How to make beats sound less mechanical?

I'm new to Maschine, and have made a few beats, but they sound too harsh.

I've played with the swing feature, and delay, but still sounds like someone turning a switch on and off. It just doesn't sound like a person playing an instrument.

Any suggestions?

thanks

 

hard to tell without listening to your stuff , gimme a link , if its not minimal or dr n bass , perhaps i can help

 

My thoughts:

If your primary focus is a drum track that sounds like a real drummer playing, get another plug-in or record a real drummer.

I use Maschine (it has this name for a reason) because i want exactly the timing it has, which is very useful for rap music for example.

 

Thanks for responding. I dont' have a link. But basically if you choose any kit and make a beat. Each note/sound doesn't seem to decay very well. It seems to end just as hard as it started. Like I said its like someone turning a switch on and off.

I don't mean mechanical like the timing always being exact.

Its hard to discribe. I don't have a musical background.

Maschine is giving me BOOM BOOM BOOM when I want BOOm BOOm BOOm..

Does that make sense?

thanks
---

A real drummer defeats the purpose of having Maschine, but I understand what you mean.

I'm sure there is a way to get what I want out of maschine, its just my ignorance of how to use it.

I've got BOOM BOOM BOOM and I want BOOm BOOm BOOm.
there doesn't seem to be any fade / decay in each sound/note.

thanks

 

play with the adr settings and prolong the decay, make sure your sounds aren't in a "choke" group and cutting each other off.

try turning off the input quantize, you can leave the grid on if you want, but grid plus input quantize gives a robotic feel in my opnion

to turn that off go to the pad button, you'll see a quantize mode, it will say RECORD by default, that means it's quantizing everything you record

let us know if any of those things help

 

ok , when you have a drum sound , press button 5 for src , there are several pages with adjustments for the sound , on page 2 u can set the type from "one shot" to "ahd" or "adsr" , so now u have instant real time acess to the attack , decay, hold parameter.
check that

hi saintjoe , parrallel post

 

(very) small quantisation + nudge function can inject some "groove"

 

this is very helpful. thanks to all!

I'll give a shot tonight!

 

Altering the velocity of the hits helps a bit.

 

thanks.

I'll give all the suggestions a try tonight.

Hopefully a combo of most of these suggestions will work.

I'm trying to get a good reggae beat going but so far it doesn't seem to have any "soul"..

 

I turn off the grid and then I add some drums (not the kick)
When drums are not on the right position, I select them and quantize 50 %, or press the quantize 50% button twice or three times

 

How does this work with sounds cutting each other off?

 

sounds applied into one voice group (sound , src , page 1) cut each other off in a monophone way , didn 't know that one ?
or did i get the question wrong ?
:S

 

There are 2 ways to make sounds cut each other off.

1) Go to group page 1/2, and set polyphony=1
2) Go to sound page 1/5, and set group= 1 to 8, for example if you want an open and closed hihat to cut each other off, put them in the same group

and if you are using "sounds" in the context of instruments/ sliced files in the same map, select mono.

 

^^^ that be it

 

Could someone explain possible uses of using method #1 (setting polyphony to '1')?
I played with this but not much seemed to happen.

Thanks!

 

there are 2 steps needed to do this.... step 1 and 2

it means that sound will only pla one note at a time. if another sound also set to 1 note and also in the same group - lets say group 1 - that is how you get the choking effect. try it with hihats.

sowari

 

The only way to make it sound natural is to actually record while you're playin'.
You have to play the pads like you play a real drum. That needs experience you don't have if you never actually played drums.
When you play the hihats for example, you don't want every note to sound the same. Normally when you play 1/16 notes you accentuate 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. So they are more present. You press the pads harder on that notes while playin'. Also there's a feature in the SRC section i think where you can find a setting (don't know how it's called right now) which alternates the sound a little. This is a great feature for notes that are repeated and are very close together.
This is just an example.
In a rhythmic pattern you accentuate every drum-hit in a different position in that pattern differently.
Another example would be the bass drum. Say you wanted to have a pattern like 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4 and on 16/16. So you'd get a pattern like
tuff...tuff...tuff...tuff..tutuff and so on. Then the last note on 16/16 would be maybe only half as loud as the one on 1 2 3 and 4.
If you never played drums and wanna get to know that just listen to some classic rock tracks or even better some jazz. There you'll hear the accentuation of different notes the best.

I know it's hard to explain. And I don't even know if you can imagine what I'm sayin' but I hope I could help you.
If you can't get it right with recording the patterns live you can also change the note vaelocity in the sequencer where it says full and half in the left screen in sequencer mode.

If you record patterns live and it's not close enough to the beat (you don't want it exactly on beat either) then you can play around with the quantize 50% feture and see if it gets you to what you want.

Now have fun and just play around a little more.

 

u could also put some beat delay on the snare and the kicks as well and try to play around with the offset ect . , try it with (for reggae) fx presets like dub delay or ping pong to get an impression .....
still ,....getting that certain "soul " on tracks is a tough one with computer produced tracks and in my opinion theres more to it than natural drums....... but sure it starts with that ....

 

beatdelay and stuff like that aren't that useful b/c they change every note not just certain ones. so you have a delay everytime that note is played which still won't give you a natural sounding result where every note just sounds a little different.

As pawcut says....there won't be soul in your beats if you don't bring that soul in there...manually by playin it