PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Humanise with straight feel? [Resolved]

I have a few songs with melodies that that are very precise and would sound a little more natural if humanised. The style is ev8 4/4 bossa. I used =AQUA, though I guess others would behave the same.

I just started with a Latin number and so used Melody->Edit Melody Track->Quantize, Time Adjust->Humanize with Straight Feel
(I've since tried using the "Humanize Melody" option from the same menu and reduced the "Change 8th note spacing" so the before and after values are closer ... that seems to give a much better outcome).

But ... the output is definitely swinging, if only a modest amout, and it sounds quite odd against a straight accompaniment.

Am I missing something, some set-up?
Here's a clip of the resulting piano-roll:

I want to try this. I agree, Latin music especially Bossa Nova is straight eighths, and any swing feel would sound odd indeed.

Gordon,

I suspect that you probably already know this. Others reading this thread might not, though, so I'll mention it.

The values used in the 'Humanize' settings are in PPQ, and since BIAB's default setup is 1 x 1/4 note = 120 PPQ in length, a change of 20 will give a swung 1/16th note variation; a change of 30 will give a 1/16th note variation; a change of 40 will give a triplet 1/8th note variation; a change of 60 will give an 1/8th note change, etc.

In other words, depending on how much you changed the values, it could be easy to end up with a value that is near some kind of 'swung' value. This doesn't appear to be evident on your graphic, though, as the small changes to the 1/8th notes seem tiny. In addition, the changes have also seemed to make the notes sightly late rather than a mixture of late and early.

One other setting that may have impacted if you entered the notes in Notation Mode is the 'Tick Offset' option found under Notation Mode's options. By default, BIAB always sets this to automatic and the amount of offset added to notes as they are entered is dependent on the style chosen. I write a lot of melodies and I always disable this option because it sometimes makes the melodies sound uncomfortable to my ears. To check if this has been applied to melodies, simply open Notation Editor and then select the "Staff Roll Notation Mode". This makes it very easy to see how removed from the beat a note is.

--Noel

P.S. I've found from using Synth V (the vocal synth), that to reproduce vocal realism, it is necessary to loosen up the start times of notes in both directions. Generally, accented words that carry meaning such as verbs and nouns are often better with a hint of an early feel (around 4–12 milliseconds). These notes are usually on the stronger beats within the bar. The way in which notes are grouped also impacts on musical strength. This is a layer that sits on top of the musical feel of the style. Words that are usually unaccented such as prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc., often seem to sound a little more comfortable if they are slightly late (2–10 ms). In other words, humanizing requires movement in both early and late directions and often depends on a word's grammatical function.


★ my latest song: My Home (vocals by Synth V’s vocaloids, Kevin and Solaria)

Great info, Noel. I assume since the BIAB resolution can be set up to, I think, 920 or so, that the proportions in your example could represent different times? I need to try this later.

I remember CAL scripts from very old MIDI programs like Cakewalk that could control Humanizing pretty well.

Yes, BIAB PPQ settings can easily be changed (Preferences | MIDI File... and then set the note resolution value). I've grown so used to 120 PPQ that I haven't needed to change the value. That said, the higher resolutions would certainly offer greater finesse when making adjustments.

Also, I have never investigated CAL scripts. I'll do a bit of homework and find out about them. Thanks for mentioning them.

Humanizing is quite an art, I think. Synthesizer V has taught me a lot. I'm guessing that if a musician plays a melody that has well known lyrics, the 'humanizing' aspect would be to try and interpret those lyrics instrumentally in a similar way to how a vocalist would interpret them. In this case, knowing about how English stresses work in spoken language would be useful. On the other hand, interpreting and humanizing melodies that have only ever been instrumental would require a different approach (e.g. classical composers or songs like Music Box Dancer, Apache, etc.).

EDIT
In case anyone is interested, I've just discovered these CAL (Cakewalk Application Language) scripts...
https://www.hexachord.net/cakewalk-cal-scripts/

And here is a link to a PDF file that explains how the CAL language works.
https://msmcleod.co.uk/cakewalk/Cakewalk%20Application%20Language%20Programming%20Guide.pdf

I didn't know, but I'd pretty much worked most of it out from the fields in the latter "Humanize Melody" dialog.
Half way down is "Change 8th Note Spacing from [61] to [68]". There's no hover help or anything I noticed in the manual, but I think that means that it spaces the even notes slightly further behind and changing 61 to 68 out of that 120 PPQ would create a mild swing effect. Reducing that 68 to 63 sounded better. But the fact is, that "straight" feel appears to be having slight swing put on it. Why? Straight is straight.

I imagine that the presets are trhe same for the 'straight' and 'swing' versions as they are in the presets in this dialog.

Each of the even notes is slightly later than the odd notes ... not a lot, but enough that it notices. I'd noticed before that the 'humanize' had always appeared to be a delay, though I hadn't tried to prove it. The dialog offers 'delay' and 'spacing', so yes, I think the notes are only ever delayed. I guess that's OK, though I'd expected some 'early' as well.

That's useful to know. I'd probably imported MusicXML, as I think I created it from my score. Timings are precise and velocities are constant.

I use tick offset when the response of a patch doesn’t keep up with another. I might put a negative number on a vibraphone, for example. But most often it helps when importing a melody from another source, seeing tons of unnecessary sixteenth notes, then adjusting the timing.

I made one for Rapid Environment for Audio Production, Engineering, and Recording
Swing Tracks to Even, Even Tracks to Swing

I've never used the tick offset, though I may well now do so.

My aim here was just a quick-and-dirty way to make the rigid play from an XML export sound a bit more natural. I was just rather taken aback that the 'straight' feel was actually slightly swung. Setting the values manually sorts it out reasonably.

The best answer, of course, is to play the melody in myself.

I think this is resolved, I just disagree a bit with PGM/BiaB's interpretation of 'straight' in this context.

Thanks Musocity.
Interesting, though a little different from my intent here.