Does anyone know how to humanize a shaker sample? Mine sound kinda lame even though I mess with velocity.

I know probably velocity has a lot to do with it and maybe velocity layering.

Percussion is hard.

If you give tips I'll get "Fook Yu" to give you "secret massage".

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what is humanizing?

Yeah, velocity and filter-cut too.
I think that for a song to hav a good percussion, first it must be able to play alone well. Make a percussion flow that sounds cool without any other elements of the song, even the beat, and if u can do it, the percussion will be good
Try to make an arrangement with various layers, and make a flow, with its ups and downs, with them.

Some tips (about hi-freq percussion only):

- To conduct the percusion, u can hav every note playing a shaker, maraca, or short hat at low volume, and alternate panning. So, adjust the volume to go up from one beat to another and back (or try to mess with it till u like it).

- Get the feeling of your track. If its bangin-pumpin, or on the common off-beat style of song, then u will want percussions that repeats its pattern in each beat. If u want it groovier, than get a longer space, like an entire bar or even more, and think in the progression of the main percussion along this time (though u may hav some auxiliar percussion flowing in shorter patterns), u will also need much more diferent layers for that.

- Never ever let 2 consecutive notes of percussion to sound identical (unless they are far from each other), tweak the volume, panning, filter-cut, stereo delay, whatever, but make minimum variation or it will sound mechanical.

- Volume, panning and stereo placement are the most important things when messing with percussion, so that one layer dont "merges" with each other makin a single noisy sound.

Im very interested in percussion!
Would like some/many tips too!

Last edited by NicklessGuy on Jun-10-2003 at 14:14

nic01445, to humanize is removing that mechanical feel and give that human-playing feel.
When a human plays something, it dont sounds identical et every note, it aways get some diferences in volume, frequency and whatever peoples hands does when playing. So, humanizing is making that slight variations to what is generated by a machine, so it sounds real.

Fruity has an automatic humanizer that a like a lot, and had learned a lot from its presets too...

Other programs may hav the same function, look for it in the help section.

just go into piano roll if you use fruity then go silly messing with the events

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tss tss all this humanising talk, and nobody comes up with the idea that it's not really possible for a human to play 16th notes in a grid accurate on the millisecond

so, move the timing around, making it unperfect, or play it in yourself.

Also what works very well for me is apply a light shuffle (55% ?) on some percussion tracks. And none on others for example.

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quote:

tss tss all this humanising talk, and nobody comes up with the idea that it's not really possible for a human to play 16th notes in a grid accurate on the millisecond so, move the timing around, making it unperfect, or play it in yourself. Also what works very well for me is apply a light shuffle (55% ?) on some percussion tracks. And none on others for example.

Fruity's humanizer already includes this, its on the "shift" property of the note that u can also adjust yourself. But pensonaly i think this is much optional... I mean, u can get wonderful percussions without having to do these changes in timing, and it brings some groove that u may not want at some tracks...

It allows some interesting things, though, like making that out-of-time percussion with 3 notes in a beat with exact space between them like in some track i heard in that Dj Rush liveset available here on TA

Never really messed up much with "shuffle" feature... Gonna play with it Thanx!

quote:

Originally posted by Project T just go into piano roll if you use fruity then go silly messing with the events

is that your technical advice?

i can see why you're a Mod around here

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quote:

Originally posted by Pjotr G ...apply a light shuffle (55% ?) on some percussion tracks....

sick sick man!
that is gonna sound like a trainwreck... 25% is enough for any man

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quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

Yeah and for those of you like me who don't know how to add shuffle to an individual channel on fruity (whole song or nothing), you can fake shuffle by making every 2nd and 4th sixteenth note delay a little bit.

One thing that you're leaving out is that adding the kick, clap, hi hat, etc alllllll to their own channels, then routing to 1 'master drum' channel, then compressing that master drum channel, can allow most samples within that channel to all groove with each other....Like if you add a shaker to that channel, every kick and clap effects it a little bit volume wise, so it grooves better.

Also yeah - when using fruity take the snap off of the LINE mode, and put it to NONE, then manually draw in all the shaker notes very fast and sloppily - thats an easy way to humanize. Also like was said, make a 4 bar longggg pattern for the shaker, so the listener is less likely to hear the repeat and it sounds more human.

quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi sick sick man! that is gonna sound like a trainwreck... 25% is enough for any man

your sequencer probably is different from mine, I use cakewalk.

In which 50% is "tight 16th notes" and anything more is shuffle by putting the 2nd and 4th notes to the back abit, and anything under 50% puts it to the front a bit. So 55% is just a slight tad of groove

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All rhythm evolves around a kick...

quote:

One thing that you're leaving out is that adding the kick, clap, hi hat, etc alllllll to their own channels, then routing to 1 'master drum' channel, then compressing that master drum channel, can allow most samples within that channel to all groove with each other....Like if you add a shaker to that channel, every kick and clap effects it a little bit volume wise, so it grooves better.

Hey, good one!! I used to adjust each one of them individually. Gonna try that soon

I forgot to mention one of the most (if not THE most) important notes to make a good percussion, and that is the sequence "melody" (dunno how to describe it with other word, sorry, poor english, hehe).
The pitch changes of the notes gives much life...
U wont get nothing much wonderful with a sequence with all notes in "C" only, lol. Well u can, but its harder, troublesome, and will require more samples.
Just for an example of a very commom sequence much used in many songs is like this:

c, f, e = Hat's respective notes

f-cfc-fcf-cfc-fc or

f-cfc-ccf-cfc-cc or

-cfe-cfe-cfe-cfe and so on

I see these used in many songs with a thin hat sample, to fill space and give a groovier feel, of course its not the main percussion, but u got the ideia, i hope, hehe

A sligh medium to fast LFO in the frequency is good too.

Another thing much used in trance and especialy progressive, are some small, discret, thin, low and dry sooth-synth sounds at mid-freqs (300hz to 600hz, often) scattered in the loops, they merge with the beat and add much to the rhythm when well placed and discrets.

Last edited by NicklessGuy on Jun-17-2003 at 02:38