I have some single-instrument tracks that I’ve recorded, but at the time I didn’t record them to a metronome, so the timing isn’t perfect.

I was curious if remixers out there still find tracks w/o perfect metronome timing to be useful in their work. (i.e. - should I even bother uploading them?)

I’ve caught some of your stuff and I’m already a fan.

Short “quotes” from a loose piece will work fine. Correcting a long piece is very, very hard work, requiring a good ear and a lot of patience.

I’ve tried (and even succeeded) at doing this with some of the vocals (pellas) that come in at CCMixter, where the timing is suspect. A memorable vocal or poem is worth the slicing and dicing.

But since CCMixter has so many high quality samples and as I play a whole pile of instruments, repairing the timing on a long piece generally isn’t worth my while for instrumental parts, speaking personally.

Yes I do. But I’m not a standard remixer I’ll use bits and peaces from larger files to create my own melodies, sounds or new intsrument tracks. So timing is not really an issue for me, I like it when it’s not perfect gives me more variation.

I don’t know if you’re ever heard of electro-swing, but basically it’s creating a typical electro-style track (~130 bpm) out of older swing, ragtime, django kind of jazz tracks. The reason I bring it up, is that most of these older songs were not recorded in perfect tempo. There were no drum machines back then. That being said, even samples with non-perfect timing can be chopped up. In some cases, you can even adjust a few notes here and there if there isn’t a lot of instrumentation or effects.

absolutely. usually the simpler, the better though. i generally warp everything anyway, and most samples require some sort of snipping and warping to loop or fit into a project. i generally disregard BPM and key.

Sometimes it’s nice to work with a untimecoded track because all the playing has to be live.

Part of me thinks that un-metronomed music is the only “real” music, although that will upset a lot of people. I record to machine beats all the time because, well, that’s what we do, but actually I think that “freetime” or “human time” music is more organic, more dynamic, more expressive, more emotional, and more beautiful. I read an online article recently saying that human rhythms are fractals and have a “logic” of their own, even though not in perfect time. The question of how/why we play in or out of time is now attracting scientific interest. But from the point of view of file sharing, it’s always good to have something played in strict machine time coz it makes life simpler. That said, if you have the time and patience, cutting/pasting and realigning hits or melodic phrases can generate unexpected and creative results.

Sure. I use Studio One to make tempo maps. It’s quite challenging because getting all the beats together takes a really long time. Sometimes even 2 hours to make perfect tempo map for 4 minute song. Then I just export midi with tempo to Reaper and work on it. Too bad Reaper doesn’t have tools for that purpose because it’s very handy DAW.

I do it all the time with the melodyne and protools. I think most Daws have time stretching now.