Posted
Hello all,
don't you think that an at least very basic view that is specialized
for percussion and drum editing would be pretty convenient?
I am already finding it pretty difficult to edit grooves and
especially more complex percussion stuff.
As all of modern contemporary music in any genre basically include
more or less sophisticated grooves, this might be worth a consideration.
Of course there are spexialized applications for this but I still think a basic
implementation might be a great help here.
Especially because I could imagine some awesome trickery in conjunction
with the "paste rythm" feature.
Best,
tL.
Sun, 2014-07-20 - 17:57 Permalink
This is under consideration already. The only issue is HOW to design this editor, to make it suit any musical style.
The usual 16-Squares-in-a-Row click field only works for basic EDM. Most other music is not using a simple grid like that. Many styles do not even make heavy use of loops, so a simple 4-bar or 8-bar pattern would not suffice.
IMHO, editing drums manually has never been easy, unless you record it with overdub. The typical EDM grid eases this by drastically limiting your choices. That style doesn't need require expressiveness and variety of other genres like R&B, Jazz, Funk, Pop, so nobody will complain. Synfire needs to accommodate many more styles.
If you have any ideas, let us know!
Sun, 2014-07-20 - 18:09 Permalink
The only issue is HOW to design this editor
Maybe you can get some inspiration from WaveDNA's beat generation software 'Liquid Rhythm':
(http://www.wavedna.com/product-information/)
Sun, 2014-07-20 - 18:20 Permalink
@Andre
True but in one point I honestly disagree.
Even the most basic drumeditor is easier to work with than with any kind of piano roll,
which means work is getting done faster. Which should be always the goal.
Just a way to see drumnotes that way and to be able to edit velocity and notes same time
would be just make stuff quicker. DP (Digital Performer) has one of the best IMHO and DP
is far from being used by any EDM guy at all. Still No.1 DAW for Movie Score guys.
best,
tL.
Sun, 2014-07-20 - 19:28 Permalink
Thanks for your input, much appreciated.
Liquid Rhythm seems to be very successful. Otherwise I wonder how WaveDNA could afford 16 people on their payroll from selling a single plug-in. That's extremely impressive. The majority of plug-in developers, especially the innovative ones, can hardly make a living. Let alone the piracy plug-ins have to face, more than any other type of software.
Building rhythm from small snippets and permutation isn't rocket science (and is not new either). Their success is probably due to the tight integration with Ableton Live. I agree it looks cool, but think it also complicates a few things more than necessary. Anyhow: Chapeau!
I'll have a closer look at DP too.
Great food for thought.
Sun, 2014-07-27 - 14:13 Permalink
The only issue is HOW to design this editor
I've been thinking about it. I guess you could define one of Synfire's Instruments as Drum Instrument. One different from the normal instruments would be (of course) that the lines of the staff do not represent different pitches but different instruments of a drum set. There should be a mapping editor (staff line >> MIDI note).
But the most important difference would be that each staff line gets its own set of parameters (only rhythm relevant parameters of course). And the Figure parameter for each line would only accept static symbols (or convert other symbols to static automatically). The length of the figure should be adjustable for each drum instrument (staff line). To each staff line a separate name can be given. I've attached a picture of how I imagine it.
Of course this is still expandable. For example there could be a specific set of transformation commands for these drum figures. And the general looping features of Synfire also should be brought up-to-date.
