Humanizing Sustained Strings/Pads - Is it necessary/ tips

[jordanrooben]

When you're humanizing tracks, when and how should long sustained notes be humanized? Are there times when i'ts not important to humanize them?

[Garpocalypse]

Always solo the track and make sure it sounds like a viable performance on it's own. As far as Strings and Pads it really depends on what style of music you are doing. Some electronic oriented forms of music are supposed to sound fake and machine-like so if you are doing one of them you might want to keep humanizing to a minimum.

Not that you have much humanizing to do with pads to begin with. Vary the velocity and timing a bit and move on.

Strings on the other hand could take all day on a single passage if you want to get detailed enough. Usually you would only do that if you were trying to make up for not having a full human orchestra at your disposal.

[Rozovian]

A long strings note at a constant level, constant timbre, constant pitch will sound fake. When the music swells, so should the strings, likewise when it wanes. While this can be done with volume, it's better to use the expression midi cc for that. When using volume, you typically change the volume of reverbs and other effects as well. This is not realistic. You'd want the change to exist as close to your imaginary performers as possible, before reverb and other effects. If Expression doesn't do anything, try other midi ccs, like the modulation wheel. Some patches/samplers may go for convenience over intended use. In any case, this is for the bigger dynamic movements that can happen during a long note.

Subtle touches of vibrato and/or tremolo also remove some of the fakeness of it, tho an entire strings section would typically not do tremolo or vibrato in perfect sync (hence why you make it subtle, and use different patches for more overt tremolo/vibrato strings).

Some subtle filter modulation can also work, it'd suggest the strings are being played softer, bowed slower or something. All it really does is softly muffle the sound, which is a change in timbre - which can be useful. It's best used in conjunction with the changes in expression.

Note: subtle means you shouldn't notice it if you don't know it's there. Very subtle.

Remember that humanization isn't randomization. Think like a performer or a conductor. How would the music move? How should the sustains move?

Also, if you're not faking an orchestra, screw strings humanization. Just make it emotive, even if it's mechanical.

[SnappleMan]

I think people here put too much effort into humanization. The only humanization that I think is "necessary" is simply playing your parts on a keyboard (which is much easier than people think). When you do it with a mouse it almost always sounds bad because the key to a good performance is the feel, something you can't ever emulate. If I'm working someplace without access to a midi controller of some kind I always leave the parts un-humanized, though in that case I would definitely go back and take some velocities wherever necessary. As for lengths of sustained notes, I'd just make sure that they're long enough to sound like they're supposed to in the song. If you try to fake realism you'll always fail when someone with experience is listening to your music.

[SnappleMan]

Does MIDI CC really count as humanization though? To me that's just standard stylistic stuff that should be mandatory to anyone using MIDI. As far as I'm concerned humanization is more about faking timing, pitch and velocity to emulate natural human error.

[Rozovian]

idunno, to me, humanization is about faking human performance by whatever means available. If there's a combined timing/velocity/detune/vibrato macro that turns stiff sequencing into hard forte and smooth piano according to the value of a single automated knob - that's humanization. If you spend hours on screwing with every midi attribute of a dozen separate violin solo patches - that's humanization. Humanization is making it more human, any means necessary.

But yeah, it's easy to overthink it, overdo it, get overwhelmed, or whatever. My advice is to just learn every tool in the box, and then just use the tools you need for the parts that need it. If an auto-quantize tool to a light swing rhythm makes your drums sound more human, it's humanization.

But for sustained strings specifically, the most important is that they swell and wane with the rest of the track. Think like a conductor. Humanize accordingly.

Also, humanization is not randomization. They're both opposites of mechanical sequencing, but in different directions. If that makes any sense.

[Mikeaudio]

I think a good place to stand for those who do have a midi controller, (specifically those who don't have monster computers) is to indeed play the parts out via midi and afterwards adjusting the velocities to the desired value. I know this comes in handy when using samples with many layered velocities(Orchestral Samples, drums samples), as some midi controllers don't have that much velocity control. Although this is more on the de-humanizing side, if one has latency issues that cannot be avoided, play the part live then fix the performance closer to what you initially played. Personally, I have found that recording straight to a wav file cuts down most latency issues if I have any, as compared to recording to the sequencer. For those who don't have a midi controller, there is no way around the tedious mouse click. My advice would be investing in a midi controller for sure. If you're on the go alot, perhaps the nano series by korg would be useful. I've never used them personally, but they seem to be pretty good, and Jorden Rudess uses them.

[PixelPanic]

Imagine you are playing it yourself. For notes that, say, play quarter notes, remember the strength of notes in a counted 4/4 measure go STRONG-WEAK-MEDIUM-WEAK, meaning you should you should focus most on 1 and 3, and kind of apply that. Like, a grace note will be note quite as emphasized as the note it's leading to because it is not set on a beat.

For pads, change up velocities, change up timbre/vibrato, and sometimes just change up chord structure, or other basic music theory stuffs, like, changing a 1/3/5 major chord by moving the 5 down to make it 5/1/3, changing the bass, but retaining the core sounds of the chord.