Need advise on making realistic sounds

[lelise]

I need feedback from experienced Ableton users please. Am I doing it wrong?

Everything sounds very artificial/midi. The piano, guitar, drums, strings sound awful, nowhere near a real instrument. The only sounds that are descent are the ones that are supposed to sound artificial. I am trying to get a simple classic grand piano sound, but my keyboard sounds better than Ableton. Am I doing it wrong or is Ableton only good for creating songs that are supposed to sound artificial? Can anyone please tell me how to get more realistic sounds if it's possible thanks?

[jestermgee]

Sounds like you have record quantise enabled so everything is locked tight to a grid. You can try disable record quantise or just micro-shift the notes round a bit to add some off beat variance.

[dsu]

Making MIDI instruments sound realistic is not easy and it is arguable that the sampled instruments that come with Ableton just aren't sophisticated enough to work at the highest level required for film scoring work.

The bottom line is that just draw midi notes on the piano role is not going to get you were you want to go. You need timing and dynamic variation and an instrument that support subtle articulations. This next video is interesting since it looks a how editing MIDI information can create a more nuance performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyyGGkWhGNk

Eventually, you will probably need to get 3rd party instruments that a specialized. For example Trillian Bass does a pretty good job of simulating a real bass. This video gives a sense of what I'm talking about. https://youtu.be/l1toLihZkDs


Good luck