My experience has been that overtweaking tends to remove the feel and soul of the performance, especially if the grid & snap is turned on. It always causes me to edit with my eyes insread of my ears.
There are just some times when the drums sound good a bit behind the beat, others when leading a bit... I suppose it depends on genre (EDM and metal seems to tolerate machine-like precision better than other sorts of music).
On the songs that I don't use acoustic drums, I play my V-Drums and record the MIDI data, sending it to Superior Drummer 2. If I look at what I played in piano roll view, I'm all over the map and almost never on the beat.
Oh well, it's automatically "humanized" that way.
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Glennbo
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My experience has been that overtweaking tends to remove the feel and soul of the performance, especially if the grid & snap is turned on. It always causes me to edit with my eyes insread of my ears.
There are just some times when the drums sound good a bit behind the beat, others when leading a bit... I suppose it depends on genre (EDM and metal seems to tolerate machine-like precision better than other sorts of music).
You're absolutely right, of course.
Most of the time it took was creating different patterns and variations, auditioning them, and then dismissing them; the composition stage.
I'm certainly no expert on midi programming though, nor a drummer. I just try to use my ears, but I'm still a bit of an amateur when it comes to programming midi drum tracks.
I would love to get some suggestions of how I might make it sound more realistic from actual drummers, or more experienced programmers.
I wondered the same thing, I did around 4% for parts that were snapped to the grid. That's what my ears suggested, but I had no other reference than that. I would also be interested to hear what other people do.
I wondered the same thing, I did around 4% for parts that were snapped to the grid. That's what my ears suggested, but I had no other reference than that. I would also be interested to hear what other people do.
I don't think I've ever used "Humanize". I also never snap to grid, unless it's going to be a metronome track.
I nearly always play the kick, snare, hat, and ride in with my keyboard. I'll usually play the kick and snare first, and go through until I've got them through out the song. I don't play all the way through, I'll take a verse and/or chorus, each separately. Sometimes I will copy paste, sometimes not.
Then I play the hat and ride, doing the same thing I did with the kick and the snare.
I intentionally play with as much feeling as I can, both with the position of the note as well as the velocity of the note. Since my timing is never very good, I will quantize the notes from 50% to 75%, depending on the situation. That usually works pretty well for the position of the notes, the important thing is that they don't sound off from the the other parts, which will maybe be acoustic and/or electric guitar along with the vocals.
The toms, fills, and crashes I might put in as I go, or later. I go by what I hear in my head and they can come at any time.
For the most part I will leave the velocities pretty much as I played them with the exception that I will usually lower their value by 10 or 20, because I tend to have a heavy hand (or fingers in this case).
With the hat and the ride, I will go through and judiciously adjust their velocities. The reason being, that I not only can feel the way a drummer would play them, but there is a very logical way that a drummer would play them.
Now, the important thing to understand is that the music I produce now days is very simple. I don't produce any rock or metal, most my clients are pretty much either in the country, country rock, or older pop vain.
I should add, I've never played with any hard core rock bands, nor heavy metal. However, I've had the opportunity to play with a lot of great drummers in my many years as a musician, and I've not only listened to what they did, but I've closely watched them. You can learn a lot that way.
I use BFD3. I program it, if I am going for natural acoustic sounds, with an eKit.
I can't get the right swing or velocity with keys...which is odd because I can play key parts just fine. Piano, organ, whatnot. But my groove is shit on drums without sticks and an eKit or at least pads.
Taking advantage of the midi, I usually do the main parts in one take. Helps me not have too many things going on simultaneously, again, if going for a natural sound - -human drummers usually just have two arms and two legs. Then I'll go back and do fills.
For my band. We have a drummer, record them live.
With both, I mix them in a very similar way, use a similar template, minus the BFD track. With BFD send multiaudio out of course but largely the same plugs on the tracks.
On the songs that I don't use acoustic drums, I play my V-Drums and record the MIDI data, sending it to Superior Drummer 2. If I look at what I played in piano roll view, I'm all over the map and almost never on the beat.
Oh well, it's automatically "humanized" that way.
Yes, exactly what I do. Now. On my most recent album release I didn't even do that, I just recorded the Roland drums audio output.
Here's some streamable tracks if anyone is interested: www.soundclick.com/philboking
But I'm finding some really great drum sounds in other synth engines lately, so I've pushed on into MIDIland again for my newest works.
I haven't tried using reasamplomatic5000. I did download and install "Grace" the sampler by One Small Clue, and then sampled all my own hand percussion into it. Since then I ported all those samples over to Kontakt.
Did you quit using Grace for any particular reason? I'm thinking about trying it out...it's free.
MIDI patterns don't work for me because I use a lot of odd and changing time signatures. Even in 4/4, I find myself gravitating toward a lot of stuff with the drums following the riff.
Now, I've gotten real drums and am learning to play them.
The problem with "humanize" functions is that they just make random variations to timing and velocity without reference to what is going on musically which is not what real drummers do.
Real drummers do things like play the snare slightly behind the beat, or ahead. Or slightly rush a fill and place an early downbeat going into the chorus. That kind of thing.
The problem with "humanize" functions is that they just make random variations to timing and velocity without reference to what is going on musically which is not what real drummers do.
Real drummers do things like play the snare slightly behind the beat, or ahead. Or slightly rush a fill and place an early downbeat going into the chorus. That kind of thing.
Yes, but they don't do it perfectly on time and with consistent velocity, so a tiny smidge of humanize after already dealing with rushing/dragging and dynamics can make a programmed drum part sound a bit more lifelike.
I know some people who are excellent drum programmers, average listener would not know they were not real drums being played. I am not proficient at drum programming so I usually just play the real ones until I get it right. One thing about real drums and I have also noticed at times with bass guitar is that some notes are often a bit ahead or behind the beat. This is not always a bad thing. That can give it that humanized feel. Also when and entire rhythm section lays down a track playing at the same time they may speed up or slow down a bit during certain sections of a song. Put a metronome one some hits from the seventies and eighties and you will see what I mean. Music played by humans is not perfect.
Also when and entire rhythm section lays down a track playing at the same time they may speed up or slow down a bit during certain sections of a song. Put a metronome one some hits from the seventies and eighties and you will see what I mean. Music played by humans is not perfect.
A friend of mine pointed this one out to me recently. Play the first chorus and then the last chorus!
Yes, but they don't do it perfectly on time and with consistent velocity, so a tiny smidge of humanize after already dealing with rushing/dragging and dynamics can make a programmed drum part sound a bit more lifelike.
A real human drummer will tend to rush or anticipate exciting parts, and then relax and play behind the beat during calm or laid back sections. No computer algorithm I know of can tell when to do either, and mostly just randomize the positions of the hits.
Someone should create a humanize algorithm that lets you tell it when the tension and release should occur, by marking sections or something.
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Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
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A real human drummer will tend to rush or anticipate exciting parts, and then relax and play behind the beat during calm or laid back sections. No computer algorithm I know of can tell when to do either, and mostly just randomize the positions of the hits.
Someone should create a humanize algorithm that lets you tell it when the tension and release should occur, by marking sections or something.
Yeah, I don't humanise is for that. It's for adding slight random imperfections to a part that already has all of that programmed in.
This! Or just an automation-ready "aggressiveness" or "mellowness" parameter, globally affecting performance push/pull/velocity humanization...
Maybe let you record a track of pitch wheel or something, so you could ride the effect of anticipating the beat or getting slightly behind it as a controller track recorded in real time after programmed or looped MIDI drums were arranged.
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Glennbo
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Maybe let you record a track of pitch wheel or something, so you could ride the effect of anticipating the beat or getting slightly behind it as a controller track recorded in real time after programmed or looped MIDI drums were arranged.
I was actually just looking around for something like this, and then though of trying my hand at a script, but I'm not sure (programatically) how it would handle the 'pushes' (playing ahead) without introducing necessary latency... Unless it was an application function that edited the MIDI directly, and not as a plugin...
I'm sure smarter folks have taken stabs at this...
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Humanize doesn't simulate anything a drummer would consciously do, it simulates what they do because they're not perfect, i.e. hits that were intended to be the same velocity and in time will actually be slightly different and slightly out.
I think any deliberate rushing etc. Would just have to be programmed in.
I've just accepted that my programmed beats won't be as good as a real drummer so make them minimal.
Much of real "feel" is purposeful and intentional and not random even though there is some randomness there - it even sounds like a mistake to some at times. It's tempting to chase the randomness but that isn't the part that makes it feel good. It is possible that some randomness may remove some of the stiffness to a grid but that ain't feel IMHO.
Additionally, if we are talking feel, there is a chance one or more notes will be a tad late or early on purpose and that does not 'always' get compensated for on the next beat, everything now remains a little late/early when compared to the grid. Point being made.... If you don't have the drum tracks yet, one can often get pretty dang good at the feel part by just working at it, even on a keyboard controller and getting better at that usually solves the problem because it's easier to get a few out notes in by manually moving them, than to artificially humanize a entire quantized performance.
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We're already sampling/clicking/drawing/looping/copying/quantizing/pitch shifting anyway, right? What's another non-human function? It could even have neat graphics, which are important to sound quality!
Perhaps 'tendency fader' would be a better name for the function? With appropriate range settings, maybe a bell curve distribution approach, could be potent...
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It helps if the hitter thinks you're a little crazy
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Humanize doesn't simulate anything a drummer would consciously do, it simulates what they do because they're not perfect, i.e. hits that were intended to be the same velocity and in time will actually be slightly different and slightly out.
I think any deliberate rushing etc. Would just have to be programmed in.
I've just accepted that my programmed beats won't be as good as a real drummer so make them minimal.
Yeah, exactly this.
If you can hear humanize, you've overcooked it, IMO. It's in je ne sais quoi territory.
It makes an even bigger difference with programmed tonal instruments, like piano or tuned percussion. No-one hits every note of a chord at exactly the same time, nor do they hit them to within a 0.78% tolerance of velocity.
If you can hear humanize, you've overcooked it, IMO. It's in je ne sais quoi territory.
It makes an even bigger difference with programmed tonal instruments, like piano or tuned percussion. No-one hits every note of a chord at exactly the same time, nor do they hit them to within a 0.78% tolerance of velocity.
That's kind of in the vein of how I do horn sections on my songs. I'll record all single note takes for the chords I play in the trumpet section, trombones, and saxes to make it sound like different people playing, and no two of them hit identically. Not only does it make the horns sound more real because of the timing, but also because the samples themselves breathe better when they are not stepping all over each other.
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Glennbo
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That's kind of in the vein of how I do horn sections on my songs. I'll record all single note takes for the chords I play in the trumpet section, trombones, and saxes to make it sound like different people playing, and no two of them hit identically. Not only does it make the horns sound more real because of the timing, but also because the samples themselves breathe better when they are not stepping all over each other.
Right on. I hate the sound of block chords to the grid with horn samples.
That's kind of in the vein of how I do horn sections on my songs. I'll record all single note takes for the chords I play in the trumpet section, trombones, and saxes to make it sound like different people playing, and no two of them hit identically. Not only does it make the horns sound more real because of the timing, but also because the samples themselves breathe better when they are not stepping all over each other.
Not only does it make the horns sound more real because of the timing, but also because the samples themselves breathe better when they are not stepping all over each other.
Not to hijack or change the subject...
It's shame you have never had the opportunity to record the human brass players in the Dallas/Ft. Worth/Denton area...!
The studio cats there all hit together, swing hard and play in tune. It is one of the most frightening things I have ever witnessed. Your hair is blown back and your mind wonders how they accomplish it...!
It truly spoils one... No brass I've ever heard sounds as badass. Worth every penny...!
jk, it's just that feel seems to be in a league of its own. We all do what we gotta do though.
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