How to randomize velocity fl studio

Miscellaneous Channel Settings

The Miscellaneous Channel Settings page contains various generator settings and are available for all Instrument Channels, including VST/AU plugins.

NOTE: Apart from setting Root note ( Right-click ) and Key range, the vertical position on the keyboard previews note velocity.

Levels Adjustment

Polyphony

NOTES: Portamento and sliding of overlapping notes is not supported by VST/AU instruments. It may also not be supported by some Fruity Plugin instruments (those that do not support pitch bending).

Velocity/Keyboard Tracking

Example keyboard tracking. The blue note shows the MID key. Each key then generates a modulation value that can be sent to Mod X and or Mod Y.

Cut Groups

The open hi-hat is then listening for any activity on cut group 1 and if the open hi-hat channel hears activity on Cut group 1, it will stop playing. Alternatively activity on the open hi-hat channel won’t affect the closed hi-hat channel since its Cut by value is set to none «—«.

Cut itself: This button causes a channel to cut itself by setting the Cut/Cut By values to the same number. FL Studio will do this automatically if you check the Cut Itself button (this can also be accessed by Right-Clicking the channel button and selecting ‘Cut itself’ from the pop-up menu).

Arpeggiator

This section lets you add a real-time non-destructive arpeggio effect to the sequence of an instrument. To use the arpeggiator, select a direction from the icons in the top left corner of this section. The available options are: Off (default; turns off the arpeggiator), Up, Down, Up-Down, Up-Down (twice the lowest and highest notes), Random (selects random notes from the range and chord specified).

Echo Delay

This section creates echoes for the channel based on echoing note events (rather than audio). This enables some special effects like pitch shifted echoes, but also requires additional CPU power for each echo generated (each echo is a normal note voice). If you want to use a standard audio-effect, use the Fruity Delay effect instead (see Effects).

NOTE: If you click the small arrow at the top left of this panel you can access some presets for this section.

How To Randomize Velocity In FL Studio (3 Simple Steps)

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To randomize the velocity of notes within FL Studio, you’ll want to open the desired midi pattern in the piano roll. Then press ALT+R to open the randomizer tool. Within the randomizer window, disable the top ‘pattern’ section. Then tweak the velocity parameter level to randomize the velocity of the individual notes in the selected pattern.

Randomizing Velocity

This article will look at how you can quickly introduce randomized velocity into your FL Studio productions.

When producing music inside of a DAW, it can sometimes be easy to overlook the elements that go into making music sound human. This can sometimes leave electronic music sounding somewhat flat or lifeless, usually due to a lack of ‘humanization.’

In the context of music production, this term refers to the introduction of random, subtle variation back into the music, which can often leave you with a more natural sound.

Variation in both timing and velocity are the easiest ways in which this is achieved.

This tutorial will look at a quick method within FL Studio that allows you to manipulate these parameters.

Step 1 – Selecting The Pattern

To randomize midi note velocity, you will first want to ensure that you have the correct pattern selected and opened up in the piano roll.

This can be done by checking the pattern’s name in the top toolbar and then clicking on the FL Studio piano roll icon, as shown in the video below.

Step 2 – Opening The Randomizer

Once you have opened the correct pattern within the piano roll, you can open the randomizer tool.

This can be accessed by the keyboard shortcut ALT+R or by using the drop-down menu at the top left of the piano roll and selecting ‘Tools‘ and then ‘Randomize.’

After you have gone through either of these methods, a randomizer window will open with lots of parameters on it. You may also notice that all of your notes seem to change in the piano roll, but don’t worry; this is normal and will be explained next.

Step 3 – Using The Randomizer

Now that you have the randomizer open in the piano roll, you can start to tweak the settings to automatically assign different velocity values to random midi notes within your pattern.

If the randomizer has opened up with the pattern section enabled, you will want to firstly disable this.

This is the section that changed the actual key placement of the notes.

You will then want to make sure that the ‘levels’ section is activated. Within the levels section, you will see the options to tweak six different parameters relating to the FL Studio piano roll notes.

We will focus on the one labeled ‘vel‘ (short for velocity) for this guide.

When you change this parameter either left or right, you will notice the velocity of each note visually changing in the indicator just below the piano roll.

This shows you the variation of the velocity of each note.

If the randomization isn’t to your liking, you can also try clicking on the ‘seed’ arrows. This will give you a new set of randomly generated values for the velocity of each note, and you can keep cycling through them until you find what suits your needs.

It is also worth noting that you can use the randomizer to randomize other parameters apart from velocity, which can help give a pattern some life.

For example, subtly randomizing the panning of random notes can help to bring some added variety and interest to a pattern.

Related Questions

What is the benefit of randomization in music production?

There are some situations in which randomization can help bring a pattern or loop to life instead of sounding flat.
For example, parts with real instruments such as pianos can really benefit from introducing a small degree of randomness to help make it sound as though someone is playing it.

Can you apply velocity to samples in the playlist?

Suppose you are looking to add some variety to samples within the playlist. In that case, your best option is likely to create an automation clip of the volume of the sample and then modulate this as it plays.

What else can the randomizer be used for?

In the piano roll, the randomizer can be used to place notes, which you can then define the parameters of randomly. For instance, you can choose only to want notes placed in a specific key and within a certain octave range.
As well as this, you can also vary the note length and enable random note glides.
You can also randomize the pan, release, two different sets of effects, and the pitch of the desired notes from within the randomizer. These parameters can be found alongside the velocity knob in the ‘levels‘ tab.

Can you randomize velocity in Ableton?

Using the ‘velocity‘ midi plugin, you can change multiple parameters to achieve a wide variety of velocity changes. This is very similar to the randomizer within FL Studio. However, it has some more refined parameters, such as a velocity curve that let you fine-tune the sound to a greater extent.

In what cases should I use velocity randomization?

There are many instanced when you might want to try velocity randomization. Speaking from personal experience, it works excellent with real-world instruments generally played by a human. This includes guitars and pianos; however, it also works well in bringing things such as hi-hat loops to life.

Can you randomize the starting position of notes in FL Studio?

There is no way to randomize the starting position of notes within a pattern in the piano roll. With that being said, if you are looking to create a more natural sound, you can try using the ‘strum’ and ‘flam’ options from the tools menu where you find the randomizer. These options work really well when used with a chord.
These will add some variation to the start position of notes but predictable instead of being random.

Why doesn’t randomization always sound right when I use it?

There are some instances when the randomization may not sound right on your pattern. This may be down to the instrument being used not working well with the velocity randomization or the amount of randomization being too much or too little.
It is also worth noting that some patterns, such as hi-hats, work well with more predictable velocity. This is what helps give them a sense of groove and is how real-world drummers play. So in these instances, it is worth manually applying a velocity pattern.

Final Words

You know now how to randomize the velocity of your patterns from within the FL Studio’s piano roll. This is a great tool to utilize in various situations to help bring some needed variation and humanization into your patterns.

There are many examples of when you might want to utilize this trick, for instance, adding variation into midi drums such as hi-hats.

In real life, a drummer would likely not be able to hit the hi-hat with the same strength repeatedly. Adding some randomization into loops such as this helps them feel more lifelike and dynamic.

How to Randomize Velocity in FL Studio

Table of Contents

How to Randomize Velocity in FL Studio

The FL Studio Piano roll has a neat feature that allows us to save time and add random and subtle variation to the velocity and volume of each MIDI note. This effect will end up making your piece sound more like a human made it, and less like a computer. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to randomize velocity in FL Studio. Let’s check it out.

What is Velocity?

When a pianist plays the piano, we call the speed at which he or she strikes the keys the velocity. The velocity alters the tone and volume of the key being pressed.

Pianists consciously change the velocity of their key strikes while playing depending on how expressive they want each note to be. On top of that, human error ensures that there will be a slight variation in the velocity of each successive key, even when the pianist is trying to make them sound the same. We can use velocity randomization in FL Studio to more closely imitate a real performance.

Randomize Velocity in FL Studio

The overall process is called velocity randomization, and the Piano roll tool we can use is called the Randomizer.

Step 1: Create a Progression of Notes

First, choose an instrument, and then open its Piano roll. Keep in mind that this technique will work for drums too, since each drum hit will never have exactly the same velocity/volume of another in a real performance. For this example, I’ll be using a snare drum.

I programmed the snare to be triggered on every step. We can see the velocity data for each note in the velocity window. Notice how they are all exactly the same. We could go in and manually change each one, but this would be tedious and time consuming, especially if there are lots of notes. With the Randomizer tool, we will add some variation using a computer algorithm to speed things up.

Step 2: Use the Claw Machine (Optional)

The Claw Machine is a tool used to add variation in note lengths and triggering while maintaining the overall length of the progression. This is great for spicing up your drum and percussion patterns.

We can open the Claw Machine by pressing Alt+W on the keyboard while the Piano roll is open.

Just choose a period that’s less than or equal to the period that your note progression takes up, and then mess with the Time distortion knob and Trash every setting to shift the note lengths. Hit the Spacebar to preview the new pattern. You can end up making some really interesting patterns for your drums with this tool.

Step 3: Use the Randomizer Tool to Randomize Velocity

OK, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The keyboard shortcut for the randomizer tool is Alt+R. Make sure the Piano roll is selected, and open it up.

You’ll notice that this tool can randomize velocity and also create randomization for note locations too. As a default, the Pattern randomizer is on. We only want to randomize velocity, so turn it off for now. Just click the orange “Pattern” button at the top left of the Randomizer window.

Under levels, you’ll see a few knobs and buttons:

OK, we’re all done. Let’s compare the original progression with the new one. The difference is subtle, and adds a little bit of human touch.