I’m maybe a bit “old school” with this notion: whether to round note lengths or tunings up or down to fit perfectly into a recording, or even sometimes a performance.
As far as I can tell the word “quantization” can refer to timekeeping or tuning, or both. That is to say, a note from a performer or other music source is treated as an approximation and “corrected” to a predefined time signature or frequency. Modern production techniques tend to favour this procrustean approach to performance. I have even seen customers of a quite usable looper complain that it lacks a quantization option so if their timekeeping isn’t good enough the results aren’t as good. The temptation to dismiss such concerns with the suggestion to “learn to keep time” is difficult to avoid, but the problem exists and is only magnified by the possibilities opened up by modern electronics.
There are pretty good interoperability reasons to quantize. In MIDI the ability to convey subtleties of performance is limited. Pitch bending control signals must be used to pinpoint a variation from the chromatic pitch in the NOTE ON signal. But commercial music (and commercial instruments) tends to concert pitch. All well and good: re-engineering a modern brass or woodwind instrument to fit an arbitrary musical paradigm would involve some expense given the high standards of craft involved in producing a good wind instrument.
Much modern chromatic music sits upon a compromise, the humbug of concert pitch. Timekeeping in music can be a matter of life and death, as the unfortunate “Time Lord” of the baroque, Lully, was to discover. A man who died for his commitment to the art of the dance, which he had revolutionised.
And here we stand at another precipice. Must all music become more homogeneous?
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