Recording midi files

Please forgive my ignorance on this topic. Can anything be done to make midi tracks sound less fake? Can the midi drums for example be replaced with audio loops? Could other midi instruments be replaced with virtual instruments? I’m asking because I have some midi files that I made and I want to record the midi files and vocals in a professional studio and I’d like the tracks to sound as natural as possible. Before I start calling studios I’d like to be able to communicate what it is that I want. What (if any) software should I ask to get my midis to sound more natural?

Thank you in advance

Hello.

The possibility of what you can do to improve the sound is endless, but ultimately it boils down to the tools YOU have to work with if your the one wanting to enhance the sound.

I often get people coming to my Studio wanting to sing covers of songs or just looking for backing tracks. What I do is buy the songs in midi file format, then delete all the GM/GS compatibility from them and remap everything on a KORG OASYS to make the most from that Keyboard.

It's not just a matter of picking better sounds either, the effects play a major roll in the quality. Putting a compressor on the drum track for example makes the drums pack a good punch.

What keyboards have you to work with ?

I do offer the service of taking midi files in and giving them back to the clients as Wave files performed on an KORG OASYS, so if that's something you would like to avail of, it only costs 20 Euro a song.

Regards
James

Bottom line is, if they don't sound very good on what you created them on, odds are they won't sound THAT much better on anything else. 90% of it still comes from the PERFORMANCE... Does it have dynamics, does it have impact, does it sound brilliant already? Is the playing stellar? An undynamic, uninspired part through the best samples in the world sounds no better.

And most modern MOTL and upwards arrangers are capable of sounding quite fabulous in the right hands. I would try to make sure that what you already have sequenced knocks your socks off first, before I went in a studio and spent hard earned cash...

Sampled loops are OK, but they suffer from seldom having Intros, Endings, even Fills that are appropriate to your song. And they have to be matched VERY carefully to the groove of the SMF (or vice versa) or they sound tacked on. There is no 'magic bullet' that will turn something you are dissatisfied with into something amazingly better. It's a long and slow process to integrate a variety of 'replacement' samples into something cohesive. And if the part in the first place sucks, it is pretty much impossible...

Thanks guys- I have a tyros 2. I don't think my midi files suck, but I don't think they sound like a real band either. I'm hoping that some effects as James suggested and perhaps using additional sound sources will make the tracks sound better.

I'm kind of debating of maybe just playing styles from my T2 rather than midi files. To my ears the styles sound more natural and I could always overdub the extra parts.

How do you guys record your music (assuming you don't a live band) Styles? SMF? Something else?

Hi Montunoman:

Thanks for bringing up this topic. My question is aimed at James (IrishActs).

Do you know of a source for better sounding instruments (especially a dobro) to be used in certain types of songs (country, bluegrass, western, etc.) and "kicked-in" via multi-pads? My need for more country sounding guitars, banjos, etc. is important to me. I use a Yamaha PSR-2000, never perform in public and record into a digital recorder using only one track. I do my volume edits and tweaks after the WAV file is ported to the PC using editing software.

Thanks in advance,

Dave Rice
http://www.ShowCaseYourMusic.com/DaveRice

Hi David.



Not sure what you mean by that at all. There's an AKAI S1000 (2CD) Format library called Whole Lotta Country which pretty much contains all the sounds your after.

Not sure where you can buy it now, and looking at this site it seems its now available in different formats.
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Big-Fish-Audio-Whole-Lotta-Country-101752038-i1174274.gc


I have this library myself and I'd highly recommend it.

Regards
James

Thanks, James:

We have a Guitar Center Store in nearby Ft. Worth. I'll see if I can get someone there to show me if it might suit my songwriting and recording method. It sure looks good from the available instruments aspects. I appreciate you taking the time to point this out to me.

Dave

@Montunoman... What I will often do is use the sequencer in my arranger to record an SMF of the style that works best for the song. Try to get as close to the structure and flow as possible, but don't let details plague you... we'll fix that later. Save the sequence as an SMF, and THEN transfer to a computer sequencer like Cubase, Logic, etc..

Once it is in the DAW, a whole world of possibilities open up for you. For starters, you can now edit the sequence and make adjustments to things like the bassline (which arrangers' basslines pretty much suck... they never know where they are going TO, only where they are coming from) and put in a better leading bassline. You can now edit the drums, and take out the repetitive fills, and make each one at least a LITTLE bit unique. Here's where you can add in ghosting and other little drummer-like details, also.

Once the sequence is arranged and polished up to where it rocks, now is the time to think carefully about the SOUND. Even simple techniques like recording the drum sounds individually can go a long way to being able to mix them well (you simply solo each drum sound, dry, and make a recording pass), and software reverbs, especially convolution reverbs set to drum room impulses, can make a world of difference to making even modest drum sounds more convincing.

But if, in the end, the drum sounds themselves remain undynamic and unconvincing, you can use VSTi's like EZDrummer or BFD, etc. to replace some or all of the drum sounds. Care needs to be taken to match the dynamics, because all of the VSTi drum sets have FAR more samples per note than arrangers' do, but if the part has some dynamics in the first place, the VSTi will make the most of it. Most also have a 'round robin' allocation scheme, so that if you DO have multiple hits all at the same velocity, these things will alternate two or three different samples, to remove the 'machine gun' sound that can happen.

Once you start to replace your arranger's sounds with VSTi's, the sky's the limit. There are VSTi's that do real guitar strumming and picking, just like the Audya, outstanding bass sounds (I LOVE Spectrasonic's new Trillian), great percussion, strings, horns, you name it.

But the bottom line is to be VERY careful about deciding whether something that fails to convince you now is the fault of the sound, or of the sequence. You can spend a lot of money on VSTi's, only to find out that, even through the best sounds available, they still don't QUITE make you go 'that's real!'...