I see it’s now possible to randomize velocity of a MIDI event. Happy Dance…Happy Dance!
Now my question is. What is the best value (0 - 100) to use for realism?
Hi,
For the realism, the best value is to record it.
It depends on the instrument, musical style, player style/interpretation, compression level… There is no the best value.
it’s going to depend on what you are randomizing but I find this makes a massive difference for drum programming. guys will listen to my drums & be impressed with the swing but what is really making he magic happen is tiny randomization of the velocity. For drums I usually use between 3-7% variation. very slight but makes a big difference & no machine gun effect.
Also since we can now set the probability of a particular Note playing or not, creating low velocity ghost Notes that only occasionally play adds a lot of realism to a drum part.
I’d think for randomizing Velocities you’d generally want the range to be significantly smaller than the average-ish difference between accented & unaccented Notes.
Don’t forget to randomise position, too, just by a smidgen. And bring the snare forward for some edginess, or push it back for a laid back feel.
I made templates for the LINN / MPC60 quantizations. It took my a long time to understand swing because it isn’t ever spelled out directly anywhere. so if you aren’t familiar, with say 1/16 note swing you are adjusting between straight 1/16 notes & 1/16 notes triplets - the larger the swing setting the more you swing towards triplets as 100% swing would be triplets.
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Since we’re on the subject of randomizing MIDI velocity, how do you guys go about it? I mean, for me it’s easier to program-in the “top of the bell curve” velocity let’s say, the baseline, the natural, initial state of a phrase or rhythm.
But, I see that velocity randomization works in positive and negative percentages, so it seems to demand from me that I work from the extremes of the dynamic spectrum.
Is there a way to have this randomization be bipolar around the initial velocity?
Hi,
No, this is not possible in the current implementation.
Your MIDI Note Velocity is the Min Velocity Limit and you can Randomize up by the value amount, or your MIDI Note Velocity is the Max Velocity Limit and you can Randomize down by the value amount.
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I may be misunderstanding this question, but this is one of my presets. Value2 is Velocity. I use fixed values, rather than percentages.
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Hi,
Yes, it does the trick.
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Yes, that’s how it’s done with the LE, I was wondering about the Controller Lane method.
What’s the “Controller Lane” method?
The same way the Key Editor sports lanes for velocity, articulations/dynamics, CCs etc, there’s now two lanes for velocity randomization and probability for an event to sound. I don’t even know what to call it, I just wrote “controller lane method” and counted on crystal balls doing their thing.
Ahem!
But I understand now. 
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i almost always play my parts whether its drums or synth or whatever. i normalize the midi to all about the velocity that I want. then go midi, velocity, & use the variation tool & set a variation percentage.
one more trick on drum programming with groove agent is slight bit of pitch randomization can be incredible especially on snares.
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Sometimes I split my Kick into 2 tracks.
For example,
- Kick track 1 has all the hits on a 1 and a 3. And those hits have a higher middle velocity, plus small randomizations.
- Kick track 2 has all other potential hits. Lower middle velocity, plus small randomizations.
Add hit probabilities to taste for each of the 2 tracks. But those are more problematic when trying to emulate a human drummer, since a great drummer doesn’t truly randomize hits that much. But high randomization of hit probability works well to emulate a really bad drummer. 
Analogous for Snare tracks. Except I split off the 2 and the 4 hits into a separate track.
Arguably one could do something analogous for many other drum instruments by separating out the important “feel” marker hits from less important filler hits.
p.s. Stylus RMX has quite a bit of potential for applying different modifiers to downbeats vs backbeats etc. But it works on a sliced loop metaphor, so not easily hijacked into MIDI drums.
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