Brahms Intermezzo + Autumn Leaves

Today I used Synfire to transform a Brahms intermezzo into something else.

First, in Synfire I recorded from a MIDI piano the first 9 measures of Brahms at a very slow BPM and separate hands (I'm not a concert pianist!).

I had to partially correct the interpretation of Synfire, since Brahms entered chromatic passages. In (a few) segments it was necessary to bypass the Voice Leading parameter. I also entered by hand the original Brahms' harmonic progression.

You can hear the result from the file Brahms_op_118_1_original.mp3

At this point I created an empty arranger window and dragged into it the Container of the original work of Brahms. Synfire asked me about some elements to include in the imported container, and I answered YES to Tempo variations, because I manually draw some BPM modifications to humanize a little the excerpt. See the following animated gif:

I eliminated all my previous chromatic corrections from the melody and finally I got nine measures on a static C major harmony. The result was rather monotonous: you can listen to it playing the file Brahms_Autumn_Cmaj_only. mp3

I then dragged the template Autumn Leaves shipped with Synfire, and I got this harmonic progression:

I corrected some not very good notes in the bass, and you can hear the result from the file Brahms_Autumn_harmonized. mp3

It can be further improved a lot, of course, but it makes the idea: we now can listen to Autumn Leaves standard on the almost same piano writing of Intermezzo op. 118 n. 1 by Johannes Brahms.

It was very instructive and amusing.

Hope you will love it ;-)