Sunday, November 6, 2011

Why Doesn't Midi Instrument Hit on the Beat?

Let's say you've quantized your MIDI instrument such as violin synth or bass synth.
That is, you've selected notes, gone into the GarageBand SCORE region, and selected
Auto Align to
for all the quarter and eight notes.... but the instrument sometimes still is not "hitting" on Count 1 of the measure. Why not? How do you fix this?
There's a huge chance that your MIDI notes are too long.
1. Go into the Piano Roll view of the notation section.
2. Look at MIDI notes near the end of each measure. Are some of them so long that they cross into the next measure?
3. If so, it's an easy fix: Just shorten the long notes so they don't cross the measure bar.
NOTE: This doesn't matter so much for other counts. The ear doesn't really notice those so much.
REASON for the problem: The last MIDI note of a measure will usually continue to be heard if it extends into the next measure... and the note which you had quantized for count 1 of the next measure often can't be heard in time.
Much peace to you in the regular beats....
©2018, 2011 DianaDee Osborne

Updated version published 20 April 2018