making beats sound more real - less quantised and programmed

Fantismo · Post by **Fantismo** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:32 pm

hi - any way to make beats or any MIDI clip sound less quantised?

Im currently going through manually and changing the beats to be "just off" their markers

please help someone!!

laird · Post by **laird** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:14 pm

yes, playing just ahead of the beat, or just behind, can have very different effects on how we perceive the rhythm.

Also, read up on ghost notes too... velocity can be your friend (and much esier than manually shifting every note... instead you can just copy a track, delete everything but the snare, move that ahead in time by a 16th note or something, put a velocity plugin on that track, adjust to taste, route back to your drum machine... and voila.

Also, don't quantize. That's the best bet. Learn to drum out a basic beat, and practice... even if its just on your keyboard controller. Do some of the stuff by hand (hats, percussion come to mind). Having a few sounds unquantized can help make the rest sound more human.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:21 pm

If you have a copy of Live 7 it is worth putting warp markers on a all the hits of a masterful breakbeat and slicing to midi. Now when you look at where the midi notes are (relative to the 16th beats) you can see how far off the beat they are, and possibly you can see how the drummer was pushing the beat and dragging it. There are some tips to be extracted from the greats that way. Sometimes it's hard to analyze what they are doing by only listening.

It's worth understanding a bit about triplets and dotted notes so you can make sense of what is going on though, otherwise you might just think that the drummer is employing some sort of personal madness/genius to generate the groove and you will never make one for yourself.

Fantismo · Post by **Fantismo** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:37 pm

... i think youve missed my point..

i have no problem getting good results.. BY HAND.

i want a plugin that would alter my midi notes.. (im not using audio)

so i could set to, say, RANDOM at 0.5% and all the notes would be shifted either side of their marker by 0 - 0.5%

does anyone understand????

jeskola · Post by **jeskola** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:52 pm

Could you not put the drum samples in sampler, then set the sample start to be affected by velocity then add a random velocity midi tool before the sampler?

Shame impulse doesn’t have sample start , or track dely affected by velocity that would be rather interesting…

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:46 pm

Fantismo wrote:... i think youve missed my point..

i have no problem getting good results.. BY HAND.

i want a plugin that would alter my midi notes.. (im not using audio)

so i could set to, say, RANDOM at 0.5% and all the notes would be shifted either side of their marker by 0 - 0.5%

does anyone understand????

I totally understand.

I want a plug in, that will bring me beer, buy me a private jet, and suck my...

laird · Post by **laird** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:20 pm

Random usually does not sound "more real".

Still, you can add a MIDI delay and modulate that. (unlike a destructive MIDI editor, you can't use something like this to nudge MIDI events ahead in time).

I think tobybear makes one,
also
http://www.midiplugins.com/
has a big old list...since we dont know what sort of computer you are using.

Lo-Fi Massahkah · Post by **Lo-Fi Massahkah** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:00 pm

I'd play the beats (or even parts of the beats) and the quantize to a percentage. Then you'd get that human touch without getting sloppy.

-M

Fantismo · Post by **Fantismo** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:24 am

thats a good tip (the one above)

laird · Post by **laird** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:57 pm

Can you automate the Clip Start Envelope on a MIDI clip the way you can on an audio clip??

Hmmm, looks like yes ( a bit more complex than needed:)
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32046

koikane · Post by **koikane** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:11 am

I remember at one time they called that plug in, live music. How about this tip. Lay down a basic kick and snare in step, then over dub playing live. This usually will give a more live feel as it...is.

morerecords · Post by **morerecords** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:13 am

will live allow you to apply different swing quantizations to different clips? Like one clip swings at 33% the next at 36%

djgroovy · Post by **djgroovy** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:30 am

morerecords wrote:will live allow you to apply different swing quantizations to different clips? Like one clip swings at 33% the next at 36%

Yes, in a workaround way.

Drag your first clip. Set swing to 33%. Freeze clip. Copy to new clip as audio. Set this one to straight quantise, no swing.

Drag second clip. Set swing to 36%. repeat...

59min · Post by **59min** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:33 pm

Fantismo wrote:hi - any way to make beats or any MIDI clip sound less quantised?

Im currently going through manually and changing the beats to be "just off" their markers

please help someone!!

Hi, if you have Live 7 use REX-files, to my ears they sound more "musical" compared to evenly laid out markers. Get yourself a copy of Recycle or try it manually:
"If you have a copy of Live 7 it is worth putting warp markers on a all the hits of a masterful breakbeat and slicing to midi."

REX-files are really good, try them out!

/regards

andrewbrewer · Post by **andrewbrewer** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:28 pm

Fantismo wrote:... i think youve missed my point..

i have no problem getting good results.. BY HAND.

i want a plugin that would alter my midi notes.. (im not using audio)

so i could set to, say, RANDOM at 0.5% and all the notes would be shifted either side of their marker by 0 - 0.5%

does anyone understand????

fruityloops can do this, but I have always been disappointed by machine randomized beats. doing by hand is much better.
I just do this sort of thing by hand until it sounds right

making beats sound more real - less quantised and programmed

making beats sound more real - less quantised and programmed

i think youve missed my point..

Re: i think youve missed my point..

thanks

Re: making beats sound more real - less quantised and programmed

Re: i think youve missed my point..