Humanizing MIDI notes in MusE Sequencer

[GraysonPeddie]

I've been spending some time humanizing MIDI notes and when fully zoomed in in the piano roll, scrolling is very slow. I have had to zoom out, easily scroll to the right, zoom back in, humanize MIDI notes, zoom out, scroll to the right, zoom back in, humanize, rinse, and repeat. In other words, scrolling to the right or to the left in the piano roll is a lot faster when zoomed out, but slower when zoomed in.

Since I'm not a keyboardist, are there any programs that would let me quickly humanize MIDI notes? I'm very comfortable with MusE Sequencer's workflow compared to QTractor (if it has one), so I'm not sure if it's possible to export 28 tracks to standard MIDI format, since General MIDI has a limitation of 16 channels.

Does anyone spend a lot of time humanizing MIDI notes themselves when the songwriting process is done? I'm not including those who use keyboard to create music. It's more of those who would use a mouse for adding MIDI notes.

Okay. I have exported my tracks as MIDI file,created a new project, and import them back in. All the port numbers and names are kept intact. Next, I did some research to discover that QTractor has a randomize feature, so I gave the note time, duration, and velocity about 5% in QTractor and export all the tracks as a MIDI file. But then I noticed that the "OK" button is grayed out unless I select a port. I said "Hmm... Okay" as I hope for the best when I import them as a backup file back into MusE as a new project. All the channels are back where it's suppose to be, but I now have to rename all the ports that I have made and delete the excess ports that are marked as input. Well, at least I got what I wanted from QTractor! Plus, all the MIDI connections are made in Carla, which means I don't have to reconnect all the synths and samples to my MIDI sequencer.

Unless there is a randomize feature in MusE sequencer, I will mark my thread as a workaround. To all QTractor users out there, the randomize feature is found in Tools-> Randomize when you right-click the clip(s) you have selected.

Now to get all the naming of ports back in order...

Update: Okay. I went back to QTractor and instead of 5%, I chose 2%. At first, I chose 5% but then when I import the QTractor-exported MIDI file back to MusE. I suppose I could choose 1%, but I don't know if that makes a difference, fooling a listener into thinking that a music is played by a human instead of a robot. Well, I don't want to spend the time to reorganize the MIDI ports again. Oh well...

[rncbc]

first thing i must tell is that all, meaning ALL MIDI content, created, edited and/or conveyed in and out by qtractor is full MIDI standard formatted de tout couer , which also means it's SMF, optionally format 0 (one single track, merged by MIDI channel 1-16), or format 1 (several tracks, each one to its own MIDI channel; may have many MIDI tracks on same MIDI channel, in 1:1 fashion as you have on a qtractor session). as it ever was and will be

second, the so called "humanizing" function might well be "emulated" through by applying a slight Tools/Randomize followed by a moderate Tools/Quantize strengh (<100%); don't know if you notice but the (MIDI) Tools dialog lets you combine ANY of the tools/functions in one go.

in addition, you may also try Tools/Quantize/Swing, which i find the most appropriate for "humanizing rythm" effect. again, you can combine it all in one go or, better yet if you like, a dang (MIDI Tools) named preset.

hth.
cheers

[glowrak guy]

fooling a listener

I think you should consider your music as art. Your goal should be 'delighting and enthralling the listener',
and the quality should mean the listener is too happy to have any questions, or concerns
about the actual production.

Using sounds and effects with varied adsr envelopes can nicely alter what note-on and note-off present.
And mixing in some mono and legato modes among the poly will change things up. Also using a little portamento
can throw things 'off' in a nice way, and using variants on multiple instances of the same sound
can be great fun. Barely audible, or to the hilt. Arpeggios (perhaps cloacked in reverb and other effects) can
inject a little mystery, and can be made into collaborating phantoms. Sending track outs to various chains
of subtle rythmic effects, tremolo, delay , phaser etc can be effective. Combining extreme effects settings with gating
can get you into 'armed and dangerous' robot territory, should you want it.

You can set up several rakarracks on screen, where they can be conveniently turned on/off
(tick-box upper-left corner) while recording sequenced outputs to audio. The desired effects,
sublety or lack thereof, and timing to trigger them, is in your control.

As an aside, if using hydrogen for some 'beats', if you have a kit with 12 percussion instruments,
that leaves you 20 slots for audacity-modified versions of the key sounds, so secondary sounds can provide cymbal tails,
various amplitude, some echo, some boost for thump or snap from eq, and can all be inserted within the grid,
and still use the velocity range and panning from within Hydrogen.
Cheers

[GraysonPeddie]

Okay, thanks guys. I did not know about using swing for humanizing.

I know that music is art, but does a listener care about whether a song is played by a robot or a human? I mean, I just enter MIDI notes by hand without ever playing a keyboard.

[folderol]

It's not often I enter MIDI notes by hand, but when I do, I work in a piano-roll editor and the first thing I do is switch quantisation off

[ssj71]

does a listener care about whether a song is played by a robot or a human?.

Personally, I don't care that much, but most robots aren't very good players, so in that sense I do care.

[GraysonPeddie]

Okay, thank you for your help.

[spamatica]

Hi Grayson,

I'm late to the party and it seems you already got a solution, thought I would just point out the quantize and humanize features available in MusE.
First, if you check under the Functions menu, both in the Arranger and the midi editors there is a tool to Quantize with Swing factor.

If your material is already quantized however and you want to humanize it there is a script in the Plugin menu called SwingQuantize1.
I fear I don't remember anymore exactly what it does but do try it out. Plugins work on the selected notes when you are in the editors, from the arranger it is applied to all selected parts.

Regards,
Robert

[GraysonPeddie]

Thanks. I will look into quantize with swing functionality.

[GraysonPeddie]

Hi Grayson,

I'm late to the party and it seems you already got a solution, thought I would just point out the quantize and humanize features available in MusE.
First, if you check under the Functions menu, both in the Arranger and the midi editors there is a tool to Quantize with Swing factor.

If your material is already quantized however and you want to humanize it there is a script in the Plugin menu called SwingQuantize1.
I fear I don't remember anymore exactly what it does but do try it out. Plugins work on the selected notes when you are in the editors, from the arranger it is applied to all selected parts.

Regards,
Robert

Okay. I started a new song a couple of days ago and tonight when I try out SwingQuantize1 in muse3 and this is what I get:

MusE was unable to launch the script, error message:
File "/usr/local/share/muse-3.0/scripts/ConstantLength", line 65
print "beatDiv=",beatDiv
^
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'

The result is that notes that I have selected are deleted by swingQuantize1 until I undo the deletion.

[AyeLinux]

print "beatDiv=",beatDiv
^
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'

This looks like a Python 2 vs Python 3 thing. If this portion of the application is in Python, maybe there's a way to force it to use Python 2. Check with the dev's docs/community/bug tracker.

[GraysonPeddie]

It seems I have not updated my MusE3 sequencer yet through git. Perhaps the update from the repository will clear it up for me.

Thanks.

Update as of 10:21 PM: I will be using Qtractor in the meantime, as the updating the muse repository did not fix the problem. The development of MusE Sequencer 3 did not stop me from writing my next song and there are some features that I cannot live without it in MusE Sequencer 2, such as adding/removing JACK devices, so workarounds is all I can do.

When MusE Sequencer gets better, along with ZynAddSubFX-LV2, and that all Qt-based synths/effects get updated to Qt5, I can start to load synths and samples inside MusE3 more often and I don't have to launch a stand-alone version of Carla. That way, average musicians who are into heavy use of MIDI using MusE Sequencer do not have to keep track of development and not deal with workarounds. But then maybe they do. Who knows what the future holds out for musicians thinking about switching to Linux? In the other hand, early adopters who are musicians can use the latest version of software that's out there.

[danboid]

Hi Greyson

It's worth noting that the MusE devs don't visit this forum very often so please report any bugs you find on the MusE github issue tracker or they may not get noticed and fixed:

https://github.com/muse-sequencer/muse/issues

Thanks!