PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Are there any things you do to "humanize" your generated Tracks ?

OK, in addition to articulations, various ornaments (and I use the term broadly) are available to different instruments that you may want to emulate.

Couple of examples (a few of very many):

Saxophonists often tend to "scoop" up to the first note of a phrase (from flat to on pitch), especially in slow songs. Sax vibrato tends to be more below 'on pitch' than above it because of the nature of the instrument (it's easier), and also, the vibrato tends to start flat and then increase speed and intensity, often followed by a decrease, sometimes even subdividing the beat, (IMO, no LFO can recreate a wind instrument vibrato well). Plus the timbre of the tone changes with the vibrato. Saxes are good at glissandos, grace notes, and dynamic variations in the held note.

Guitar vibrato tends to vary from on pitch to above pitch because that's the easiest way to get vibrato on a guitar, by bending the strings. Of course some guitarists use the whammy bar or hit a note half step below, and bend up to get + and - vibrato. I hear a lot of especially blues and rock guitarists intentionally hitting a note a half or whole step below and bending it up to pitch. Don't forget hammer-ons and pull-offs - which can be recreated either with pitch bend or if you synth has it a legato effect. And where saxes do glissandos, guitars do slides. Then you have harmonics, double-stops, and so many other guitar-like effects done either with the hands or the stomp boxes and/or amps.

Trombonists tend to tongue every note, unless the slide effect is wanted.

I could go on and on.

The ornaments used by any physical instrument are usually dictated by what that instrument is capable of doing. In the words of Charlie Parker, "You don't play the sax, you let the sax play you."

So the idea is to listen carefully to each instrument in order to understand how that particular instrument gets its expressive devices, then see about recreating those expressive devices on your synth patch if you can. Certain synths can do better than others on different instruments.

Also it is as important to avoid an expressive device on an instrument that can't do that if you want to emulate that instrument.

For example, hitting each note and letting it decay like a piano on a sax patch isn't going to sound very sax like. Hitting a note on a piano and then increasing the volume while you add vibrato isn't going to sound very piano like. Not that you cannot do those things if your artistic instincts tell you to do so. All I'm saying is that they won't make for a very good emulation.

There is an art to making a synth patch sound like another instrument, and it isn't just the tone of the instrument. It's recreating the nuances, which IMHO are more important to the emulation than tone.

I've used this example before.

Think about a comedian that does an impression of a famous person like the president of the US or some well-known celebrity. Does the impressionist have an identical voice to the person he/she is doing? Definitely not, no two voices are exactly alike, and sometimes the voice is quite different. Then why do you hear the famous person and not the comedian? Because the comedian has captured the nuances of that famous person's speech patterns.

Recreating these nuances of other instruments does a few good things for you. (1) it opens your ears and gives you both a greater understanding of different instruments and their players but also gives you greater listening pleasure due that understanding (2) improves your synth emulations (3) improves your non-emulative synth playing and (4) makes you a better all-around musician.

There are times when the Real Tracks fit perfectly, and there is nothing left to do by enjoy them -- and there is nothing wrong with that. But the output of BiaB is rather generic - as it should be - and as all auto-accompaniment devices are. To play something that is not already included in the background, the easiest and most economical way is to use MIDI, and to use MIDI effectively, it's a lot more than just choosing a patch and entering notes. It means learning to play MIDI like any other musical instrument. And in a way it's still easier than say learning a guitar. You don't need the build those callouses and learn the notes on the fretboard and how to shape your hand into thousands of chord variations.

So I think by your definition of humanize (which is different from the standard sequencer definition) there is a world of things you can do. Take one instrument at a time. Listen critically to different players in different genres playing that instrument. Then use the continuous controllers in MIDI and your synth to recreate those nuances. A complete list of continuous controllers can be found here:
http://www.nortonmusic.com/midi_cc.html

Insights and incites by Notes