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MIDI Requantization

Flag: --requantize-midi

The automatic pipeline does basic grid quantization during MIDI cleanup. This feature goes further — it re-evaluates timing with awareness of groove, feel, and musical intent.

Decisions it makes

  • Quantize tightly or preserve groove? Some parts (hi-hats, bass) benefit from tight grid; others (keys, pads) sound better with loose timing.
  • Straight vs triplet/swing? Detects whether the original timing implies a swing or triplet feel and snaps to the appropriate grid.
  • How much humanization to keep? Measures the average timing deviation and preserves intentional push/pull while correcting drift.

Modes

Mode Behavior
light Gentle nudge toward grid — preserves most of the original feel
strict Hard snap to nearest grid position
swing Quantizes to a swung grid (alternating long-short subdivisions)
triplet Quantizes to a triplet grid

When to use it

  • When the basic MIDI cleanup sounds too stiff or too loose
  • When you want to change the feel (e.g. straighten a swung part, or add swing to a straight part)
  • When you're layering the MIDI with a different instrument and need tighter timing

Example

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# Light requantization
suno-to-ableton requantize-midi /path/to/my-song --mode light --apply

# Add swing
suno-to-ableton requantize-midi /path/to/my-song --mode swing --apply

# During full processing
suno-to-ableton process /path/to/my-song --requantize-midi --requantize-mode light --apply

What --apply does

Without --apply, prints how many notes would move and by how much. With --apply, writes requantized MIDI files to the output directory.