How to give your instrumentals a 'natural' feel ?

[psihobambi]

How do you guys design your instrumentals so they don't sound so electro ? I don't want people that listen to my music to immediately think 'oh that was made in a DAW on a PC'. (I am not trying to avoid electro sounds !)

example :



Can the guitar in there be played in VST or does it have to be played live (because I don't have that option).
Do you guys automate a lot to achieve that ?
Do you have any vst or sample libraries that can replicate this type of stuff ?
Any tricks ?

 

[Free Spirit]

Several factors involved but the most obvious one to me is reverb.

Also correct timing/groove added to the sound as well as changes in the velocity of the notes.

I think that's where most of the "natural feel" comes into play.

 

[bandcoach]

the thing with natural feel comes back to one of few choices when recording the parts

you either play in real time and do not do more than an iterative quantise at 80% or so (pulls stuff off the grid to within 20% or so of a grid position)

or you click it/mouse it in and then apply a randomise position (+/- 10 ticks at most - a tick is the smallest division of the beat, most daws render a tick as 1/120 of a 16th so you end up with 480 ticks per quarter). You should also apply a random +/-5 positions on the velocity values to give the part a sense of dynamic movement within your selected loudness level - different daws and different folks have their own ideas about what constitutes each type of musical dynamic level (pppp-ppp-pp-p-mp-mf-f-ff-fff-ffff) so you probably need to decide what works for you

as for that guitar part, I'm am loathe to say you can do it and be believed as that is a real player using a real guitar and real fx playing in real time

scarbee funk guitarist may be able to do some of what you want but I would not rely on it for every type of guitar playing