Quantization [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

The quantization is an operation which consists in adjusting the position and the duration of notes played, in order to align them together and with the beats of the measure.

When you add 4 quarter notes in a 4/4 measure, Pizzicato will play them exactly. Each note start will be placed exactly on the beginning of the beat and each note duration will be exactly 1 beat of the measure. The graph in the piano view will looks like this:

Each line is precisely aligned with the beats. When a person plays this melody on a keyboard, the precision reached is never comparable with the above diagram, especially for a beginner, and the diagram will rather look like this:

Quantization lets you go from this diagram to the previous one. It corrects the spacing and brings the notes back to the beginning of the nearest beat.

It is a double-edged weapon and you must not misuse it. A musician who performs a musical work will voluntarily create light differences in his manner of playing the notes. It is one of his tools to personalize the performance and to express what he feels. If after recording his performance in real time you quantize the play, you will remove this expression and the piece will appear much more mechanical and artificial.

If you make your first steps on the musical keyboard and want to introduce melodies or battery rhythms in real time, the quantization will be useful because it lets you correct your precision errors.

The basic rule is thus to use the quantization to remove shiftings caused by errors. When the shifting belongs to the musical work, you must not touch them, otherwise you will remove a part of the score beauty.

When working with percussion rhythms, quantization will be very useful, because this kind of instrument must often have a rather important rhythmic precision.

Let us see now in practice how to use quantization.

• Open the Ex053 document. Open the piano roll view and move the vertical scroll bar to view the following area:

• Activate the metronome. Listen to the first measures. You will notice that the notes do not always start exactly with the beats. The performance is relatively imprecise. In the score view, select all measures and select the Quantize item from the Edit menu. The following dialog box appears:

Three types of operations are possible. Here are their descriptions.

• Quantize note start

This operation move the note start by bringing it to the nearest quantization value. The note total duration does not change. The end of the note is moved in the same manner as the note start. In the piano roll, it corresponds to a horizontal shift of a line.

The quantization value determines the precision used. If you use a quarter note value, each note will be moved to start exactly at the beginning of the nearest quarter note which can be placed in the measure. With a 4/4 measure, the notes will thus be brought back on the first, the second, the third or the fourth beat. By selecting an eighth note, the notes will be adjusted to the nearest half-beat. There will thus be 8 possibilities, because a 4/4 measure contains 8 eighth notes. If you use a 16th note for the quantization value, you will have 16 possibilities, and so on.

We thus see that the influence of the quantization is weaker as its value gets lower. By selecting the 128th note as quantization value, the notes could be moved only from a half-128th note and the effect will be almost impossible to hear. If you place a whole note as quantization value, all notes will be brought back to the beginning of the current measure or the following one, and the effect will be terrible.

The Dotted box specifies a dotted value such as for example a dotted quarter note (useful in 6/8 measures for example). By checking the 3 for 2 box, the rhythmic value is considered as a triplet.

• Quantize note duration

Independently of the note start position, you may also quantize the note duration to bring them back to multiples of the quantization value. The principle is the same, but only the length of the line representing the note is modified. The start of the note is not affected.

• Delete notes with a duration less than:

This operation corrects the unexpected notes. While playing on the keyboard, you accidentally slide on a note which was unexpected. These notes are often very short, because the reflexes of the performer will stop this note as soon as possible. By using this option, Pizzicato simply removes all notes having a duration lower than the specified duration.

The first operation is checked. Check also the second one and click on Quantize. Go back to the piano roll to visualize the effects of these operations. The measures are now displayed as follows:

Compare this drawing with the one before quantization. The notes are now all aligned with quarters of beats because the value of the selected quantization was the 16th note. By going back in the score view, listen to the sound difference.

• Execute the operation again by selecting the eighth note as quantization value for both operations. Listen to the sound result. This time the piece is strongly modified. You must never use a quantization value higher than the smallest rhythmic value of the score, otherwise you completely modify the result. You can easily understand this by comparing the graph displayed with the eighth note quantization value:

Recording multiple voices - Correcting the notes [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

You can also directly work in the score to record in real time.

• Close the preceding document and create a new one. Select the Midi cursor tool . In the recorder, activate the metronome.

• Place the Midi cursor on the first staff, first measure. The cursor blink:

• Use the recording shortcut which is the Return key. The metronome counts one measure and the recording starts. Play for example only quarter notes (one note per beat). Pizzicato automatically stops at the end of the score or when you press on the space bar, and the musical notation transcription is automatically done, to get for example:

• You can then start the operation again with the lower staff. Place the MIDI cursor in the first measure of the second staff and record quarter notes to obtain for example:

It is possible to record several voices on the same staff. We will combine the rhythmic voices menu with the transcription options.

• In the Options menu, select the Transcription item. Disable the Delete previous measure content box, and click OK.

• In the rhythmic voices menu, located in the upper left corner of the score view, select item 2:

• Place the MIDI cursor in the first staff, first measure and record quarter notes as above. By selecting again the 1-8 choice for the voices menu, you obtain for example:

You can execute that with voices 1 to 8. In practice, beyond three voices, the notation becomes complex and more difficult to read. Notice that if you play chords, those are considered by Pizzicato as only one rhythmic voice if each note of the chord has the same duration.

When you play notes on the keyboard and when Pizzicato transcribes them in musical notation, it nevertheless memorizes the exact way in which you played them. In other words, your performance imprecision (desired or not) is associated to the notes, so that Pizzicato can play them again as you originally played them. You can reach these performance parameters and modify them.

• With the right button of the mouse (Option-click on Macintosh), click on one of the notes head. A menu appears. Select the Edit note play… item. The following dialog box appears:

You can also reach it by clicking a note while holding down the SHIFT key. The values will not necessarily be the same on your screen, because they depend on how you played the note.

• MIDI Velocity: when this box is checked, it means that the note has a velocity associated with it. It is the case when you played it on the keyboard. With the slider located to the right, you can modify this velocity between 1 and 127, which respectively correspond to an almost inaudible note and to a note with maximum force. If you disable this box, the note loses its associated velocity and will be played with the velocity determined in the instrument view or according to MIDI symbols.

• MIDI duration: when this box is checked, it means that the note has a personalized duration associated with it. You can modify this value, which is expressed as a percentage compared to its exact value. A note twice shorter than its normal value will thus have a 50 % value. 100 % correspond to the value of its musical notation. The slider lets you vary it from 10 to 200 %.

• MIDI Start: when this box is checked, it means that the note has a personalized start associated to it. You can modify this value, which is expressed as a percentage compared to its exact duration, between -50 and 50%. A 50 % value will correspond to a note which starts too late of a duration equal to its own half duration. A value of 0 % indicates that the note is played exactly compared to its musical notation in the measure.

When you add a note with the mouse, these three boxes are disabled. You can then modify them to create performance effects. In addition, if you play notes on the keyboard, you can modify one or more notes using this dialog box to correct the performance, or simply to disable the three boxes to go back to a note such as it would be played with musical notation.

The Justification frame allows two things:

• Manual stem direction: when you use the stem tool to reverse a note stem, this action is memorized by Pizzicato as a characteristic of this note. The box is checked if the stem was manually modified. If you want Pizzicato to automatically manage this note stem, disable this box.

• The multiple choice is by default Automatic beam. It means that Pizzicato manages itself the way in which notes are grouped with beams. The second choice prevents a beam with the preceding note and the third choice forces a beam with the previous note. When you modify the beams with tools, Pizzicato links this information to the note. This dialog box lets you use the automatic mode again.

Other frames are present in this dialog according to the Pizzicato version you have. See the lesson on the contextual menu of a note. Click OK.