Posted
First of all, I am very happy & excited about HN2. Well worth the wait. Thank you! I particularly like the ease of creating a song with parts.
I am still figuring out everything, but here is a question about workflow in which HN2 could help.
Is there a way of capturing the groove of an audio track, import the "melody" into HN, and create accompaniments (and other musical components) that conform to this. Or is this already done automatically in HN2?
I imagine the following. I somehow convert audio into one or more MIDI tracks. Assume this is given, and a starting point for the question. e.g. starting with a guitar part MIDI melody. This contains the "groove" of the song. Will additional accompaniment (e.g. piano etc) conform to this track's groove in HN2? Or do I need to do something else?
Now how about the best way to start with an audio track (again say guitar). What's the best way to "get it into" HN2? What would be the best way to convert it into MIDI?
Finally in this above does Synfire help more that HN2? I understand that the chief difference with HN2 and Synfire is that with Synfire you can edit and create new figures. But in and of itself does this help with the above question?
BTW FYI I am able to drive all kinds of instruments using either Bidule or Digital Performer. Works great.
Thanks for all the effort you have put into this project!
Tue, 2010-05-04 - 16:34 Permalink
Thanks for your positive feedback!
Neither HN nor Synfire can do audio-to-midi conversion at this time. There are sereval tools available on the net that claim they can do. But beware. Apart from the wonderfully engineered Celemony tool "Melodyne", most the stuff out there only works for simple monophonic material.
I haven't tried but basically it should be possible to use Melodyne to generate midi from audio and import that into HN. There you can render it against new chords (Harmony) and add more instruments around the basic groove.
New instruments adapt to an existing rhythm when you copy another instrument's figure and paste it into the new instrument's Rhythm parameter.
Besides being able to create and edit figures, the main difference between HN and Synfire is that Synfire offers many more (and more powerful) ways to arrange, combine and experiment with musical material. You are also not limited to a linear song structure.
Wed, 2010-05-05 - 02:18 Permalink
[quote]
Neither HN nor Synfire can do audio-to-midi conversion at this time. There are sereval tools available on the net that claim they can do. But beware. Apart from the wonderfully engineered Celemony tool "Melodyne", most the stuff out there only works for simple monophonic material.
I have Melodyne and have (just recently) done a audio to MIDI conversion and it works quite well (for the right material). I did not mention it to see what you might come up with, and so this is good.
[quote]I haven't tried but basically it should be possible to use Melodyne to generate midi from audio and import that into HN. There you can render it against new chords (Harmony) and add more instruments around the basic groove.
I have also imported that melody in HN2. It did do it, but I did not have a good starting piece. So operationally, I was able to do it. But I don't know enough HN2 to do the right thing (ie harmonize to it).
[quote]New instruments adapt to an existing rhythm when you copy another instrument's figure and paste it into the new instrument's Rhythm parameter.
I think this is the answer I was looking for, that indeed this is what happens. And the key here, that I would not have focused on, is to extract the figure and put it into the rhythm parameter. Excellent. Will try it.
[quote]Besides being able to create and edit figures, the main difference between HN and Synfire is that Synfire offers many more (and more powerful) ways to arrange, combine and experiment with musical material. You are also not limited to a linear song structure.
I am almost certainly a future Synfire customer. The only reason I haven't is I think I should master (ok graduate student) HN2 first!!
Thanks again!
Wed, 2010-05-05 - 08:54 Permalink
Regarding harmonization, here's a video how that works:
(http://www.cognitone.com/support/tutorials/show.stml?o=10044)
It was shot for Synfire, but the harmonizer in HN2 works basically the same way, except HN2 can't sync its transport to a DAW.
Wed, 2010-05-05 - 15:24 Permalink
Yes, it would be wonderful if HN2 was able to use ReWire (audio drum loops, voices, audio effects ...) Cognitone?? :admire:
Thu, 2010-05-06 - 02:46 Permalink
[quote]Yes, it would be wonderful if HN2 was able to use ReWire (audio drum loops, voices, audio effects ...) Cognitone??
... Umm, I believe that product is available now and its called Synfire....! I mean if everything was available in HN2 then there would be no need for Synfire, right?
Thu, 2010-05-06 - 10:43 Permalink
800 for being able to sync HN to my loops and drum patterns in my DAW...... don't think so (yes I know Synfire provides alot of other things).
Drums are really important in many modern music styles and doing that from HN only is not really the best workflow.
Quite a few people today start their songwriting using a wav loop of jamming something on their groove box (mpc, NI Machine or PadKontrol etc). To bring that drum loop via midi import to HN is just to cumbersome. Keeping HN in sync with the outside world is essential to be songwriters tool 2010!
Sorry for hi-jacking this thread!
Thu, 2010-05-06 - 12:31 Permalink
And none of the other songwriting tools available does what HN2 does. Its a tradeoff there. And 800 is a deal considering what those "lot of other things" are that Synfire does.
If you really prefer using HN2 to other songwriting software out there, I can't see how you can only be satisfied with only having Rewire added. My guess is that you will eventually want/need Synfire.
As for me, I'm learning on HN2 but will almost certainly get Synfire. And saving just 1 each day, why in just a couple of years or so ... ! :)
Now having said that, yeah, Rewire in HN would be cool. HN3 probably. :lol:
Sat, 2010-05-08 - 18:30 Permalink
I'm dissapointed that the recent update didn't include better intergration with a DAW.
I only use the software for a few ideas for chord progressions in my daw having to use midi loops & having no way to sync tempo is a pain that puts me off using it.
I know it probably wasn't designed for this but i would been happy for a le version that was just a vst midi plug.
Harmony improvisor does this very well but the palette idea is much better in HN.