Humanizing randomizes certain things about the music (attack, release, volume are the most common). The concept is that humans don't play everything perfectly, so a little randomizing will help the music sound more human.

It came around when MIDI sequencing was still quite new, and many sequences were step-inputted instead of played life or quantized to cover up gross timing errors. This gives the music a mechanical feel, and not all forms of music want that mechanical sound. So humanizing was intended to loosen up the timing and volumes a bit to make it sound less robotic and more human.

Well it has its good and bad points. It does what it does and it's IMHO better than nothing. Used too much IMHO it just ends up sounding like sloppy musicians with poor timing.

However, as a drummer you probably know this, human imperfections are not entirely random like the humanizer makes them. Musicians play with a groove (feel and other terms) where certain beats or sub beats are played slightly ahead or behind where they would be if step-entered or quantized.

My first introduction to this was when I was in either Junior or Senior high school (I had the same band director for both). He played a series of orchestras playing Viennese waltzes and had us notice how that the second beat of the measure is usually rushed a bit. He used contrasting examples of different waltzes to demonstrate how this was an interpretation by the conductor. Then we played a waltz as he directed us to rush the second beat of each measure a little. We could feel the difference.

Jazz bands, funk bands, blues bands, country bands and so many others just do this without thinking about it. Even in the same genre, one song can have a different groove from another similar one.

A Humanizer cannot inject a groove into the music. But if used in combination with a groove filter, both in the right amount, the combination can inject a live feel to MIDI music that has been step-entered or quantized.

When I write my styles, I play the music live into a sequencer and then import the sequence snippets into the StyleMaker. That way the groove is there when you play it back -- and if you are playing it back through a good sounding MIDI synth, MIDI music can sound excellent.

MIDI music can sound very expressive. Entire motion picture scores and hit records have been recorded using nothing but MIDI instruments, and millions more have mixed MIDI with other instruments.

MIDI often gets a bad name because it's easy to get a sound out of a MIDI synth, just like it's easy to get a note out of a drum set. But there is a big difference between someone banging on the drums and someone like Bernard Purdie. To get good MIDI, you have to learn how to play the instrument, and a MIDI sequencer IS an instrument.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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