A video tutorial on humanization?

Now that the key editor (in both play mode and write mode) has seen huge improvements, it could be a fun idea to show in a video tutorial how to actually use the features of the key editor to somewhat convincingly ‘humanize’ a short and simple piano piece, say.

The following aspects would be of particular interest to me:

  1. How to use the tempo track to create a subtle tempo rubato.
  2. How to use the note duration editing feature to create different gradations of legato and staccato.
  3. How to use the velocity editor (or some dynamics CC channel for anything that’s not a piano) to create somewhat realistic nuances of dynamics (especially in the voicing of chords).

Of course, this whole subject of humanization doesn’t really belong to the essential feature set or purpose of Dorico. It belongs more to art than to the technical details of a piece of software. Still, as someone who (due to a physical inability to play any real-life musical instrument) is entirely reliant on Dorico to get my music across, I really think it would be nice to see how Dorico could be used to improve on the standard VST ‘robot sound’. (I know there’s NotePerformer, but while it does give decent performance out-of-the-box, especially woodwinds and brass, I’d really like to be able to tweak its output here and there.) I imagine that there are other composers (mostly amateurs probably) in a similar situation.

Thanks for reading!

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I agree, I think this would be a great subject for one of John’s Discover Dorico sessions, and I will pass it on to him.

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Thanks a ton, Daniel!

Hi @kimfierens - I’ll give this some thought, thank you for the suggestion.
There is a bit of tweaking playback in Play mode (tempo, played note positions etc) in the First Steps guide (from page 73 in the PDF version) but that is also of course based on v3.5 so it would be good to do something using v4.

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Many thanks for taking it into consideration, John!

I’d also be interested to see tutorials on playback tweaking, and how to combine Dorico + a DAW (like LPX or Ableton) to create polished virtual instrument performances

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Fantastic idea. I put my piano compositions and arrangements on youtube, I can play quite well but sometimes I need to be note perfect, eg playing ragtime and stride piano where the left hand needs to be both fast AND accurate and although my efforts at making it realistic have improved slowly, At the end of the day they are just mock ups but that’s what Dorico is for and I would appreciate greatly some top level advice as to the possibilities.
Thanks Daniel