Quantise and groove

20.40

Related to the ‘microtiming’ concept, Mason’s a firm believer in not overusing quantise. “If you quantise everything, your groove might become a bit flat,” he suggests. “I trigger a lot of stuff, and it can be a bit off and unquantised, but sometimes that gives it a lot of character. Then I just go back and forth in microseconds until the groove is right.

“All the DAWs these days have groove templates, or swing, shuffle, whatever you call it. In Logic, you can do it in percentages, so for instance, this hi-hat is 53%. It’s important to have other sounds also on the same percentage so they’re in a similar groove. Instead of making everything exactly on the beat in 16th-notes, it’ll put the second and fourth notes a little bit off, later or earlier, depending what groove you want. It’s good to pay a lot of attention to that.”