# Humanizing Drums In Cubase 5



## Yo_Wattup (Mar 15, 2013)

A member inboxed me asking how I go about humanizing midi drums, so instead of just replying to him, I thought I'd make a thread for everyone to see. 

Note this is for Cubase 5 only, if you have another DAW, I can't help you, sorry. 

Okay lets start...

Go into MIDI>Logical editor... 
In here you can set a bunch of stuff to happen automatically, its quite a powerful tool, and the main reason I don't use Presonus Studio One (which I otherwise love), but it takes a bit of tech/programming skill sometimes, so I'll just show you what I do...

This is what I do for random velocities between 95 and 120






And here's the result in the Midi editor window





Note in the logical editor you can change the velocities to whatever you want. If you are in the midi editor window, Press ctrl+a to select all the midi notes before you go into the logical editor window, or, you can select only the snare to be random and leave the kick drum at 128, maybe set a wider randomization range for the hihat, do whatever you want...

But heres where most of the humanizing happens,





What this does is randomizes the positions of each midi note or 'un-quantize' ever so slightly. This effect is most noticable on double-kick runs where a snare and kick would usually be hit at the same time. You will now be able to hear the individual hits ever so slightly out of time with each other. You can also adjust the randomness values for this, I have them set at -8 and +8. Perhaps you could place them further apart (-10, +10) for a slow, rocky song, or closer (-4, +4) for some tighter sounding death metal blasts. Generally slower = looser, faster = tighter.

Here's what it looks like in the midi editor window





And here's what both effects look like together 





A bit better than the original, right?






And that's basically it. Of course programming drums will never sound as real/good as a real drummer. But I find that this method gives my mixes life and a bit of realism, when I don't have access to a session drummer (my solo stuff) . I hope I've helped someone today! If you have any questions feel free to ask.


----------



## Metalus (Mar 25, 2013)

Any quantizing tips?


----------



## Yo_Wattup (Mar 25, 2013)

Metalus said:


> Any quantizing tips?



What do you mean?


----------



## Larcher (Mar 25, 2013)

hey, when I try to change the values in the logical editor, it doesn't let me use numbers, so it changes them to B5 and C8 ?


----------



## Yo_Wattup (Mar 25, 2013)

Larcher said:


> hey, when I try to change the values in the logical editor, it doesn't let me use numbers, so it changes them to B5 and C8 ?



Action target should be value 2


----------



## Larcher (Mar 25, 2013)

sweet dude! thanks


----------



## MailMan (Mar 27, 2013)

Very useful, thanks!


----------



## Santuzzo (Mar 29, 2013)

Thanks!

This is awesome! I never even knew until now what the logical editor was.....

How can I set the velocity randomization to only affect a particular MIDI note (like the C1 for example)?


----------



## Sean Conklin (Mar 29, 2013)

Helpful post dude!


----------



## Yo_Wattup (Mar 29, 2013)

Santuzzo said:


> Thanks!
> 
> This is awesome! I never even knew until now what the logical editor was.....
> 
> How can I set the velocity randomization to only affect a particular MIDI note (like the C1 for example)?



Just highlight that row of notes (click and drag) when you're in the midi editor. Easiest when fully zoomed out.  

One thing I think that benefits from really inconsistent velocities is the ride cymbal. At least in metal, you can still tend to hear the lower velocities just fine. About 60-110 randomization is a good starting point.


----------



## Santuzzo (Mar 30, 2013)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Just highlight that row of notes (click and drag) when you're in the midi editor. Easiest when fully zoomed out.
> 
> One thing I think that benefits from really inconsistent velocities is the ride cymbal. At least in metal, you can still tend to hear the lower velocities just fine. About 60-110 randomization is a good starting point.



Thanks a lot!

Would I be able to use different randomization this way on different parts of the drums?


----------



## Yo_Wattup (Mar 30, 2013)

Santuzzo said:


> Thanks a lot!
> 
> Would I be able to use different randomization this way on different parts of the drums?



Absolutely


----------



## Santuzzo (Mar 30, 2013)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Absolutely



Thanks a lot! This is golden! I will experiment with this


----------

