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For me its importing a wav file into melodyne, exporting the chords and importing the chords into synfire. from there I start assigning a pad to the chords and create melodies on top by either importing from the libary or by drawing them in by hand. I start to drag n drop the harmony parameter into the figure to edit the chords. I ether start to assigning vsts or keep everything to piano.
I recently found out that you can use drums as melodies to create great techno songs but they only make sense as accompaniment as they are to simple for melodies.
I still struggle very much in assigning registers to instruments. Its very hard to layer the instruments on top of each other as its not clear to me how high the notes will be played just from assigning instruments. also dragging the key selection up or down makes the instrument just sound weird. I solved it by using one piano track and making the arrangement inside this one track.
that also solves the rythm problem for me as its really hard to for me to get everything in rhythmic sync. assigning rhythms from drums to figures always destroys the figure.
most of the time I create a very simple melody on top of chords or a pure piano track in one track in synfire (so all is rhytmically correct and on the right register) and import that into logic to cut it into individual instruments that do not interfere with each other and then work from there.
recently I started to create all figures in orb-composer so the rythm and the registers will be correct and I can import them to synfire and work from there to add more variation and with other parameters orb-composer does not provide. At the end I will most of the time end up in logic to use stuff like the freeze funktion and the great drum composer.
Tue, 2018-12-18 - 15:12 Permalink
I will start to use a more crescendo buildup as my songs are often very repetetive towards the end. so its going to be a more loop based arrangement where I am going to build from drums to bass to the rest so that the starting point is peak crescendo with many instruments in a loop that I can seperate later on to create the song.
Tue, 2018-12-18 - 23:01 Permalink
this is a songexample that basically goes nowhere. I really like it but there is no buildup at all. I wonder if adjusting just the chords to a more dramatic build up would help the song already. I had good results doing serveral songs in logic by exporting the synfire midi file to logic and then combinding them afterwards in logic but its impossible to do it in synfire as there is no freeze function so using more than 4-5 instances of great synths are impossible. this uses the autochord feature by the way.
I am currently trying to sample the synths with a tool like samplerobot beforehand so I can use more of them in synfire via kontakt.
chordbased_omnisphere_drums_schneller.mp3
Tue, 2018-12-18 - 20:27 Permalink
I still struggle very much in assigning registers to instruments. Its very hard to layer the instruments on top of each other as its not clear to me how high the notes will be played just from assigning instruments.
That's what the playing ranges (pitch ranges) are for. You can set them for each instrument on the "Instr." tab of the parameter inspector. Synfire will recompose your figures to match that range.
Your Figures should remain close to the zero line. Absolute pitch is not part of the figure. Figures are all relative.
assigning rhythms from drums to figures always destroys the figure.
Drag your drums to the Rhythm parameter of the figure. That will kind of groove quantize it. Or apply a Rhythm template to the defaults of the container, which will make all instruments use it.
I will start to use a more crescendo buildup as my songs are often very repetetive towards the end.
That's a good idea. We all tend to be lazy and stick to repetition, while putting a little thought into a buildup can make a huge difference.
this is a song example that basically goes nowhere
I like it, too. Has a psychedelic feel to it.
Try some buildup. Don't hesitate to use many containers even for a few bars of music. Containers make buildup easier, because you can throw anything in them, move them around, mute individual instruments, etc.
Tue, 2018-12-18 - 22:42 Permalink
another thing worth trying is to create a 1 bar sub containers at the end of a drum sequences and add pauses or alternative figures (silience certain drum instruments or add fills). You can create aliases of these to quickly add different drum patterns to the end of 4, 8, 16,32 bar loops. Works for other instruments too.