Shuffle It or MIDIfy your Audio!

I’m sure you already noticed, we didn’t feature a lot of Pro Tools MIDI tricks in the past – because in daily Imaging business playing synths or working with MIDI FX does not happen that often (besides Vocoder stuff). But time by time composing in Pro Tools can be inspirational for Imaging too. So let’t shuffle up your sessions!

Imagine you’re using a shuffled/swinging loop and you want to place VO or samples on the beats – on way would be to work with tab to transient and relative grid. If you’re searching for grid sizes that might fit, but you just find grids between 1/16 and 1/1, dotted and triplets – unfortunately Pro Tools has no “shuffled” grid like Studio One or Logic Pro X.

But there’s a nice workaround which can be done with the quantize function – which composers use to shuffle their MIDI like in this example:

If you press ⌥ + 0 you’ll get the quantize window where you can choose the usual grid sizes and add per percentage Swing (besides other quantize options).

Or pick one of Groove Templates – for the old school HipHop fans for example MPC Style Grooves!

Pro Tools will remember the quantize grid you selected in the session – so now you can use it on any other MIDI or (and now comes the part that surprised us) audio!

• Open the Event-Operation dialogue by pressing ⌥ + 0.
• Make sure the the Quantize tab is being displayed
• Select the samples you want to be in sync with the loop.

• Choose a groove which fits best to the loop. A lot of Electro/House music works with a shuffle/swing between 40% and 80%
• Apply – and enjoy the groove!

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