Logic and humanise/randomize options, particularly for timing

[chagzuki]

Is it me, or is there a strange lack of a basic midi timing humanize option on midiFX? There doesn't appear to be one as a preset in the scripture either, and after searching for something of that sort online, all I could find was Smarter Humanize, which is rather overcomplicated.

There's the option of using the midi transform operation, but if one edits any notes one has to quantise and then repeat the randomise operation.

Tracktion has a randomise function as a kind of groove template, i.e. it's applied as one would a groove template and is non-destructive. This is a nice implementation as you can see the timing in the piano roll despite the non-destructiveness.

Have I missed such a feature in the scripture presets, or is there an online resource that has such a thing?

[PositivePressure]

Hey @chagzuki! I know this is an old post, but I just saw it as I was posting about the newest version of SmarterHUMANIZE : )

And, you're right that SmarterHUMANIZE 1.0 was pretty complicated. I wanted users to have a lot of detailed control over how they shaped the timing feel, and with all the choices it can be a bit overwhelming.

The good news is that after finishing the update to SmarterHUMANIZE 2.0 I decided to do a really stripped down version - just two sliders - Delay Amount, Randomize Amount - but still having the beat-aware algorithm of SmarterHUMANIZE 2.0 (keeps strong beats solid and lets smaller subdivisions drift more) behind the hood. That way users can have the natural feel of SmarterHUMANIZE but not be overwhelmed by all the options and nuance of the full version. Then, if you do want things like velocity shaping, per beat/subdivision, multiple time signatures, early delay, mono synth mode, you can upgrade to the SmarterHUMANIZE 2.0.

Both the pro version and the free version are available now at www.positivepressureaudio.com

Just let me know if you have any questions!

-Dave

www.positivepressureaudio.com

[chagzuki]

And, you're right that SmarterHUMANIZE 1.0 was pretty complicated. I wanted users to have a lot of detailed control over how they shaped the timing feel, and with all the choices it can be a bit overwhelming.

Yes, I got the update email as I bought version 1.
Can you clarify, if there are two notes/hits playing on the downbeat, say a kick and a hi-hat, are they randomised independently of each other, or does the randomisation act globally on each measure, downbeat etc.?

[PositivePressure]

Thanks! @chagzuki!

Good question. Short answer: Yes! every note is randomized independently.

So, If two notes are on the downbeat whenever there's any positive value on the randomization sliders those notes will receive their own individual randomization within the randomization % you set. So if the randomization slider is set to 50%, the kick and the hi-hat would each get a random delay that's somewhere between 0-50% of the full amount of delay on the downbeat slider. Always changing, always random.

The big difference between piano roll humanization and SmarterHUMANIZE 2.0 is you get to set how much processing you want on each Beat/subdivision... so, in your example, if you just wanted the downbeat to be humanized, you could, while leaving everything else right in time. With the piano roll you'd move every single note with the same randomization strength.

If for some reason you actually wanted all the notes on the downbeat to have the same random offset, you could actually turn on Mono Synth Mode, which assigns the same random offset to every note in a Beat/subdivision category. It's built that way since mono synths need to track one note to work, and humanization moves things around confusing their envelope tracking, but if you had a use case where you wanted simultaneous notes to have the same offset you could kind of use this mode as a hack to achieve it.

Let me know if you have any other questions! Your original post actually helped me a lot, as I was puzzling over the solution to the balance of giving users deep control, but also not making it too confusing... which led to the idea of SmarterHUMANIZE lite so that people could have a version that is really simple when that fits the bill (lite), and then a version that is for when you really want detailed control (2.0).

Thanks!

-Dave

[Etienne1973]

Tracktion has a randomise function as a kind of groove template, i.e. it's applied as one would a groove template and is non-destructive. This is a nice implementation as you can see the timing in the piano roll despite the non-destructiveness.

I hope I understand you correctly. Logic already offers Groove Template and Groove Track options. Both non-destructive.

But you're specifically looking for a way to create random, still musical variations. So they're not the same thing.

SmarterHUMANIZE 2.0 for Logic Pro seems promising.

[jancivil]

groove template and so-called randomize are not the same thing, at all. A groove template is formed when you play a groove (or take it from somewhere) and over a given span of time use its timing to over-quantize subsequent editing. People whose musical time is desirable in its human feel are not doing or are even vaguely capable of randomness.

How exactly is using randomness as though to alleviate the deadness of hard quantized clock time divisions better than being a bit sloppy with note entry? Actually one can be sloppy with intent.

Music is interesting when people have their own time together and are responsive in a flow.

[PositivePressure]

Hey @jancivil! don't want to hi-jack this thread, but since SmarterHUMANIZE was discussed I'll give a quick-ish response based on why I wrote the script.

I've talked to lots of people who input everything, and get the human feel that way, and SmarterHUMANIZE is not intended to replace that for people who work that way (like it sounds like you do). It's simply meant as an improvement on the piano roll humanization that lots of users already use - either for all their MIDI, or for specific use cases.

Maybe some people are great musicians, but not great keyboard players. Like an amazing singer or sax player, who just doesn't have the dexterity involved in playing the keys to replicate what might be in their head. In that case it might be that they enter in the notes on the grid. Or sometimes you're under time pressure and it's quicker to enter it in. I know an amazing film composer who needs to work really quick, and he has the ideas sorted out in his head and just blazes through manually entering the notes on the piano roll. For me, I found that inputing MIDI sometimes was better if it was a really complex part, or when I tried to play it in and I couldn't hit the sweet spot of human but not messy sounding. Or if the technology part was getting in the way of the musicianship for fast parts, like laggy samples, latency, etc...

The other reason I wrote SmarterHUMANIZE was so that I could try out lots of different feels over large sections of MIDI. Like, I could listen back the next day, and say "OK, maybe this would sound better looser... or more swung" And instead of having to re-play everything in the whole track and get it right, I could just move a couple sliders... listen, adjust to taste, and demo different feels without overwriting any MIDI.

So, it's not meant to replace humans, or replace people's current workflow if playing everything in is working for them. It's just meant to improve one of the tools that Logic already has, which I found very lacking when I did need to reach for it.

Regarding groove templates, they can be very cool! but I also found they're a bit limited. Like if your groove template is based on a section with just 8th notes, if you try to apply it to your own MIDI with 16th notes, it doesn't have enough info so it doesn't move the sixteenths that fall on spaces where there's no data in the groove template. Also, unfortunately, they're static - they apply the same timing to everything over and over again, which even though they're derived from real players sometimes, is not how a player would play since each bar would be slightly different. And maybe there's a "funky drummer" template that might be cool on one thing, but sounds terrible on the next, so it's a lot of time hunting around for things that work. And then when you find one that's close, they don't have the flexibility when you like most of the feel, but want one part or beat a little different, except for maybe making a kind of Frankenstein cut up of different templates and saving that as a template...

SmarterHUMANIZE is, to me, a bridge between the world of "groove template" and "humanization". If you know the feel you want (like in a groove template) and it's: drag beat 2, and 4, but 4 a tiny bit more, downbeat should be a few ticks early, eighths should be loose, but not fully swung, and 16ths should have a lot of variation... Then you just dial that into SmarterHUMANIZE and you can hear how it sounds... if it's too much, dial it back, if the sixteenths actually are better tighter, just tweak them. That way you can get more musical feels, but still have the flexibility of changing all the macro and micro timings. And I wanted velocity processing to follow a musical logic too, so you could change the feel per beat/subdivision for the velocity also.

Sorry to go on at length about this! I just spent an inordinate amount of time getting inside what might be a useful upgrade to "humanization" for SmarterHUMANIZE so I find everytime I try to write a quick reply I go on and on : )

-Dave
www.positivepressureaudio.com