Harmonizer - view exact note pitches

I would too like to see a 'midi piano roll editor'.. It is much more consise, And since Synfire already has to convert to midi to play, it shouldn't be hard.. We would also be learning a great deal more about harmony, passing tones, inverted, parallel, phrasing etc.. These are factors I have learnt using SFP for the last two years. And I sometime do it by hand because now I understand the  princecaples of how SFP funcions.  SFP is also an invaluable interactve harmony, counterpoint, motif, tool.. And you should thnk in terms of selling it as that.. 

This is definetly has  college course material statues

Then of course once you do that I'd want real time editing of midi notes, The current method, although somewhat ingenious leaves us who like passing tones, and grace notes between a rock and a hard place. 

It's like a battle, all these modifications, eventually bring it to near DAW status.  The more I think of it, I would rather have SFP as a MIDI plug-in.. to work with other midi tracks.. I know this bear off you 'letter of intent' for SFP specifications, but it almost seems inevitable.. 

Would be great if I could hover the mouse over the lines representing the notes of the underlying melody and see what exact tone it is. As it's now I just see an approximate releationship between notes, not their actual pitches.

Great ideas! For the last, above ... something like left click and hold down the button with  the cursor over a symbol with a key command and have the sound play from where clicked until the mouse button is release.

I would too like to see a 'midi piano roll editor'.. <snip> The more I think of it, I would rather have SFP as a MIDI plug-in.. to work with other midi tracks.

Mark,

Do you think Andre will be surprised to learn that I agree with you 100%? :)

"The current method, although somewhat ingenious leaves us who like passing tones, and grace notes between a rock and a hard place."

Maybe what would be nice is another tone type. We now have chord tones, vertical & horizontal scale tones, etc.

How about a "passing tone or grace note" type that could be chosen by selecting the notes and double-clicking the appropriate button. These would be different from the normal scales but would still follow chord changes.

The use of this is where we want a non-scale tone in the melody over an in-scale chord.

What about making more use of the take parameter? Maybe a button that freezes the current midi notes and saves it to the take? You can then see the exact notes as the will play, unless you change something else. You could also then 'rein port' the new take back into a figure To let synfire reinterpret the sequence.

Maybe a button that freezes the current midi notes and saves it to the take?

Take:  Parameter -> Extract From Output

Yes, we could specify the scale we want (Aolian on E, etc) for more controlled passing notes (or chromatic).  Let's face it, those of us who are most serious, and anybody spenting $1200 for music software IS SERIOUS.. Sooner or later we are gonna have to learn these different modes and types of scales and a lot more about harmony.  SFP is the perfect tool for that,, It has already taught me a good deal, 

Rather than struggle with fitting a lot of passing tone chords, into SFP. Right now, I leave SFP output where it is, and when I import back into Logic,  I do a lot of editing notes into a particular mode and scale, to suit the current need. 

Again we come back to the current 'definition' of what is Synfire?...  To have all these features, but we don't want to give Andre a nervous breakdown,  and if at some point the software becomes too 'esoteric', it will be a limited market for it..

Emagic was wise to sell Logic to Apple and Steinburg sell Cubase to Yamaha.  With companies of that size they have a built in market, and unless they really screw up their software will never become obsolete..  

Maybe Andre could make SFP more generic, and a huge mega company would buy him out.  Then he could devote his time to writing the exact software he wants, without worry about keeping food on the table,  Andre whateveer path you take, I'm with you.

In my old age (65) my most important perogrative is producing a good sized body, of what I deem is good music.. 

If it comes down to f**king around in SFP for 5 hours, I'll swtich back to Logic an hand edit every single out of place note...  And after a couple of years with the score editor under my belt, and my ears improving, I can usually draw in the notes, right where i want. (never been able to do that before)..  

Of courese SFP with all its power, offers me new stimulus to learn.  The juxtoposition of notes, step, pause, and interpretation features lets you come up with ideas, that would take another 3 years of solid music theory study, to come to grips with it. 

Andre I think you should give some thought to SFP as an educational tool.. Would take some work to write a thorough manual...  But people here are way beyond leggo creating prorgrams, of shoving individual licks and hoping for the best.. 

Apple's dropping of the Chord track, instead of making it an easy way to analyze chords and put into score of piano editor, just shows where their head are at.  The 'analyze only portion' of Logic's chord feature never worked properly, it build into the song,  an indestructable chord transpose feature, that turned any cutting and pasting of phraess into garbage.  Once it was in, your song was now corrupted in the sense, no further chords could be modified 

It was strickly meant to use for the brainless 'oh lets just throw a bunch of appleloops together, an we know it will come out in key, cause of the automatic chord transpoe feature, which you had no control once you created one it.

"Then he could devote his time to writing the exact software he wants, without worry about keeping food on the table,  Andre whateveer path you take, I'm with you."

Of course, that could be what he's doing now.

One thing I am finding out is that the more I use the program, the better I become at using it. Things that had me pulling out my hair at first are becoming second nature. I still don't understand half of the basics, but I can still get most things to work.

I'm guessing that the next thing will be the Videos and a new Manual. Once those come out, I expect a lot of questions will be answered.

As far as new features and more DAW-like features, those may be added as needed in future updates.

Of course, it might be simpler to use drones and export the midi output to the DAW for that kind of editing. You'd have the option to play the drone with SynFire or the DAW.

At this point, I can't get drones to work with Reaper 64, although transport sync works. I might try Reaper 32 and see if that works.

OK, I agree that we need a way to see the actual notes that will be output. I'm requesting this for synfire Pro. But I will also give a simple reason that is easy to understand.

I watched a video that explains some tips for Epic Film type of music. It only talks about 3 tips. The second tip (the linked video starts at that point) explains how to ensure that different melodies are playing in separate pitch ranges. This is easily checked in Cubase. You only need to select all midi parts and open all of them in the midi editor. Immediately you can see if any instrument parts are overlapping (not good) or all of them are nicely playing in different pitches (good).

I understand that this can be manipulated easily with instrument ranges, but I cannot check if the actual output is really nicely spread on the scale.

Video ?t=838

I will not speculate how to realize such a feature. Either by adding more DAW features to sunfire or by seamlessly integrating (dynamic) synfire with DAWs.

Hello!

Like in Cubase classical composing seems to be not possible in Synfire: 

- seperation of range check for counterpoint is not possible by overlapping of phrases in one track  (a topic earlier discussed)
- a chord progression ( say triads ) recording and then assigning the chord notes to different instruments is not possible.
- coloring for tracks and grouping them ?