ChordMeloMelody Generator
Chapter 30About 2 minAll chapters

Velocity and timing — why programming sounds mechanical

Break up the strength and the placement slightly and identical notes start sounding like a performance.

The same notes played by a person and entered by mouse sound different. The difference is not pitch; it is strength and position. Touch those and it comes alive.

Part six closes with craft rather than theory: taking what you have written and moving it towards a human performance in the DAW.

What does "flat programming" mean?

Every note at the same strength, exactly on the grid. It is correct as notation, but no human plays that way — strength and placement vary slightly every time, so anything this even reads as a machine.

Break up the strength and the placement, slightly.

Velocity gives it dynamics

MIDI stores how hard each note is struck as a number from 1 to 127: velocity. Keeping the same pitches and the same rhythm, making the beats stronger and the off-beats weaker already creates expression. Compare the two rows below — bar height is velocity.

  • Flat (all the same strength)
  • With dynamics (strong on the beat)
The same eight notes. Bar height is velocity: even on top, beats emphasised underneath.Buttons and keys in the diagrams play sound. Check your volume first.

The second one feels like it is moving forward. No pitch and no rhythm changed — only numbers did.

In plain wordsVelocity

How hard MIDI says a note is struck, from 1 to 127. On many instruments it changes tone as well as volume.

Nudge the placement

Perfectly on the grid sounds stiff. Shifting notes by a few ticks — a few milliseconds — moves it towards a played feel. A DAW's "humanize" function automates exactly this.

  • On the grid (dynamics only)
  • Nudged (off-beats late)
Identical dynamics; the lower row has its off-beats nudged slightly late. The horizontal offset is the timing shift.Buttons and keys in the diagrams play sound. Check your volume first.

About a tenth of a note's length is plenty. Beyond that it stops sounding like feel and starts sounding like bad playing.

From ChordMelo into a DAW

  1. Generate a melody in ChordMelo and save the MIDI.
  2. Import it into your DAW. Melody and accompaniment come out as separate tracks.
  3. Rearrange the accompaniment by register using the procedure in chapter 29.
  4. Set velocities: stronger on the beat, weaker off it.
  5. Nudge only the off-beats a few ticks late.
  6. If a note sounds wrong, suspect the clash from chapter 27.

Theory and programming are separate skills, and neither alone produces a track. The rest of part six will cover diminished chords and the tritone, the three minor scales, and how to decide structure and length.

Generate a melody, save the MIDI, and go edit velocity and timing in your DAW. The same notes turn into something else.

Generate a melody and save the MIDI
The one thing to remember

Identical velocities on exact grid positions is what sounds mechanical. Strong on the beat, off-beats slightly late.

Quick review

Everything here is answerable from this chapter. Pick an option and the answer appears straight away.

  1. Question 1

    What is "flat programming"?

  2. Question 2

    How do you move towards a played feel?