Does the groove sound unbearably horrible? Not at all – but it could certainly sound more convincing! Let’s start by taking a look at our velocity values. Note that in this tutorial, we’re not equating ‘humanization’ with ‘swing’ – rather, we’re going to walk through three subtle techniques that can go a long way with both straight and swung grooves.Īs a starting point, we’ll be using this simple unhumanized groove (performed by one of Logic Pro X’s built-in drum kits):Īs you can see, the velocity values of all the MIDI notes are unwaveringly uniform, everything is perfectly lined up to the grid, and the hi-hats look as though they’ve just been copied-and-pasted indefinitely. Not all grooves need to sound like they were performed by a human, but there are numerous musical contexts where you would want your software instruments to sound as realistic as possible. If you find yourself seeing the latter, you’ve come to the right place – in this article, we’ll explore strategies that will help you humanize your MIDI drum sequences.

Illustration: Daniel Zender When you close your eyes and listen to your MIDI drums, do you envision a drummer playing the groove, or your DAW punching out audio samples?

How to make midi sound real