Hi all,
in order to humanize MIDI drums (kick, snare, hats, etc.), do you have any suggestions on how to make the micro-shifts of the midi notes?
In the sense that I could do them randomly, anticipating or postponing each note a little, but I wonder if it is a procedure that reflects the reality of execution. Is there a logic to making these micro shifts of the midi notes? Have you perhaps found an optimal procedure that gives realistic results?
Same goes for velocities.
Thanks,
a.
In my experience, you can use the transform option to randomly move stuff around, and I believe that DrumGizmo has some randomization/humanization options, but I generally like using Hydrogen, which has some humanization options, which works great when you are routing audio output from Hydrogen into Ardrour, but if you want to import the midi from Hydrogen, it did not implement any of the humanization in the midi output, at least a few releases ago. I put in a request for that a long time ago, and donât know if it ever made it into the product.
And then, of course, going in and adjusting notes by hand to get it perfect, as has always been and will forever be the case.
There is âMIDI Velocity and Timing Humanizerâ JS plugin (script) from ReaPlugs. Author - Schwa.
Try Hydrogen Drum Machine
Thanks everyone.
It would be interesting to add an âhumanizeâ function inside the Quantize window.
But what I was interested in is this: what logic would the programmer use to implement this function? Would he simply use some particular random distribution for the micro-displacements of the MIDI notes and their velocities? Or something more refined related to the way a man plays and the style of music?
Thanks,
a.
Reaper also has âctrl + Hâ as a default humanise MIDI notes command but itâs not much use in Ardour 
There is the aforementioned Transform tool which can achieve âhumanisedâ timings as you described. But you have to get quite mathy with the inputs for it to provide satisfactory results in my experience. Better to just use MIDI drum loops that have been recorded by human drummers (like from Groove Monkey, Ugritone, et al) and edit them as needed.
Ugritone itself has humanisation built in to the VST instrument, if thatâs of interest. The excellent Drumgizmo also has really good humanisation. But in my opinion, people wanting artificial but real-sounding acoustic drum tracks often put too much weight on this type of thing. Many acoustic drum tracks in modern recordings are rigidly quantised and ârobotisedâ anyway these days, for better or worse. And thatâs before we look at rhythm choices, spontaneity, dynamics, voices, etcâŚ
Here is an article on the topic of humanization in music from a scientific perspective.
Colouring musical rhythms with coloured noise
Max Planck researchers discover the statistical laws governing rhythmic fluctuations in human musical performances.
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@guth
Thatâs exactly what I meant. But I donât see the link to the paper where the governing rhythmic fluctuations laws are explained.
a.
I donât know if this insight will be incorporated into an algorithm that makes artificially produced music sound more human. If itâs possible, it will be doneâŚ
edit: I cannot perceive fluctuations of 2-4 BPM as noticeable.
Have you completely rejected the approach of playing the parts on a keyboard or pad controller? Nothing humanizes like using a human.
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Donât know about you but I humanize a bit to well for anyoneâs benefit:)
Seablade
^^ Not a musician:)
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Hi,
I never use any of the timing or velocity tools, there are a few other practical things you can do to take the edges off the grid⌠Itâs kind of vital to understand how human drummers play and what sorts of things they do naturally like slightly speeding up when the song moves to a Chorus or solo, you can do this with tempo maps and help the song breathe that way. If I program drums I almost always play the percussion parts by hand. A grid drum beat with a tambourine, shakers, bongos or congas played by hand will loosen things up but of course you canât get too far off the grid timing but a little bit will help. Lastly if possible sometimes I will play a recorded kit piece along with a programmed drum pattern. As an example often ride and crash cymbals are dead giveaways that drums have been programmed so in chorus parts I will play a Ride cymbal by hand on a different track and delete the Ride cymbal MIDI events, as with the percussion you need to have decent human timing to not get too far into the rhubarb but it can really add timing and sonic dimension to programmed beats.
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Thanks for sharing that article 
Without going too far off-topic, I quite like this metronome alternative idea by Chris from Airwindows which kind of touches on the same territory.
The percussion in the tracks youâve posted to this forum, Glen, are really very good and sound, for lack of a better description, very human and humanly-influencedâŚ! In my previous post, I wanted to express and emphasise the need for understanding of how human percussionists operate but my own bias and frustration muddied my response a bit. Youâve articulated, and demonstrated, it well though so thank you
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Thanks to your tip about Airwindows, I checked it out and Iâm impressed. First of all, Iâve gotten into the habit of setting the master volume to -85 dB when zapping through the plugs. ;))
Tangentially related:
I found this tool to be very effective to humanise the velocity (not timing!) of MIDI notes in a generated sequence:
It works best for the material it is trained on, by default classical piano performances.
I am looking for a similar machine-learning based tool for MIDI timing, but havenât seen one so far.
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Back in the day, I used to take my drum track, copy and paste to a new track and then shift the second one a bit for a fuller drum sound. Maybe using a different drum patch. You can shift parts of the second track, forward or backward. I know youâre asking for human sounding drumming, but this kind of creates that illusion.
Worth a try. Especially when needing BIG sounding drums.
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