Getting Realism [quick tips]

[blnd!]

I found this on http://audio.tutsplus.com and i think these basic guidelines can be useful even in garage or any dance music, its about how to make your music a wee more "live"
Gonna copypaste some parts of it, here is the whole article: Quick Tip: Getting Realism in Orchestral Music

Make Velocity Changes

After you’ve loaded up the RR samples try to edit the velocity of each tone. Imagine for a while that you are a conductor, standing in front of around 60 players (strings only). When they start playing, they won’t play two identical notes – especially when it comes to volume.
So, going back to the MIDI orchestration, when you make slight velocity edits, you can add additional realism to your music. Sometimes this could take much of your time and you can use some helpful tools like randomizer plugins.

Humanize

The humanize technique can help you achieve the “live” sound of your music. This helps you escape the quantize-jail, and add slight rhythmic MIDI notes as it would be played by a live player.
No human player can possibly play as exact as a computer. Remember those 60 players we were talking about? It isn’t possible for them all to start playing at the exact time – every time one of them would be a bit late or early. And this is that magic that we all feel when we go to a concert (whether we’re listening to Haydn or U2).

[Lye Form]

Thanks for this.

perhaps off topic but for a really lofi/gritty/really live recording sound its good to record a melody with your phone (old phones give a really bitcrushed effect) to re sample. also sounds cool if you layer it with the original sounding very clean low in the mix.

[blnd!]

Thanks for this.

perhaps off topic but for a really lofi/gritty/really live recording sound its good to record a melody with your phone (old phones give a really bitcrushed effect) to re sample. also sounds cool if you layer it with the original sounding very clean low in the mix.

yeah, its always a good idea to record some stuff and layer them, can make a difference

[ToneBox]

why not just play stuff in by hand?

[blnd!]

why not just play stuff in by hand?

i guess if u have a MIDI keyboard and u can play on it and u just wanna record a lead or a bassline it's better than shittin with envelopes and velocity.
but i dont have a MIDI keyboard, even if had one, i wouldn't know how to play on it, even if i could play in by hand, it could be quite tedious when you deal with lots of strings and stuff.
also i think this "technique" is quite useful when u write the drums, slight changes, unquantized hits and stuff like that, not just repeating the same pattern. and if i'd play them in by hand i'd still make slight changes.

[fmsea]

Yeah, velocity is one of the most important things people over look while laying down drums, I just learned that myself a few months ago. Here are a few things I've been doing to humanize my drums a little:

Variation! You'll never hear a real drummer play the same beat for the whole song, most won't even play the same fill twice, so don't just make a four bar loop and copy/past it over the rest of your track. Little switch ups every few bars can add more energy, keep the beat interesting and make it sound like there's someone behind the drums playing by feeling.

Don't quantize anything! If you've got the time and patience, make an 8 or 16 bar loop by just placing the samples by hand. No quantize, copying, or zooming super far into the grid, just throw everything down as best as you can. You can copy that loop after, make some changes, etc. That'll loosen things up a whole bunch. I like this on 4x4 kick patterns especially.

One little trick I use a lot in Reaper to add additional timing variations/humanization on my hi-hats without doing too much work is to throw the au sample delay plug-in on my hi-hat track, go into the automation options and select "in/out delay" in the sample delay plug-in, then select the modulate option in the automation lane and check "lfo". Once you're in the lfo section, choose the random waveform, set the base value to the very bottom, the speed to taste (I usually sync it to 64ths) and the strength fairly low (unless you want the effect to be extremely noticeable). This delays the sample by random amounts (milliseconds... subtle but still very effective) and loosens up your drums even more.

One last thing, do all the swinging/shuffling yourself. It's much more fun than just clicking a preset, and you can get some really neat sounding patterns if you experiment.

Hope this helped I wanted to make a good first impression haha

EDIT: If you want to hear some examples, just let me know and I'll send you some newer stuff I'm working on in which these techniques are used more extensively than on the tracks I've released already.