Ill try and be a bit more specific.
I can spend days assigning and shaping sounds when converting, and longer still when mixing and mastering. However, there is never a human feel to the finished article. So my question is, what can be done to it, to make it appear more human?

I'd appreciate ANY helpful hints and tips.

Thanks in advance.

 

i'm not quite sure what you mean by "converting midi".
generally, slightly-off-grid notes and some variations in velocity would make for a more human feel.
depending on your daw there might be a function for that in the midi-editor or a midi-fx that does it.
using a midi-keyboard recording yourself and not quantizing 100% can also work well.

 

The most obvious human caracteristic is making mistakes... and than insisting on repeating them.

so Yes, I agree with erhwaldt suggestion

 

hi not sure if this is what your looking for ?

http://www.attackmagazine.com/features/roger-linn-swing-groove-magic-mpc-timing/

http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/10-ways-to-give-your-music-groove-232242

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?2094

 

Thanks guys, I'm going to look into (slightly-off-grid notes and some variations in velocity) and check out those links you gave me Momo.

 

A handly little trick I do, and this works I think in most DAWS, is that I actually tap along to the beat with my hands and fingers. I record that through my microphone, convert that to midi and then add percussion sounds to it. Trust me you can't go wrong with. Because when you tap along to something you add your own groove to it. This works wonders guys trust me.

 

Everyone so far has given some great advice. The best thing I can think of to add to this is as follows.
Electronic music "can" have a very cold feel to it due to the lack of human elements. Be careful when shifting midi notes slightly out of time because there is a fine line between adding human element and producing a new glitch hop or chillstep track. And don't be afraid to make happy accidents. I am now 7 years into producing electronic music and some of my best stuff has been from happy accidents. I have not gone in with an extremely solid plan, I just jumped on my DAW and started creating. If you make a few mistakes, it is not necessarily a bad thing, you are human after all and it can give your music a really nice touch. Good luck with the music making

 

I'm working on something at the moment, and will post it here when finished, but I cant thank you all enough for your help. I'm learning so much.

 

I would like to know what kind of music are you trying to do and with what elements, perhaps could be more specific I could give you an advice (other than the already mentioned). A small trick I can give you that serves me well is tap-tempo... if your daw allow it, do the timing by tapping it. Other one would be paying close attention to the instrument you are trying to emulate, for example drums; you don't have to necessarily become a drummer but if you understand why every hit is where it is, what are the human (player) limitations and how would you play it (like if you were in the drummers sit) it would help a lot and immensely improve the realism you can put onto those. The keyboard, analize your hands, the range of it (a hand cannot play more than 5 notes but even that way is unlikely for it to play 5 notes; the range of a hand is a little bit more than an octave; let's say 13/14/15 semitones), the force you would apply to each note either musically or the force your hand has to stress to press (try forming a chord shape against the table and pressing like a chord on a keyboard and analize which finger is stronger) and so on. But on the top of that, just experiment and use your ears and instincts and something good will come out of that

 

Hi,
In ableton live you can do that with the groove poll, the idea is you quantize your midi track (or you can wrapped your audio file) then you choose your groove and you put it on the track ... thats it ... it change a little the position your notes ans the volume of the midi notes.
You can also extract groove from an audio track and put in on a another track.

I hope you ve undestand (english is not my first language ), you can find video on youtube if you are interrested

 

I used to always quantize or snap to grid when recording. Metal, dubstep, dance, anything.
But I noticed all my scratch ideas sounded better than my finished versions :/ Not in overall sound but the general feel.

So now I just record the parts the best I can (I'm no keyboard player) even if its just the snare on its own. Then I only fix the real crappy notes and possibly the first and last note... as this gives the ear the illusion that every other note is bang on. Unless you are working on a collab with others then just slap those notes down and worry later, most of the time it'll sound better anyway

 

What other says + Listen to your track again and again. Keep close eye on your transitions - this is where most of our mistakes lie. Velocity variations, CC1, CC11 and CC64 are your best friends. I hope you have done all this so just a reminder.

 

No one has mentioned humanization and randomization (of MIDI AND audio parts), so I just mentioned that. Most DAWs have it.

 

LOVE that idea!
simple and clever. thanks heaps

 

There are a bunch of tools in DAWs : humanization/randomization for sure, groove extraction in most and more.

In any serious DAW, you can extract a groove from a reference audiotrack (like a real human breakbeat) and apply it to any audio/midi track.
It will act as a "global" groove.
It can works wonder with a well played bassline, too.
The trick is to use a REAL human audio track to "clone" human feel

 

This is a good topic to bring up, since it spans genres and involves different techniques. Everything that's been suggested thus far is valuable. When doing pop/rock songs, at first I play real-audio guitar over MIDI drum kits, and play bass samples (in Kontakt) in real time along with those two. Sometimes I manually adjust the entrances (start times) and note velocities of the drum kit samples on the piano roll so that the drums more realistically "play along" with the other two instruments, while also inserting and moving notes for fills and more-realistic variations in the drum "performance." This is laborious, but ultimately rewarding.

A couple years ago, I "found" those multitrack files of songs from David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album, and looking at the tracks' waveforms in the timeline of the DAW, and isolating a couple here and there while they played, I realized how off-time the instruments were with each other, but also that this randomness averaged-out in some consensus among the players as to what were the beat was as they went along. The musicians' playing together in real time was a contributing factor to this effect. Another effect is the ensemble's creating the dynamics of the overall performance. These two "humanizing" factors make for much more engaging listening.

 

Very very informative links you've gave us, Momo. MPC's Groove "Myth" is broken by its creator himself, Roger Linn.
Aly James (a super-cool guy, btw) have explained the same thing in the manual of his great VLinn/LM-1 emulation (now called VProm): http://www.alyjameslab.com/alyjameslabvlinn.html

I can't resist to quote a sort of advice from Roger Linn - which I found myself so hard to follow :
"I notice many musicians spending countless hours learning how to microscopically edit their music in order to get it to sound right. I can’t help but imagine a skilled drummer quietly chuckling inside when they see someone going to so much trouble in order to avoid learning to play the instrument skillfully. At a certain point, it might just be easier to focus on developing the skill to play it in realtime. If so, an added bonus is that you’d be able to play live with other musicians, which is quite a lot of fun and the resulting serendipity can be wonderful."

Exactly. And the contrary (perfect timing by quantization) explains also why all these modern disco/house remixes of old standards have lost their original soul in the process of helping DJs to mix them easily with the current EDM crap. Today's DJs have lost the art of mastering the speed-shift cursor in realtime, which was an essential technique to possess in order to compensate for the natural beat shift of old records in the mixing phase => Traktor's Automix Mode is a killer feature, indeed: it perfectly kill the skill .

 

Last edited: Oct 11, 2015

If you're using Ableton, and got max for live there is a few things you can do. If you're looking to add a more 'human' feel to hats, there are two ways to do it, the native midi effect called Velocity and the max effect Expression control. Dial in some randomness with the Velocity tool. As somebody said in this thread, velocity is part of the 'human feel'.
Another trick is to map the decay of your drumhits with the expression control parameter called velocity. This will shorten the hits with lower velocity, just like when you hit a real drum or hat. To go even further, combine the two effects.

If you're looking to work with the overall groove of your track, check out this Max for Live device http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/2466/group-humanizer .

 

Wow, very interesting thread. I'm learning a lot.

In the line of DAWs humanization tools, you can also use a MIDI "humanizator" plugin. In other words, realtime, non destructive.

I'm not into electronic music but Kontakt, for example, has a "humanization" script which act like a MIDI plugin.

 

There is just so much to take on board. I'm treating it as if I'm building a puzzle, 1 piece at a time.

I literally had no idea this would open up such a plethora of tips (and potential pitfalls when done incorrectly) from everyone who has responded, so once again thank you ever so much.

I have started one or two projects and fully intend to use some of the valuable tips I have learned.