julibee

dmbaer, just for arguments sake... I have some experience using Reason and what Reason calls ReGroove I don't know the algorithm or anything, but it's a tool specifically to humanize a track or the whole song and it's quite effective.

What I'm working on is a utility that will take a click track and construct a tempo map from it.  That's very similar to what you can do with Sonar's process/fit-to-improv.  But with the latter, you need to do the entire "song" in one go and you're limited to using click-events one per beat.  In other words, for 4/4, you can only "conduct" in quarter notes.  If you wanted eigth notes, you're out of luck.
 
I've got the critical code written and working, and I'm just putting the finishing touches on the GUI.  The software will be presented in conjunction with an article I'm writing for the Dec. issue of Wusik Sound Magazine ... otherwise I'd make it available sooner.  My main motivation for doing this is that it's something I can personally make great use of (and it's a feature I don't expect to show up in Sonar any time soon).  Who would use something like this?  Probably no more that two or three percent of the total user population.  But that small group will hopefully find the utility a great help.

julibee


^^that sounds really interesting... I'll keep an eye out for an update.  You will tell us when it's published, right? :)

Certainly will.

julibee


Nah, Janet, I'd watch it. :)

dmbaer, just for arguments sake... I have some experience using Reason and what Reason calls ReGroove I don't know the algorithm or anything, but it's a tool specifically to humanize a track or the whole song and it's quite effective.  I imagine it's at least somewhat similar to what Jeff mentioned, and yeah, it can get kinda boozy if that's what you are after.  It has "slide" and "shuffle" that work independently of each other and are fully adjustable (via virtual knobs).  Plus, it can have multiple tracks routed to it and each track effected differently via faders.  It's pretty interesting anyway.  When you have one of your programmed drum modules already set to Shuffle and you add on a ReGroove instance with more shuffle and the addition of slide... It can get pretty far out.  I just thought I'd mention it. 

I DO completely agree that there is nothing like a human performance though for more traditional music making. But in a club, it's gotta be head on.

Please don't anyone throw tomatoes at me.  I still mix in Sonar. :)

ReGroove is very similar to Groove Quantize in Sonar, but it is much easier to manipulate in real time to impose the groove you want on the existing midi.
 
You can easily extract the timing aspect using midi taken from Rex files with the funky groove you require too, that works a treat.
 
If you can hear the groove you are after in some existing form you can replicate it.  Those that say there's no way of humanizing a groove have not explored the many great techniques that are already available successfully. 
 
It would be better for them to say manual editing is the only way THEY know, rather than saying it can't be done effectively any other way.
 
There are plenty of ways of doing it well without resorting to a magnifiying glass and hours of hand editing.  The tool you have mentioned there is one of the best at it although Sonar's Groove Quantize is a fair alternative.
 
Get fluent with either tool and you'll be good to go.
Not only CAN you humanize midi, you can be specific about the human you choose.
 
Give me 2 bars of a straight 8 drum beat tightly quantized and a constant velocity and I'll give you 2 bars of Clyde Stubblefield back. 

OK money where mouth is time...
 
Here's the same 2 bar pattern repeated twice, the first two bars is 100% quantized as 16th's with a set velocity of 100, second repeat is the same midi grooved to Nir-Z from a Toontrack midi loop.
 
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=905939&songID=11926560
 
It's exactly the same principle at work here as any drum replacement technique where the timing and velocity information is extracted from actual audio of the player enabling a producer to use any sampled sound in place of the actual recorded kit pieces.  It's featured on pretty much every hit single that has charted in the last 25 years, so for people to say you can't humanize midi they've obviously been reading too much about celebrated producers from the 50's and 60's.
 
Sounds pretty good here, huh?
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T0Gpy7nHiM
 
 
Drums are the most obvious application for it but don't limit yourself to that. It works great on basses too, or any instrument that you want to follow a particular rhythmic groove can have elements of the dynamic sensibilities of any player imposed on them to a greater or lesser degree.
 
 
So if you want to humanize first find a human that grooves how you want to groove and you are on your way.  If I'm using midi anywhere there's little if any of it that hasn't got a bit of something going on.
 
I'll even play the groove on the table if I can't get what I'm after any other way then extract the timing and dynamics from that.
 
So something like AudioSnap, Drum Tracker, Drumagog, (Melodyne?) or Recycle will extract the groove from audio if you don't have any midi grooves available already that will work for you.  Then use Groove Quantize, better still Regroove if you are rewired to Reason, to apply it to your own midi to the required degree.
 
By all means manually edit afterward if you like but it's much easier and less time intensive to do that when you are already in the right ball-park.

This should help, using the tools that pretty much everyone here already has.
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013031
 
Use this method to extract the grooves, then use the groovy grooves you've collected in Groove Quantize to shape up any clincal midi files you may have hurredly put together in the step sequencer or some such.
 
I didn't want to be specific about methods because once you have the idea there are many ways of doing it that might suit other people better than the methods and tools I use.  It's one of those things that are worth playing around with to get the actual results YOU want.
 
 
But there's the native Sonar way of doing it right there.
HTH