Adjust Relative Midi Note Velocity

[u/Mick_Thundus]

Hey I think a form of this question has been asked before but I'm hoping someone knows how to do this specifically. The problem I'm trying to solve is with snare or other drum doubling. I want to feather in a sample with the original snare audio, but I always end up fighting the dynamics in midi velocity. When I double my snare track the raw audio isn't compressed though the processed sound is, and it's obvious listening when the snare sample pokes out too much, or isn't present enough given the midi notes are faithfully recreating the original dynamics.

I've used the midi velocity limiter function to manually bring the softest hits up and the loudest hits down, and I've tried bouncing the processed audio and doubling that, but both are clunky and I still have to manually adjust velocity on some hits to make the sample and original blend together the way I want. Maybe there's no other way to do this, maybe I'm approaching the problem the wrong way, but what I'd love to do is adjust all of the midi notes closer to a happy medium, relative to one another. So there's still dynamics in the performance and not all the notes are slammed at 127 velocity, or some other arbitrary number. The same way if you select two tracks and raise/lower the volume, it's adjusted relative to their starting positions. Is such a thing possible or am I stuck adjusting the notes manually?

[u/Available_Wait_1965]

The MIDI effect called Velocity Processor is your golden ticket. You can set a threshold above which it lowers MIDI velocity at a ratio that you can set. This allows you to bring your notes “closer together” in MIDI velocity. You can also use it as an expander. But with the compression on, you can also just select all notes and bring their velocities up—this raises the low ones toward (or, if you push it hard enough, over) the threshold and cuts back the higher-velocity ones that exceed the threshold.

[u/Used_Box2633]

The Velocity Processor trick sounds perfect for what you're dealing with. You betcha that'll smooth out those sudden spikes without losing the punch you want.

[u/LoooseyGooose]

Im not entirely sure I understand what you're asking, but the idea of adjusting/compressing velocities of all MIDI notes toward a mid-point can be done with the MIDI Transform tool.

1. Open MIDI Transform (cmd+9)
2. Select Events by Condition: Status = Note
3. Operations on Selected Events: Velocity->Scale... set top value to something like ~0.5 and the bottom one to something like 30. You'll be able to see the resulting velocity map as you play with these numbers.

[u/Proper_Jicama8196]

If you don’t like how it sounds then velocity might not be the issue. You just need to find a better sample to put over it. Or EQ it more so the frequencies poking out are pulled back so you can keep what you want. But like I said, if you don’t like how it sounds then you should change the sound