Originally Posted By: edshaw

GuitarHacker, your remarks concern one of the areas, or territories, of interest to this discussion, directly or indirectly, which is hip hop and rap. ....... It didn't seem to matter the backings all sounded about alike, and had the mechanical feel of artificial intelligence about them.
One of the unspoken questions to BiaB, "How do you guys manage to avoid the "mechanical" sound so often found in computer generated?"



Easy. Avoid the use of midi. Well, kind of....

I use real tracks rather than straight midi. Nothing wrong with midi if you take the time to use good samples and edit the velocity and know how to "humanize" the midi data. Or... better yet, play the part on a touch sensitive keyboard and the human factor is built in to the part.

Probably the biggest thing is to use good samples in a good synth that were recorded well and with multi-layers, vs using a General Midi Synth or even things like Coyote or TTS. The GM synths just don't emulate very many instruments well.

Sound fonts and SFZ are a step up but still not far enough in my humble opinion. The better synths and samples are going to cost you some money....again IMHO.

Also, if you place at least one real, live played instrument track into the mix, you immediately add a non-perfect track. That's midi's problem. It's often too perfect. All the velocities and volumes and tempo are dead on the beat and mostly the same if it's generated by a computer. Yeah, I know....edit & quantize. But it's better to actually play the part on a touch sensitive keyboard because you get that human aspect. Humans don't play perfectly so the notes are not all the same volume and not lined up on the beat exactly which is exactly what you really want.

Also, use "all out" editing. In other words, don't let all the parts play all the time. Bring them in to the correct level and then take them out.... pull the faders down to zero* (* an analog reference not a digital one. Digital zero is up.)

It's a learning and experimenting process to see what works and what doesn't.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 12/06/18 06:18 AM.
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