How to Create More Expressive MIDI Music — Audio Plus

Jun 23rd in General by Joel Falconer

In this week's Audio Plus content, Ryan Leach teaches you how to make those artificial sounding MIDI pieces come to life with a kit of effective techniques. While the screenshots for this tutorial are taken in Logic Pro, the content is not Logic-centric and is equally useful and valuable in any software that deals with sequenced music.

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Author: Joel Falconer

Joel Falconer is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontman. While Joel's first love is writing and performing songs that touch on important and personal issues, programming, engineering and producing music in the studio are also strong passions.

"A MIDI orchestra isn't a real orchestra. That might not sound very helpful: you know that MIDI is no replacement for the power and humanity of real musicians. But it seems that despite this reality, many people waste their time trying to force their music to sound as "real" as possible by obsessing over the nuance of every single note and beat. Although these infinite tweaks may eventually yield results, it only takes a handful of simple techniques to address the most common issues that makes MIDI sound so artificial. If using Pareto's 80/20 principle you could argue that 80% of how good your music sounds comes from 20% of the techniques you use, then it only makes sense that we should focus on the 20% that are going to make a real difference."

Here's the kind of lively MIDI music you'll be able to create once you harness the knowledge inside:

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Table of Contents

• Make the Most of Dynamics
• Velocity
• Modulation
• Volume & Expression
• Keeping it Interesting & Varied
• Incorporate Live Elements
• Perspective

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