Hey guys new to sonar and ive been trying to get better at my drum tracking just wondering how to go about Humanizing my midi tracks......Any Help?

The swing setting in the groove quantize or quantize property menu along with changing velocities.

You cant each drum hit be exactly on beat with the same velocity, so change things up
Cj

Humanize is basically subtle changes to velocity. There may be a CAL script out there somewhere for this.

Yep, here you go: http://www.hexachord.net/cal/
 Human.cal

Dang, quick responses! Ive been a Sonar User for a few years now and my drums have always sounded stiff, trying to get a little more familiar with the Midi controls. Thanks guys.

Just for future reference EZ drummer and Superior Drummer have a built in control for humanizing. Basically more & less but useful.

"...how to go about Humanizing my midi tracks..."  Play 'em with your digits on a keyboard or control surface, fix up bad timings in Piano Roll View, and if you gotta quantize, just don't do it to 100%.

"Humanizing" works best when some actual, imperfect Human input is actually behind the track in the first place.  I'm not a drummer, but I can bang some drums out on my keyboard.

And it's not just the velocities which control the pulse of a beat, via louder and softer hits, it's also when when the notes come in, probably a bit more rushed in the chorus, maybe late a bit during a verse - it's the placement on a measure's grid also.

Randy B.

Yeah, I've tried moving em around, really my main issues are when alot of notes are being played close together (i.e. Blast Beat).

@Middleman - Yeah I use SD 2.0 but when I use it in Sonar, I let the DAW take over on the sequencing to get total control over the samples. Ive got a new guitar processor coming in this week so when I lay a new track down this weekend i'll try these new techniques.

One of the most versatile automatic ways is to use Franks midi Plugins.
 
http://www.midi-plugins.de/

"Humanizing" works best when some actual, imperfect Human input is actually behind the track in the first place

It seems to be common to equate the subtle variations in timing and attack produced by a musician's interaction with his instrument as being due to "human error." Of course human beings make mistakes, but good musicians do not for the most part treat each note differently because they missed doing what they were trying to accomplish, but because the variation from an abstract mechanical repetition is what gives them control of musical expression. That is one reason why algorithms that just randomize parameters do not do what a good musician does in live performance.

Things like "swing" algorithms are more likely to impart a sense of human influence than "randomize" algorithms, but most computer attempts to make music human fail because they do not understand how humans express and understand music. You are on the right track when you say the best way to humanize a performance is to have a human make it in real time and not to let the computer align it to abstract boundaries by quantizing. Although midi is nominally a measure-beat way of recording a performance, there are enough ticks in a beat in applications like Sonar to allow very fine resolution of a performance in real time. In effect is a real time recording with practically inaudible quantization. The problem comes when we try to impose a computer fix for a human error. In that case, we can easily end up with a performance that sounds like a machine did it.

Heh, most useful forum ever.