User Guide

45
HUMANIZATION FUNCTIONS
• QUANTIZATION PANEL
BFD’s humanization system is comprised of the Quantization panel, and the
Humanize Velocity and Humanize Timing panels. All of these functions take effect
when BFD is playing Grooves, with the exception of the Humanize Velocity panel,
which also affects BFD’s output when using standard MIDI input (in other words,
when triggering BFD’s sounds using the MIDI functions of your sequencer, rather
than the built-in Groove Librarian).
To access the Quantization panel, click the quantization button. The two
sliders in the panel allow a great deal of control over the timing “feel” of
the playing Grooves. Here, you can control the variation from the original timing of
the Groove and a hard-quantized, robotic feel, and also apply a timing distortion
map loaded from a ‘Swing Template’.
Exit the panel without making any changes by clicking its icon again, or by clicking
the icon in the top-right corner, or bring up a new panel instead by clicking
another panel icon.
Hard Quantize slider
This slider gradually varies the timing of the playing Groove from its original
timing, to a hard-quantized, rigid, ‘robotic’ feel, where any slight timing deviations
of notes away from a metrical grid (used in order to achieve a more realistic feel)
are ‘snapped’ back to strict timing divisions.
You can select what metrical grid you would like to use, ranging from 4
th
to 64
th
notes, by using the drop-down menu selector.
Swing Templates
BFD’s Swing Templates can be considered as a cross between ‘groove templates’
in sequencers such as Cubase or Logic, and the ‘shuffle’ or ‘swing’ function on
classic drum machines. They define an X-Y map which translates original time
into swung time to achieve different feels. Currently, BFD comes with the common
8
th
and 16
th
note swings.