Velocity and Humanising
Velocity and tiny timing offsets give a programmed part its breath back.
Related
Velocity sets how loud and how hard a note sounds; humanising scatters velocity and timing that have become too even.
The problem
A programmed chord hits every note with the same weight and sounds like a slab. In real playing the melody outweighs the accompaniment, strong beats outweigh weak ones, and the notes of one chord are not perfectly simultaneous.
How it works
MIDI velocity is an integer from 1 to 127, mapped by the instrument to loudness and brightness; low velocity carries less high frequency. Humanise tools randomise velocity and attack within a range. Randomness fixes over-tidiness, not accent logic.
Settings and practice
Draw a velocity curve, keeping melody notes ten to twenty above the accompaniment. Add three to five on strong beats and subtract the same on weak ones. Limit timing shifts to plus or minus five to fifteen milliseconds and leave kick and snare nearly fixed. Quantise before humanising, or the offsets get pulled back.
What to listen for
Hear whether accents land where they should, not whether randomness exists. Repeat one chord four times and follow the weight of each pass.
Common misunderstandings
Humanising is not a real performance; maximum settings simply create another machine. Velocity is not only volume, since it changes timbre too.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- MIDI 力度与音源响度、音色的映射关系，依 MIDI 规范核查，未抄文本
- 人性化时差与力度范围的操作惯例，依数字音频工作流通识核查，未抄文本
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.