Vocal Synth Timing Humanization

[mobius017]

I was wondering what approaches people have taken to humanization with vocal synths--i.e., varying the timing of MIDI notes so they aren't always right on the grid.

Various DAWs have a "humanize" function that you can use on MIDI notes within the DAW, but for something like Piapro or other VSTs, I would assume that that wouldn't work since the notes are outside the DAW. I haven't found a "humanize" or similarly-named function in the Piapro or Vocaloid 5 manuals, either...though they could be called something I didn't think of.

Is the only approach to edit individual notes manually, either so they're not quite on the grid or so that their pronunciation occurs earlier/later?

 

[peaches2217]

Yeah, it’s still a manual process for vocalsynths to the best of my knowledge. (Honestly, I think that’s a major part of the fun: adjusting the note and pronunciation timings and pitch bends until it sounds like something that would be sung rather than synthesized.) Still, I can only speak for the systems I regularly use... it’d be cool to play around with such a function and see the end results!

 

[Stardust]

I personally do the Midi-ing in Vocaloid itself, then export it if I need it on another engine. I have tried to do the vocals via Midi in Studio One, and the results were very poor. I think it is because instruments are different from vocals in how they must be done, and even though Vocaloid is a instrument, it still abides by vocal rules, so it has to be made accordingly. It was one of my first times Midi-ing vocals in a DAW however, so that may have been the reason why it was so poor.
I have noticed that a Vocaloid Midi still works well as a instrument midi for the most part, which is odd

 

[mobius017]

Thanks to you both very much for your responses!

I guess one other option would be to create your MIDI in your DAW, apply humanization there, and then export that to MIDI and import into Piapro/Vocaloid 5 as a starting point. I may give that a try. Personally, I'm trying laying out my MIDIs in Studio One, because when I used Piapro to lay out the melody and exported the MIDI from there, I eventually noticed that the attack on my instrumental was really high. I never did figure out the reason for that, but my thought was maybe the fact that it was vocal originally changed it somehow, since vocals and instrumentals might behave differently somehow, like @Stardust said.

Anyway, thanks to you both for your advice!

 

[uncreepy]

It's not very noticeable with English phonemes compared to Japanese, but the point of the Velocity parameter is for the unseen singing audio to leave the note box and start early or later. Also, it might be easier to just make a note longer/shorter and adjust the start/ending volume it with Dynamics instead of taking it to a DAW to try to do extra work to make the timing off. (Sorry if I am misunderstanding your question.)

 

[Prism]

I remember seeing a plug-in going around. I know zola project came with one that helped with velocity.

 

[Prism]

found it! It was called swing shuffle

 

[mobius017]

Nice! Piapro/Vocaloid 5 don't support plugins (Wish they did, though, especially now, since that plugin looks like it's designed to do exactly what I'm looking for.), but I could always reinstall Vocaloid 4. Messing around with Vel might achieve the effect I'm looking for, though. I'll give that a try before I mess around with the MIDI notes themselves. Thank you!

 

[Prism]

Would recommend to use v4 because of the plug-in there's some nice ones like pitch helper and shine vibrato