sequencing techniques

[karen]

I would like for any body who has experience with sequencing share his/her thoughts on this. I'm sure lots of us will find this helpful. I want the focus of it to be on keyboard sounds and facilities primarily, unless you think that there's a need to mention something else that would help to make the point.

What sort of things could improve the quality of a midi sequence and make it sound more real and less keyboardish? Even for making styles this could be good to know. May be not so much for Vars, but what about Intros and Endings? Some of them that are long sound almost like a short song.

[Rob Sherratt]

Hi Karen,

One method is not to sequence from scratch because it can take a long time to get good rhythm and bass tracks laid down.

You may like to first use the "backing sequence / quick record" to lay down a style based accompaniment. Focus on playing the chords, intro, fills etc corrctly at the correct time for the song you are laying down. Don't play any solos at this time !

You probably won't want to use all the ACC1, ACC2, ACC3 tracks. But don't delete them, just mute them or edit them later. Keep the drum, percussion and bass tracks and you can do any custom tweaking later.

Then go back and record the lead and and harmony into unused tracks using "Multitrack sequencer" in overdub mode.

Once you have something pretty good, you may like to then export everything to a PC-based sequencer to make the final changes. The reason for doing most of the work on the Pa keyboard first is how quickly you can build your song and there is no latency when you are overdubbing.

Best regards,
Rob

[BasariStudios]

Hi Karen and Rob,
Rob explained it good and he is right, especially if its something new to you.
Sequencing doesnt only require Technical knowledge, it requires a lot of
musical skills, in other words you have to be a Drummer and a Bass Guitar
player too and think like one when you sequence. When creating Acoustic
stuff try to avoid Quantize as much as possible. Talking bout being a Drummer,
programming Drums is one of the heaviest and most complicated tasks since
not many Keyboard players are Drummers, some of us have the gift to
understand drums even without being a Drummer. Once you start programming
Drums you have to start thinking like a Drummer, whats possible and whats not.
Everyone has a different approach to sequencing. I personally program everything
from scratch but i've been doing it for over 10 years and also i can play Drums
to a point so its a little easier for me. Another thing is that programming in
the synth itself or programming on a computer sequencer is 2 different worlds,
none is better, they are just different deppending on what you are used to.
If someone tells you Computer is easier then Synth they are wrong, nothing
is easier, just different. I personally any single style i create i do it 100%
completely on the synth, FROM SCRATCH, Korg or Ketron but...
i dont know anything about sequencing on M3 or TRITON since i never used
them, all i do is sequence everything on a Computer Sequencer.
Everything is different, habit and way of experience.

[Rob Sherratt]

Hello again Karen and Nedim,

I'm the first to say that Nedim's level of musical skill far exceeds mine. Nedim is a professional musician, recording artist and a serious investor in the Marlborough cigarette company. I am an amateur musician, a professional engineer and product developer, and I recently gave up smoking.

So, if I really wanted to provide MIDI song tracks of a sufficiently high standard to compete with those produced by Nedim, then I would certainly hire a good drummer who has a set of MIDI V-drums or similar and who was a Malborough cigarette smoker. I would initially prepare all the other tracks using the method I descibed in my previous mesage. If there were any very difficult keyboard parts that I could not play myself, then I would also hire a more competent musician than me to play them. Then I would mute the style-based rhythm tracks and I would record the drummer doing his/her own thing, while at the same time turning on the room extractor fan.

I just don't think it is possible for any keyboard player (even Nedim ?) to "play" drum and "percussion" patterns using the keys on the keyboard. It always sounds dreadful! Far better to stick to the built in styles. Or ....

... take a look at the MIDI drum and rhythm loops available from companies such as "smartloops". These have been recorded from MIDI drums played by skilled drummers.

http://www.smartloops.com/

You can build up a library of drum patterns "played live" in this way. Then using a PC or MAC based sequencer you can "swap out" the style based rhythm tracks for customised rhythm tracks using the resources in the library. There is a "humanise" quantize function in the quantise menu of most sequencers including the Pa-series that can then be used to provide some random timing changes to prevent it being too obvious that certain rhythm bars are cloned.

Hope this helps, and that I've not given away too many of Nedim's secrets

Best regards,
Rob

[BasariStudios]

There is no hiding of secrets Rob, its just i am too lazy to type a LOT, LOL.

[Lee]

Karen,
Thanks for asking this...it is very interesting. I also want to make sequences and new styles too.
In my case I want to use pre-recorded MIDI sequences to build styles and in some cases, like you I want to build sequences from scratch.

Maybe during the holday I will get some time to begin.

Rob, Nedim, thanks guys it helps a lot....when I get into it, I may be calling on you also.

The one thing missing with the Korg is song specific styles..Yamaha has tons of these (lots of third party ones too), so it would be nice for us all to begin to generate a lot of these on our own.

I'm not sure how hard it will be, but if a few start out and share the techniques...maybe we all can do some...then share with everyone??

I hope some at least have the interest??

Lee

[Rob Sherratt]

Hi Lee,

Salvatore Mirabile is the expert on making Korg Pa1x series styles. He needs a Pa800 though. Rikkisbears and Dreamer are also very good at it. I've made a few styles but don't think they were very good musically. I get on better sequencing songs using the "cheats" I wrote about above.

Regards,
Rob

[Sam CA]

Karen,
I agree with 2 of the comments made already for sure:

It's going to help you a lot if you use the styles and record your sequence first. Then you'll have a template that has a shape and form. Then you can modify tracks at your own pace. Otherwise you'd have no clue where to start, since you havent' done this before.

How to make it sound more realistic???

You can't do this, until you understand how the real instrument sounds like. For example, if you add pitch bend to a piano sound, that's going to sound out of character immediately. Trumpets never use Vibrato in fast notes, but only in considerably slow solo passages. French horn and Clarinets use very very little vibrato in orchestra, so if you're doing an orchestral mock up , think about that. You have to watch your "REPEATED NOTES", because it's very important that you learn how to handle those. I talked about "MACHINE GUN EFFECT" and how to minimize that while ago. If not handled with care, it spoils every thing. Never use the same velocity all the way through, it's so not musical. A drummer for example, never hits the hi hats,snares....with the same amount of force. So you have to program your velocity values some times one by one. It's a painstaking process. Don't quantize your midi events to death. I wouldn't go beyond 75 %. If you need to go beyond that, then your track is really bad and you have to do another take. Some times you don't need to quantize everything. Some times, if you just make your kick drum solid and in time, everything else sounds good. Pay attention to the general understanding of the style ....if it's a jazz song, listen to some jazz tracks and get a feel for it. Learn about the placement of instruments, articulations ....you can't play a Violin track all the way with one articulation. it's not possible in million years. Try to use different patches that are assigned to different articulations if available. For example, don't use your basic string sound to make Tremolo ..use a Tremolo patch for that...

[TANIA]

Karen,
I agree with 2 of the comments made already for sure:

It's going to help you a lot if you use the styles and record your sequence first. Then you'll have a template that has a shape and form. Then you can modify tracks at your own pace. Otherwise you'd have no clue where to start, since you havent' done this before.

How to make it sound more realistic???

You can't do this, until you understand how the real instrument sounds like. For example, if you add pitch bend to a piano sound, that's going to sound out of character immediately. Trumpets never use Vibrato in fast notes, but only in considerably slow solo passages. French horn and Clarinets use very very little vibrato in orchestra, so if you're doing an orchestral mock up , think about that. You have to watch your "REPEATED NOTES", because it's very important that you learn how to handle those. I talked about "MACHINE GUN EFFECT" and how to minimize that while ago. If not handled with care, it spoils every thing. Never use the same velocity all the way through, it's so not musical. A drummer for example, never hits the hi hats,snares....with the same amount of force. So you have to program your velocity values some times one by one. It's a painstaking process. Don't quantize your midi events to death. I wouldn't go beyond 75 %. If you need to go beyond that, then your track is really bad and you have to do another take. Some times you don't need to quantize everything. Some times, if you just make your kick drum solid and in time, everything else sounds good. Pay attention to the general understanding of the style ....if it's a jazz song, listen to some jazz tracks and get a feel for it. Learn about the placement of instruments, articulations ....you can't play a Violin track all the way with one articulation. it's not possible in million years. Try to use different patches that are assigned to different articulations if available. For example, don't use your basic string sound to make Tremolo ..use a Tremolo patch for that...

Assyrian, i don't understand what you mean by "Articulations". Do you mind...?

[karen]

if you're doing an orchestral mock up , think about that. You have to watch your "REPEATED NOTES", because it's very important that you learn how to handle those. I talked about "MACHINE GUN EFFECT" and how to minimize that while ago...

I had saved that thread on my computer,because i found it very interesting. For anybody who's interested:

"It's known as "Gun Machine Effect", because it almost sounds like it, when you have "fast repeated notes" in the lower range. Especially sounds like Timpani, orchestral sounds ..etc. You can solve the problem if you're using a sound library, but you'd be more limited with keyboards. There are a few tricks that you can use. Try randomizing those repeated notes as much as you can. Make sure they have different values of velocities, that's gonna help a lot depending on the velocity layers available per sound. Then you can randomize the length of the notes by very very small amounts. If you still hear some problems, use the pitch wheel to randomize the pitch of the problematic notes " by small amounts" It'll sound a lot better if you do these."

[nikola81]

It's the way how the real instrument is played, for example to be aware that woodwind and brass instruments cannot play too long (the guy has to breathe sometimes) or you can't make too fast contrabass lines or a polyphonic flute lines with one flute.

[Martinkorg]

It's the way how the real instrument is played, for example to be aware that woodwind and brass instruments cannot play too long (the guy has to breathe sometimes) or you can't make too fast contrabass lines or a polyphonic flute lines with one flute.

Yep! That will make your flute sound like a piano.

[Martinkorg]

if you're doing an orchestral mock up , think about that. You have to watch your "REPEATED NOTES", because it's very important that you learn how to handle those. I talked about "MACHINE GUN EFFECT" and how to minimize that while ago...

I had saved that thread on my computer,because i found it very interesting. For anybody who's interested:

"It's known as "Gun Machine Effect", because it almost sounds like it, when you have "fast repeated notes" in the lower range. Especially sounds like Timpani, orchestral sounds ..etc. You can solve the problem if you're using a sound library, but you'd be more limited with keyboards. There are a few tricks that you can use. Try randomizing those repeated notes as much as you can. Make sure they have different values of velocities, that's gonna help a lot depending on the velocity layers available per sound. Then you can randomize the length of the notes by very very small amounts. If you still hear some problems, use the pitch wheel to randomize the pitch of the problematic notes " by small amounts" It'll sound a lot better if you do these."

Most soft samplers have dedicated features for this. It's one of the worst effects and also hard to get rid of.

[Sam CA]

It's the way how the real instrument is played, for example to be aware that woodwind and brass instruments cannot play too long (the guy has to breathe sometimes) or you can't make too fast contrabass lines or a polyphonic flute lines with one flute.

yeah man. That's a very popular mistake that most beginners make. You have to make room for breathing/bowing at the end of the phrase. If it's just a keyboard sequence i don't bother, but if i'm doing a studio work with sample libraries, I record myself breathing as if i'm playing a wind instrument , and i do it in different speeds. Then i import those into the session and add them sparingly and carefully throughout in the proper places. It adds realism to the wind instrument like you can't believe.

Like Nikola said , you can't have a chordal phrase with a flute. If you have to , that means that you have more than 1 flute player in your sequence. You MUST have different midi tracks for that. If available, you must use different patches that are close in timber, and also pan them differently. Pay attention to the voicing. If one is playing the melody , and the other one plays the harmony, don't let the sub take over the dominant, so you got some volume/velocity balancing to do. Same thing for Violin I and Violin II. Use a fatter sound for Violin I, and a smaller sound for Violin II section. Make sure to put the Violin II behind violin ...

[karen]

Like Nikola said , you can't have a chordal phrase with a flute. If you have to , that means that you have more than 1 flute player in your sequence. You MUST have different midi tracks for that. If available, you must use different patches that are close in timber, and also pan them differently. Pay attention to the voicing. If one is playing the melody , and the other one plays the harmony, don't let the sub take over the dominant, so you got some volume/velocity balancing to do. Same thing for Violin I and Violin II. Use a fatter sound for Violin I, and a smaller sound for Violin II section. Make sure to put the Violin II behind violin ...

None of the wood winds, brass string, and percussion instruments can play chords? Exept guitar of course.