Velocity Edits

[Meteo Xavier]

I know most everyone uses the randomizing in Tools to try to humanize the notes, but I keep doing this and it doesn't sound much more realistic to me. Is there a certain level which you edit them apart from one another that hits the right balance?

Additionally, what do you do with instruments or VSTs that FL doesn't do velocity edits with, lets say Minimogue VA?

[Trash Man]

Well, I would never use the randomize tool. I would rather just enter velocity by hand and just think how it would be before I enter it. The results are just much better, as you are deciding when an instrument gets loud or soft at any point in time (so all you really have to do is imagine when a player is going to be hitting notes hard or soft). It's really not that time consuming, and the results are going to be better than just randomizing.

As for things that do not use velocity, well for the most part, I try to avoid using these as best I could, yeah I know this doesn't help. Perhaps somebody else has a good suggestion.

[Nutritious]

For 3rd party plugins, you could just automate the fader on the mixer for that track. Or, if you want to change it note by note, you could try changing the lower window in the piano roll to channel volume and adjust the levels of each note manually (haven't tested this second one).

[Zephyr]

FL Studio Velocity edits should work with any plugin that supports velocity through midi, it's not a native FL thing, it runs it through midi.

[JasonP27]

I tend to use the randomize tool to give myself more ideas on how to manually change the velocity. I will use it and then playback and tweak to make it sound more natural. It saves me so much more work because a lot of the notes fall to a velocity I am happy with to begin with, and I only have to change a few of them.

Some instruments react differently to the randomize tool. I find sometimes only a little change is needed to change the dynamics of the instrument, other times it barely does a thing. You'll have to experiment finding the range of velocity/dynamic you want for each instrument, simply by trial and error. Start with a little, use History (or Ctrl+Z to undo) and try again until you find the right range. The range of randomness that you are looking for is simply the lowest velocity to the highest velocity you are wanting for that part.

Changing the channel (volume, pitch etc) is the only way to manipulate some instruments, for instance with Edirol Orchestral VSTi slide notes don't work to bend pitch, so you have to draw pitch bend by hand by selecting Channel Pitch.

hope this helped you

[DJ Yoshiman]

I usually edit the velocity of my instrument notes manually - by simply thinking ahead of time, running through my head, of how it would sound if a human was playing it.

Randomizing the notes may sound good, but you get more of the human effect if you have the human editing the velocity... it makes logical sense to me, anyways.

That also eliminates the impossibility of lacking random velocity changes in some VSTi's.

[Trash Man]

Yes, I couldn't agree more. There's no way you can get a guitar for example, to sound legit unless you yourself are the one making the velocity for every last note. If you understand a guitar, it's very easy. Simply slapping a randomizer on will only end in tragedy.

The same pretty much applies to all instruments, you just have to understand yourself how they are played and when notes are loud or soft, then it becomes easy to do, and things will start to sound much more legit than just randomizing them. Even for synths.

Even doing it for every single note does not take long. Making music is all about the effort, the more you put into it, the better it will sound, so don't take velocity (or anything else) lightly, and try to stay away from the randomize tool.