Hi Matthew,
Beat Detective is used to align your audio to the grid at the session tempo; it will not figure out the tempo of your track or adjust your session. If you want to record a track and find it’s exact tempo quickly you can load it into ableton live and it will tell you. By using tab to transients and cutting out the blank space at the start of the region you can align your track to the grid.
If you do not like playing with a click track I would suggest at least using it as a two bar count off. This way you can record to the session tempo and be on the grid correctly (assuming you keep a steady tempo) without hearing the click while recording. To set this up click the “2 bars” button in the transport, leave the metronome button off and the click track un-muted. Now pro tools should give you a two bar count off with the click and then stop once recording has started. In protools 8 you have to click the word “Count Off” in the midi controls section of the transport. Also if you click on the presets in the click plugin you will find different click sounds that might not get in the way as much.
I hope this helps.
( )charlie February 3rd
does anyone else feel quantization is often overused? while there is regroove and shuffle features i still feel something is lossed from traditional recording. At first i found myself overusing it i think and my tracks kind of seemed dull, there is a certain soulfellness that is lossed i.e. sounds like well computerized like too perfect.
now i find myself using a combination of quantized and unquantized audio/midi, i like the loose mix where tracks often very subtly lose and find each other
( )Julian February 5th
Great tutorial Brian, very clear and helped and did more good for me, quicker, than others I’ve seen.
Like Matthew Broady, I too like setting down a rythym guitar track first, without a click, to preserve natural subtle tempo fluctuations here and there in the song. I was creating drum “patterns” on an old SR-16, and recording them onto a drum track, applying he to that first ryhthm track. It would act as a tempo assayer/flaw-revealer. But it allowed me to distinguish between actual tempo flaws that I didn’t want (fixing those by doctoring the regions); and subtle tempo fluctuations I DID want preserved. Like a last chorus that was a bit faster, or an intended ritard/slowdown at the end. I would identify these slightly altered tempos (that I wanted) from my original take, then apply SR-16 patterns with the slight changes in tempo (complying with my original where desired.). It gave solid tempos in most of the song, but with natural subtle changes preserved.
Urgent Question: Now that I am using better drum patches (from Xpand, etc.) and learning to quantize these, I’m assuming this will still be possible. Do you see any difficulty? I hope this question is not too complex. I basically need to be able to “play” a quantized drum track along to my first track, and be able to speed it up, or slow it down slightly at times to comport with slight tempo changes there. Possible?
( )Julian February 6th
I’m having trouble quantizing a simple bass drum beat, using an M-Audio controller, with an Instrument Track, and an Xpand bass drum. I select a section (make it black), but when I open Beat Detective and try to analyze it, it says “No Selection is Made.” So I can’t get the line separations or Beat Detective processes. When I try to quantize it going through “Event>Midi>Quantize” it works, but introduces a major tempo error, a beat way out of place though the original is very simple 8th notes, and almost perfect tempo. I have been having hours of frustration just trying to quantize a simple bass beat.
( )Bryan McAnulty February 7th
Hi Charlie,
You’re right. Beat detective is used in most modern popular music and it gives songs a mechanical and unnatural groove. It is part of the music style of this generation, much like the overuse of autotune. You need to experiment to find out what the best workflow is for your particular style of music.
( )Bryan McAnulty February 7th
Hello Julian,
Glad the tutorial helped you.
The answer to your first question is yes this is possible. Pro Tools has a couple of cool options for adjusting tempo. Click the tempo bar at the top of the edit window and you should see a flat colored bar (once the tempo box has expanded) representing the session tempo. Now simply draw a retardando with the pencil tool by drawing a downward slope on the box. Your instrument tracks will now follow the tempo changes you have drawn in. After you have done this you can make adjustments so that the tempo change best matches the tempo change in your audio track.
For your second question, beat detective does not quantize midi or instrument tracks. Quantizing midi data is an event operation. Make sure that the quantize grid in the event operations dialog box is set correctly for the material you want to quantize. If you are trying to quantize 8th notes, look at the screenshot in step 8 of this tutorial and make all of the settings the same as they appear in the screenshot. You can also go the slower route and only adjust notes that are way off. Do this by using the hand tool and dragging the note so that it locks on the grid. You might want to try setting your Pro Tools session to input quantize. This way as you record midi data onto a track it is automatically quantized.
( )james February 17th
hi
I have a question for you guys.
( )I have a piano part that is played naturally which I have painstakingly created a tempo grid for (it fluctuates loads but I want that).
However, I now want to insert a new section at the beginning.
Is it possible to lock the grid to the audio and “shuffle” the tempo grid along as I insert my new section in?
Currently when I insert the audio using “shuffle” the grid and tempo changes stay where they are so therefore my tempos are all wrong!
George March 5th
Hey there,
I am a Sonar user coming into Pro Tools with the expectation that I can do the same things, if not more now. However there is one thing I cannot figure out for the life of me.
I want to create a midi note sequence (without using the pencil tool or a midi controller), from a piece of audio (using its transient / beat markers). Now I have created a groove map using beat detective and I also have my beat markers on the timeline….what next????….and of course can this be done in Pro Tools? CAN I do this with Beat detective? Is Sound Replacer the right way to go…..or is that a different method of thinking all together?
So just to clarrify, I want to create midi notes on a midi track using the beat markers WITHOUT manually entering them with the pencil tool.
In Sonar it is extremely easy to do, but I am going nuts in Pro Tools to do this.
Any help will be appreciated.
Cheers
( )Ciaran March 20th
Hi Bryan. I have been a hardware man for the past 10 years (Yamaha AW4416) and have decided to take the plunged into software. I am using Pro Tools 8 and simply want to know how to quantize a rythm guitar part that plays throughout my song of just over three minutes? My timing is very poor, so i just want to use Elastic Audio to revert my recorded rythm guitar track into perfect timing! I have tried to do this, but warp markers are only appearing in certain parts of my track. Also, when i select the ‘Quantize’ window, ‘Elastic Audio’ is not highlighted and when i hit the ‘Apply’ button, nothing happens. Do i have to select the whole of my rythm guitar track first, by highlighting it through using the ‘Hand’ that you mention in your tutorial and then use the ‘Elastic Audio’ commands that you mention in your tutorial? I have not yet done this. Or, are the commands for Pro Tools 8 slightly different from Pro tools 7.4 when you want to quantize a audio guitar part? Please if you could send me a quick e-mail tutorial, or answer, that would be fantastic! Regards, Ciaran.
( )will April 2nd
is it possible to quantize if you have recorded drums without a click track, we had to many tempo changes to comfortably record with click so we just used scratch trakes with guitars, is there a way to make a click track after drums are recorded and can you quantize to that?? how do i do this??
( )tillmac September 16th
If you know where one is of each measure you can. Seperate audio into individual regions for each measure. then go back to first measure of seperated audio. Highlight the measure then hold down the apple key and press the I key The diolog pop up will have two measures The first one make 1|01|000 the second 2|1|000. Always make each measure end with zero. Notice in the tempo bar tempos for each measure that you have done. Create a click track and hit play and it will follow tempo map
( )christian June 3rd
you should post a video tutorial asap!!!!
( )Rochelle July 22nd
Hi can someone Help me please.
( )I am a singer and I am recording at home using protools LE 7.4, is there an easy way in which you can put all chorus’ in time (vocal) i.e. first chorus, second chous so on…. I can never place the second chorus in time with the beat. Please help???
Girlie girl, Rochelle
john November 1st
Straightening up 4/4 and 2/4 beats and what not is fine, but what about complex fills like tom rolls and combo’s. when I try using beat detective it just cocks them up. so how do I manage them?
( )Volodymyr November 18th
Thanks, fast and very straightforward explanation.
( )