TIP: Killing the "machine-gun" effect programming MIDI

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Qwerty69
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2008/10/15 04:37:32 (permalink)

TIP: Killing the "machine-gun" effect programming MIDI

Howdy -

I'm sure this has come up before from heads wiser than mine, but I just arsed my way into this technique, it works well and I thought I'd share.

I was programming an orchestral arrangement to sit against a song I am working on with less than stellar sample libraries available to me. I kept on running into the "machine-gun" effect on low instruments that I wanted to pump the same note in the rhythm of the piece. The cure was to simply insert some really quick, random pitch wheel bends up and down against the notes in question.

Works like a charm - thought I'd pass it on. Anyone else got any good tips to share?

Ciao,

Q.
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    John T
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    RE: TIP: Killing the "machine-gun" effect programming MIDI 2008/10/15 05:14:49 (permalink)
    That does indeed work really well. I've found that the best effect is from randomise a lot of different stuff by very small amounts. Velocity, pitch wheel and note duration all massively benefit from being de-robot-ised, even just a little.

    I view these kinds of un-quantising as being quite different to changing note timing, which is a more complex issue. Timing you have to take a lot of care over; for velocity, I find you can often just go scribbling with the mouse in the controller lane in PRV and get good results.
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    pwal
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    RE: TIP: Killing the "machine-gun" effect programming MIDI 2008/10/15 06:18:28 (permalink)
    velocity mfx plug with a little randomness applied

    list of stuff
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    b rock
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    RE: TIP: Killing the "machine-gun" effect programming MIDI 2008/10/15 07:37:55 (permalink)
    Anyone else got any good tips to share?
    Lots of versatility found in this one. It's part of the Frank's MIDI Plugins suite.



    I kept on running into the "machine-gun" effect on low instruments that I wanted to pump the same note in the rhythm of the piece.
    Depending on the sampler/device utilized, you may be able to invoke a 'round robin' effect to rotate through various samples.
    The Cakewalk instruments don't feature this in a visible sense, but you can script it in using the .sfz format.
    #4
    John T
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    RE: TIP: Killing the "machine-gun" effect programming MIDI 2008/10/15 07:42:26 (permalink)
    Plug ins are very useful, but I like doing a lot of velocity stuff by hand. You can get a good basic "anti-machinegun" result out of a plug in, but it's always worth going back in working out where some musical swells and dips should be.

    Take drum fill. There's a lot more going on in a good drum fill than just randomised variance from 100 velocity. There's a crest, and a roll-off, and individual wide variances within that.
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    losguy
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    RE: TIP: Killing the "machine-gun" effect programming MIDI 2008/10/15 09:51:03 (permalink)
    If you snd a pitch wheel message, wouldn't it change the pitch of all notes (new and still sustained) that are playing on that MIDI channel? That would seem to give a weird result. It seems like you would like to alter the pitch of th new note only, like the "randomize note pitch" parameter that some synths have. Adjusting that parameter dynamically would add even more natural-ness.

    Interesting MFX plugin there, b-rock!

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