I was experimenting with FXpansion’s Geist 2 the other day, and was trying to find a way to get the triggers to sound a little more human. One thing about programming beats in a grid is that they tend to sound robotic. A human will not always (actually rarely) play exactly on the beat. A drummer puts his soul into a beat by playing a little ahead or a little behind the beat. How can we do this when making electronic music? One obvious way is to draw beats onto a piano roll, making sure the “snap to grid” feature is turned off, and pull or push the hits a little ahead or behind. But what if we wanted to get that same effect intrinsically within Geist? Check out the video above to find out how.