[linux-audio-dev] MIDI groove theory

[Paul Winkler]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 07:48:22PM +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Hallo,
> Dave Robillard hat gesagt: // Dave Robillard wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone know of a page somewhere that explains just what (on a
> > developer level) MIDI "groove" is?  I want to implement it in a
> > sequencer, but all I can find is user documentation pages with useless
> > information.
> > 
> > Is it as simple as each note having a time offset (ie snare is early .5
> > ms, hi-hate late 1ms, etc.) or something more?
> 
> This classic Masters-At-Work house music shuffle swing thang is just
> delaying every second (8th rsp. 16th) note a bit. I do this in my Pd
> sequencers using percentage values (like delay notes by 66 percent of
> the straight note lenght) and it's quite groovy afterwards. I also
> apply some gaussian randomness to the notes' onset times to simulate
> human error (which I think should be distributed gaussian, shouldn't
> it?) I'm not sure I can actually feel/hear that, though.

Hydrogen has a slider for each ("swing factor" and "human time"),
and I love the grooves I can get out of that app.
"human time" is just a small amount of randomness.
Might be worth a look at the code in libhydrogen
(it's mostly in src/Hydrogen.cpp afaict).

The "human time" feature can really help the feel, I think it's 
because it makes "simultaneous" attacks slightly off from each other.

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com