Stylus RMX Question... about drag and drop

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 2:10 am

Just had a question for other Stylus RMX users.

Are the individual notes within the patterns that you drag and drop supposed to be so random as far as their timing or lack of quantization. I can drag and drop onto a measure in DP, and of course the first note in the MIDI data that I drag over from Styus RMX will land on beat 1, tick 000, but then subsequent MIDI notes will vary by a number of ticks either way 10 or so maybe more.

Is this normal and the nature of this VI? Is this mandatory humanization? I have tried quantizing the Stylus data but that can sound weird too.

Again just interested in more info from people with experience with this.

jlaudon · Post by **jlaudon** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 2:46 am

I think it has to do with the best places to slice the loops, as well as different attack times. INterestingly, they all seem to really sit in the pocket though.

doodles · Post by **doodles** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 3:14 am

nope, they're not random, this is due to where the beats were chopped up by them for the start of attacks. so if you want it to sound as the loop does, DON'T quantize. however, if you want to start mucking around with them a bit, then go for it! the hits aren't totally spot on due to the fact that when the MIDI files are sped up/slowed down from their original tempo, some of the "notes" are the hangs of the previous hit.

god, what a rubbish description

but in short, no they're not random - leave them as is for best results.

tomeaton · Post by **tomeaton** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 5:17 am

When a really good drummer grooves against a click the hits aren't on the grid lines, either! I love Stylus... definitely a solid, useful tool. Some of my favorite drummers pull the backbeat WAY back...Stylus is one of the few programs that comes with some of those "deep" grooves (esp. in the "backbeat" collection) AND allows you to jump in and tweak things (like removing hip-hop bass drum patterns from otherwise nice loops).

-tom

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 5:38 am

When I first started using Stylus, I just dragged a loop up, copied and pasted to stretch it, etc.

But the cool thing as tomeaton said, is the ability to change a kick drum pattern, delete a snare on 2, whatever.

Another neat trick is to set up a 2nd Stylus track that perhaps has a more interesting kick, or hat, or snare and use that element on that track but remove it from the 1st track.

And (most of) the grooves really do sound good even if they don't appear to be perfectly quantized as James noticed.

Buzz

(I have Liquid Grooves, Back Beat, and Retro Funk Expanders)

slybass3000 · Post by **slybass3000** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 6:29 am

Some of the grooves are quantize and some are not. Plus, go in the chaos page and capture a groove with some changes and drag that MIDI file in DP and you will have great variations of the original groove.

BTW, Stylus RMX is the best VI in the world I think,

SB

npatton · Post by **npatton** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 7:11 am

Yup. Just worked with a deep shuffle groove from Backbeat this weekend. Was shocked to play it with the click and see how far away from the "grid" the drummer had moved by the middle of the loop. It was cool to see how he had lined back up by the end of the loop, though.

The only problem was interrupting the loop with a fill pattern. At the point I inserted the fill, the original loop was waaay behind the click, while the fill was dead on. Caused a hic-cup in the pattern. However, our church band was playing live to the track, and I realized that we never noticed the problem in rehearsals or the gig. Wouldn't want to put out a recording of it, though (without first tweaking it to the grid...).

n

musicarteca · Post by **musicarteca** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:32 am

For years good musicians have been playing on the groove without worrying about "grids". Forget your eyes, use your ears!

tomeaton · Post by **tomeaton** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:41 am

veeeryy arrd ro ty[pe wioth ears./ huurtrs to clkick mouase buttonb.

musicarteca · Post by **musicarteca** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:43 am

tomeaton wrote:veeeryy arrd ro ty[pe wioth ears./ huurtrs to clkick mouase buttonb.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:18 am

I know all this about grooves and real drummers aren't right on the beat and quantized and all that.

My issues seem to arise when I'm songwriting and experimenting with ideas and I'm starting out with drum patterns that I've dragged and dropped from AD, or I've entered myself and quantized them. These are just demos, so I'll quantize and move 4 bar and 8 bar sections of drums all over the place in the TO as I'm fleshing out an idea.

So my problem presents itself when the Stylus "groove" doesn't seem to match the drums I already have.

Also, what if you use Stylus with audio played by a real drummer to a click track from a project and the Stylus groove and the drummer groove are both "groovy" on their own, but not so groovy together. I imagine perhaps there's a groove quantize solution somewhere and I could perhaps get the Stylus MIDI to quantize to a beat map from the audio?

Last night I ended up just using one sample from stylus and playing it myself from a keyboard. Also, different attack times per sample in Stylus might make it harder to line things up.

I agree that Stylus grooves *on it's own* and if I was having Stylus drive the whole rhythmic show and just building on top of it alone I'd be loving it. Sometimes having the drag & drop MIDI from Stylus completely groove with, for example, drag & drop MIDI from Addictive Drums seems to be tricky... especially maybe at slower tempos where a few ticks difference is more in actual milliseconds. The song where I felt I was having issues was 82 bpm.

tomeaton · Post by **tomeaton** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:52 am

Agreed, agreed... I use Stylus all the time for click tracks, and you have to be careful that the groove you want for the tune is in that Stylus loop, otherwise when you lose the click that groove is imprinted in the performance no matter what. I don't think Stylus's strength is in being programmable (except for the groove elements which are terrific), but rather as a really fast way to get a non-machine groove to work with.

But yes, trying to fit a particular Stylus loop INTO a pre-existing groove can be tedious and sometimes impossible. And I think as far as drag ad drop goes, you HAVE to maintain the original length of the Stylus loop (whic varies depending on the pattern) as you edit things around, otherwise quirky things happen!

-tom

Schweats · Post by **Schweats** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:13 pm

One could take live material and export it into 'Recycle' , slice the material
up , then import those Rex files back into DP , THEN, add in some Stylus
element/groove and see if the overall groove of all components combined
wouldn't match up a little better.

Just 2¢ Schweats

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:47 pm

.

Hi, James.

Have you tried "ungrooving" the MIDI notes? I mean, the ones you dragged from Stylus into DP. You can use the MIDI plug ins for this.

Also, if you have already some instruments playing a groove, you could extract THAT groove and apply it to the Stylus MIDI notes. For this to work you'd probably have to quantize the Stylus notes first. After they are perfectly aligned, THEN apply your extracted groove (or any other groove from the DNS library). You can play with the swing feel, even with the timing of backbeats, etc.
You can even create your own grooves from scratch if you want to.

I've only done this like twice, but I remember it worked wonders for a more solid groove. And the great thing is that if you don't like it, you just mute the MIDI plug, or experiment with lots of grooves by just recalling their previously saved settings

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:50 pm

.

I just noticed I am not a "Board Guru" any longer

It was nice while it lasted (even if wasn't really true

)