How can I add some random jitter to the timing of notes in SuperCollider Patterns? - scheduling

Question

I'd like to add a very simple "humanisation" to some note patterns, by randomly jittering the time that the notes play. This code repeatedly plays a chord:
p = Pbind(\legato, 0.1, \dur, 0.2, \midinote, [66, 69, 74]).play
But I'd like each of the three notes in the chord to randomly have some independent "error" in the exact timing. I do not want the tempo to vary.

Answer 1

There's a key you can use called \timingOffset - described in section 8 of the pattern guide.
The simple example is:
p = Pbind(\legato, 0.1, \dur, 0.4, \midinote, [66, 69, 74],
\timingOffset, Pwhite(-0.1, 0.1)
).play;
so that's a random offset of +-0.1 beats. Unfortunately it applies one deviation to the whole chord, which is not what you want. So you need to feed an array into the Pwhite:
p = Pbind(\legato, 0.1, \dur, 0.4, \midinote, [66, 69, 74],
\timingOffset, Pwhite([-0.1, -0.1, -0.1], [0.1, 0.1, 0.1])
).play;
and of course you can derive those arrays from some value:
~jitter = 0.1;
p = Pbind(\legato, 0.1, \dur, 0.4, \midinote, [66, 69, 74],
\timingOffset, Pwhite({0-~jitter}.dup(3), {~jitter}.dup(3))
).play;
Here's a slightly different approach which makes the right number of values, in case the array size of "midinote" is variable:
~jitter = 0.1;
p = Pbind(\legato, 0.1, \dur, 0.4, \midinote, [66, 69, 74],
\timingOffset, Pcollect({|val| {~jitter.bilinrand}.dup(val.size)}, Pkey(\midinote))
).play;