Humanizing pitch (cent-values / not semitones) on a MIDI-track level

Good evening.
Building a massive template right now. Hundres of MIDI tracks, but of course no events on the tracks yet. In the inspector I found the random transposition function in MIDI-parameters (I’m translating the menu names from German Nuendo, hope it makes sense) but I can’t enter decimal numbers like 0.15 to create subtle pitch humanization/variation with lets say +/- 15cents.
I’m on Nuendo 12 actually. Is there an easy way to achieve this
for (still empty) MIDI-tracks (not within clips, this is a blank template).
I say “easy way” bc I have to repeat this like 100 times or so :wink:
Thanks in advance!

oh and it should NOT be something like “LFO moving the pitchbend”. Not looking for constantly changing wonky sounds.
It’s an orchestral template and I just wanna humanize the pitch of staccato notes a bit (some of my staccatto patches come without round robins unfortunately).
Thanks!

I think that the midi insert Micro Tuner can do what you need:

Thank you MC!
unfortunately this just offers a static micro de-tuning.
I need a permanently changing solution with a little randomness (image repeating the same staccato note), the so called anti-machinegun-mode.
But: not AFTER the performance (manipulating afterwards on on a clip/event level) but more like a “pre-setting” influencing all MIDI-notes played on that particular MIDI track.

I’m not sure, you’re understanding MIDI quite right.

MIDI isn’t audible. It’s merely a set of commands given to instruments - like sheet music is a way of given instructions to musicians, who actually make the sounds.

And in MIDI, the note message can only give commands at note level. And to give a MIDI command to apply slight variations to pitch, one uses MIDI pitch bend messages.

MIDI pitchbend can be applied very subtle or very strong. That is generally a setting (pitch bend range) in the instrument. Some instruments default that setting to 24 notes (2 octaves) which means even small pitch bend messages trigger large pitch changes.

But setting the pitch bend range of the instrument to 1 makes pitch bend changes become very subtle.

I’m sure you didn’t understand me quite right.
I make it more precise so you understand it better: It should not be an LFO (like a sinus LFO) that is PERMANENTLY moving/shifting the pitchbend value.

I described pretty detailled what I wanna achieve:
Something on the midi-track level (not within individual automation) that changes the pitch(bend). it should only be a “subtle pitch variation, every single time a new note plays” (and not shifting WHILE that particular note plays) automatically like a subtle shift around +/-15 cents randomly changing with each new note.

I am a bit surprised that my question was so unclear. Not a native speaker here.
I did my best describing that i’m trying to avoid “machine gunning” on a staccato note without round robins. I don’t think I can make it clearer than that.

If you know the solution and you could help: I’d appreciate it.
Thanks in advance.

I think folks understand what you are asking. What they are saying is that the only mechanism in MIDI that lets you fine tune pitch is Pitchbend - that’s the only tool in the toolbox. So either you sort out a way to get PB to do what you want or you don’t do it.

Maybe use this as the reason/excuse to get a better library. I know that’s exactly what I’d do (perhaps I’ve been seeing too many sale ads lately).

I’m sorry that I misinterpreted what you were trying to say.


Maybe you can get closer to what you want by using a MIDI Insert called Transformer to insert small random MIDI pitchbend events at the beginning of each note?

Something like this?


One trick is to work around that the Transformer isn’t smart enough to use the full 14 bit range of MIDI Pitchbend values, but restricts itself to the 7 bit range of 0-127.
So the zero point of the Pitch bend is either 63 or 64 (I think - but I didn’t test it).
So to get small Pitchbend randomization, maybe let it randomize between values just a little under 63 and a little over 64.


p.s. While testing I used the MIDI Insert MIDI Monitor to see what Pitchbend events were created and it ended up looking a little like this:

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thanks raino. that’s pretty much my question, with other words: “is there a way” to do this (automatically as a general setup for a particular MIDI-track).
Lets see, there’s still a tiny bit of hope that sb could share an idea :slight_smile:
Just switched to Nuendo not a long time ago so I’m far from knowing every detail of the given midi-possiblities so I still wonder if there might be a solution for this