Posted
I'm having no problem understanding the concept of containers, phrase editors, libraries, vectors, etc. In fact I'm managing to make a lot of that work.
Where I'm having problems is importing the simplest 4 bar melody without MPS mangling the tune. I have tried every choice of Harmonic progression, user confirmation, etc. but it takes what should be a C#, D, E and turns it into a B, C#, D. I've even tried to simply play it in and it mangles it worse.
I'll add that when I harmonize this melody it plays properly in that window. But as soon as I apply and accept the change and return to the arrangement window it plays it wrong again.
Now I'm thinking this is obviously a very deep well thought out program, so what am I missing?
Anyone else had this problem?
Tue, 2009-10-20 - 09:12 Permalink
Thank you for asking. This is a very common question and hopefully my reply will be helpful for others too.
If you want to ensure a certain track retains its original pitches, you need to import it using the Static Pitches algorithm (a setting found in the import dialog window). This is recommended for melodies you want to harmonize, and drums and other unpitched instruments.
Synfire imports most tracks as dynamic figures by default, because it assumes you want to reuse them in a new context rather than reproduce them literally. This involves guessing the harmonic context and reconstructing the musical phrases relative to that. Due to the nature of music, this is a highly speculative task, so you will see more or less deviation from the original notes when the figure is played back through Synfire's renderer.
Figure recognition is very much like the vectorization of a photo.
Admittedly the user interface could point this out more obviously. Instead of offering individual settings for the figure recognition algorithm, it would probably be more helpful if there were presets with musical or workflow-related descriptions to pick from. We think about adding such a menu anytime soon.