MIDI 101

[hummingbird]

"Avoid anything that sounds stiff, dated, MIDI-driven, or frenetic, as they could be a distraction from a scene's dialog."

"Anything material that sounds dated, stiff, or obviously MIDI-driven will not work for this pitch."

"As always, please avoid submitting anything that's frenetic, stiff, or obviously MIDI-driven."

Let's discuss ways to avoid "sounding MIDI" or "MIDI-driven"

- thoughts?

[hummingbird]

- use a controller to play in your notes with expression, human timing, and different velocities for one
- play all the lines in
- try to have at least one or two 'live' tracks within the cue
- vary the VSTs if possible (different articulations, for example)

[Len911]

Midi gets a bad rap, ironically the best way to sound less "midi driven", is to use more midi!

And also by using midi properly.

Many daws now also contain notation. A notation program is essentially an object-oriented midi sequencer. Some even allow you to modify the midi parameters, or make your own symbols with midi parameters you specify.

Random velocities or randomness for human timing, probably do more destruction. It's just as easy to accent the notes you want, push or pull the note, add grace notes, change tempos, add crescendos...
by the use of a notation program.

[lesmac]

Pro tools has beat detective whereby you can quantise to a groove thats been played by a live drummer, [not a dead one]

Drawing in different velocities in a midi editor…. what Len said!

Using good samples might help?

This all leads in to something I've been thinking on lately inspired by another thread.

Maybe it's about performance. Doing this stuff alone we are forced into becoming multi instrumentalists whether we like it or not.

Being a hack guitarist I come up with an idea and then find much practice is required to execute the performance at a satisfactory level. {Thank you record and playback, and click track!!]

To me a keyboard looks like black and white lines.

I wrote the notes in texta on the white keys but they have rubbed off.

[kova]

I think the starting point is good samples that sound authentic and has many velocity layers.

From there, it's a matter of humanizing the performance. I agree with everyone here who said to play the parts rather than drawing the notes into the DAW. A human performance achieves that level of imperfection that makes a performance sound human and in some cases, it can even make the overall performance sound bigger (at least with guitars).

I think the only time I deviate from the "play the part" rule is when I'm doing drums, mainly b/c I'm VERY particular about how I want my drums to sound and the out-of-the-box stuff from suites like EZ Drummer just doesn't cut it for me. Instead, I'll actually draw everything in and then spend a couple hours tweaking the velocities to match my style of playing. So far, my MIDI-drawn drums managed to pass muster with the Taxi screeners so I figure I must be doing something right.

Needless to say, I look forward to the day when I can afford a electronic kit to input this stuff instead.

It was mentioned earlier but a tip that I heard from several different sources was to mix several orchestral suites together to make it sound more authentic.

[MattCurious]

Stream of consciousness:

It's not just about velocities - it's about timing. When people draw midi in instead of playing it (and sometimes you have to depending on what controllers you have and how they work) they have a tendency to snap the notes to the grid, which creates an artificial level of perfection. Even the best instrumentalists will vary their timing slightly while still being "in the pocket", because they're human.

Also, velocity changes should be used not just to create "imperfection" but to reflect the way people really play - a drummer hitting harder during the chorus, for example. If you can do this manually, all the better (eg. using the mod wheel to create dynamic swells in orchestral pieces).

Finally, I don't think it's necessary to play each line individually. It depends on what you're doing. For orchestral stuff I tend to play chords for certain sections, because it helps me think in terms of harmony and counterpoint. [EDIT] But then I'll sometimes separate the lines out for mixing purposes. So I might play a string ensemble with both hands but then separate them into (broadly) high and low sections so I can treat them differently in the mix.

[mojobone]

The biggest mistake I see people making is in quantizing everything or even just over-quantizing only a few things, and drums in particular. With MIDI, everybody's a drummer and drums aren't supposed to be perfect-that's for drum machines, which have their place, just not in certain genres. I don't believe notation is the key to avoiding "sounding MIDI", though, because MIDI generally has more resolution than notation and its associated software suites.

[elser]

What's been working for me is really practicing my keyboard chops so that I can actually play a good performance at the get go. Then, when there are timing issues that need to be fixed, rather than using the quantize function, I take the time to go into the piano roll editor and fix things manually. And I allow myself some human error while doing that. So, I don't line up every note perfectly on a beat or subdivision. But I work somewhat quickly and if listen back to it without referring to the computer screen. If while fixing the notes they happen to fall a few ticks off from the beat I just let it go. But I think the primary thing is to play it well in the first place.

And then with drums, as has been mentioned before, look for loops that were played by a real drummer. Unless your doing EDM.

It's an important topic. It's easy to over perfect our tracks with midi. Allow human error.

[elser]

What's been working for me is really practicing my keyboard chops so that I can actually play a good performance at the get go. Then, when there are timing issues that need to be fixed, rather than using the quantize function, I take the time to go into the piano roll editor and fix things manually. And I allow myself some human error while doing that. So, I don't line up every note perfectly on a beat or subdivision. But I work somewhat quickly and if listen back to it without referring to the computer screen. If while fixing the notes they happen to fall a few ticks off from the beat I just let it go. But I think the primary thing is to play it well in the first place.

And then with drums, as has been mentioned before, look for loops that were played by a real drummer. Unless your doing EDM.

It's an important topic. It's easy to over perfect our tracks with midi. Allow human error.

[elser]

What's been working for me is really practicing my keyboard chops so that I can actually play a good performance at the get go. Then, when there are timing issues that need to be fixed, rather than using the quantize function, I take the time to go into the piano roll editor and fix things manually. And I allow myself some human error while doing that. So, I don't line up every note perfectly on a beat or subdivision. But I work somewhat quickly and if listen back to it without referring to the computer screen. If while fixing the notes they happen to fall a few ticks off from the beat I just let it go. But I think the primary thing is to play it well in the first place.

And then with drums, as has been mentioned before, look for loops that were played by a real drummer. Unless your doing EDM.

It's an important topic. It's easy to over perfect our tracks with midi. Allow human error.