composing two midi tracks in one track (temporarily)

Just add more 'tracks' (instruments actually) pointing to the same sound.

Instrument >> New With Same Sound

Alternatively simply select the desired sound on the Instr. tab of the instrument inspector.

On the phrase editor, you can select another instrument to display in the background from the View menu. Although this works with two instruments at a time only.

If you want to work on text book examples note by note, you would probably use a notation program.

Synfire is used more like a synthesizer. Play around with parameters and listen what results you get. It is for creating new music drafts quickly.

I want the best of both worlds, too!

Someday SFP/E will include the equivalent of a midi key editor ... perhaps only a visual reference to use with the phrase editor ... but it certainly could be more!

In reality the background of the phrase editor could have been designed in the familiar piano key grid. There could be a toggle between displaying the root note of the selected key and scale transposed to the C Major scale (white keys) and between the display of the normal 'C' piano keys with white keys reflecting the C Major scale as normally displayed. We's see all 12 semitones/ steps, but when use the tools, the arp for example, would be limited to only drawing phrases (notes) on the proper intervals of the selected scale. This would work for all the other tools as well.

All a phrase is is a collection of notes that adhere to the chosen scale in SFP/E. Looking at the phrase editor adds a touch of 'mysterious magic,' but underneath it is all mathematical, predicatable and musical.

The idea of phrases is brilliant, but in reality it would be even better if displayed against a musically  meaningful background.

Looking at the phrase editor adds a touch of 'mysterious magic,' but underneath it is all mathematical, predicatable and musical.

Musical, absolutely. Predictable math? I wish it was so. Making Synfire would have been easier and I could have done without pulling out my hair for so many years. The issue is, mapping phrases to pitch using straight math sounds awful. 

Synfire needs to render the entire container, only to be able to play to you the note symbol you just selected ;-)

Looking at the phrase editor adds a touch of 'mysterious magic,' but underneath it is all mathematical, predicatable and musical.

Musical, absolutely. Predictable math? I wish it was so. Making Synfire would have been easier and I could have done without pulling out my hair for so many years. The issue is, mapping phrases to pitch using straight math sounds awful. 

Synfire needs to render the entire container, only to be able to play to you the note symbol you just selected

Now, Andre! Please don't be defensive. First, music is math. Second, code is math. Third, intervals are math. Finally, a set number of gradations on a display are math. I only stated that it is math to reflect that under the hood, all the wonderful transformations we see are math dependent in the musical sphere as well as in the AI and software spheres.

I may not have explained myself very well and, hopefully, will do better this time. Let me try again. :)

The phrase editor shows a 'zero' point for the root note as determined by the harmony under which it lies, as determined by the current key of the song. Correct?

The gradation lines are the available intervals of that same chord and scale. Correct?

Unless you've found my above statements to be incorrect, let me continue briefly ... for if I am incorrect, than this obviously won't work.

All I am saying is that I can see no fundamental reason why instead of having horizontal gradations/ lines above the root position, the display could not reflect the actual notes. Where the little 'blobs' land, whether on gradations reflectiing intervals in a scale or on an actual depiction of the 12 steps in an octave display, in either case SFP 'knows' the true value of that 'blob' or segment as an actual midi note value. If it didn't, it couldn't produce it. And after any change due to editing a segment, will still place the notes on proper intervals even if they are different ones, no?

I would find it more helpful to be able to see ... at least as an option ... the blob/ segment against a background that informed me of its actual musical meaning.

I suggested that ideally this could have a toggle between the actual value as reflected on the normal piano scale with C Major on the white keys and a second option that would transpose the 'keyboard' to one where the root note of the scale is in the C position of the piano keyboard.

I see nothing of this that would detract from all the wonderful things that SFP/E can do. It would simply bring another source of helpful information to the user.

Thanks for reading.

The gradation lines are the available intervals of that same chord and scale. Correct?

Not exactly. The lines represent scale or chord steps only if you bypass Interpretation. And when you do this, you switch off a large amount of Synfire's AI.

The gradation lines are the available intervals of that same chord and scale. Correct?

Not exactly. The lines represent scale or chord steps only if you bypass Interpretation. And when you do this, you switch off a large amount of Synfire's AI.

I'll have to think this through ... but for now I will take your word for it. :)

However, the segments still represent actual notes, so I don't see any reason the background couldn't reflect that.

The segments/ notes could still be restricted in where they could land on the grid, based upon the AI, no?

The segments/ notes could still be restricted in where they could land on the grid, based upon the AI, no?

Supertonic has recently pointed to a quite remarkable function: Take >> Extract from output.

This function takes the rendered output notes and places them in the Parameter "Take". This can help you to compare the rendered output with the symbols/segments in the Parameter Figure. After using Take >> Extract from output  you can also convert this Take to a static figure (brown symbols). This static figure then would directly represent the previously rendered output.

All I am saying is that I can see no fundamental reason why instead of having horizontal gradations/ lines above the root position, the display could not reflect the actual notes.

Due to their visual appearance, figures suggest a similarity or relationship with MIDI pitch, which is not given. I see that this confusion comes up quite often, so we will have to address it.

To be clear, there is no problem showing a piano roll for the final output, although that would be disabled and for information only. There are other reasons why this could not yet be done. Sooner or later, we will find a way.

If however you want to see Figure rendered in a MIDI grid, that will not happen, because both grids don't match.

Look at this example. The bass is am extremely simple figure looped at an odd measure. Listen to the result. You hear a driving, lively bass line:

(https://users.cognitone.com/content/simple-input-organic-output)

How would that bass Figure be displayed and edited on a piano roll?

The segments/ notes could still be restricted in where they could land on the grid, based upon the AI, no?

Supertonic has recently pointed to a quite remarkable function: Take >> Extract from output.

This function takes the rendered output notes and places them in the Parameter "Take". This can help you to compare the rendered output with the symbols/segments in the Parameter Figure. After using Take >> Extract from output  you can also convert this Take to a static figure (brown symbols). This static figure then would directly represent the previously rendered output.

I can see that this is helpful ... but what an awkward and tedious work around compared to having the information directly displayed in the background of the phrase editor.

Jürgen, don't you think it would be better if the information was displayed directly  in the phrase editor?

Prado,

don't you think having the rendered notes in a piano roll on the figure display would confuse people even more? Placing notes on the figure based on the piano roll would be pointless as those notes would not be what gets rendered. Surely that's more confusing than how thing work now? 

it would also make the display really slow to update. Move one note one step, synfire has to process the complete container looking at all the other instruments to decide what the resulting note rendering is to be then update the piano roll. Repeat as you move the note one more step.

Jürgen, don't you think it would be better if the information was displayed directly  in the phrase editor?

I'm not sure, how exactly this could work. You say that the actual notes should be displayed in the background of the phrase editor. But how? On what scale should the notes be displayed? Horizontal scale? Vertical scale? Chromatic Scale? In any case I think that I wouldn't get an easy oversight over the notes this way. I would have to count lines and do some calculations to find out what notes actually are played. 

It would be probably better, if the rendered notes would be displayed in a separate traditional notation system or in a piano roll. A piano roll display has been requested by me and many others for some time. (this was discussed for instance in this thread:

https://users.cognitone.com/de/content/help-bring-composers-vision-alive ). We will certainly get it sooner or later.

But anyway, you should not think too much about the actually played notes when you work with Synfire. To me, it's almost irrelevant to know what notes are actually played. I only care how it sounds. And that's my recommendation: Trust your ears!

A separate display of the rendered output is not a technical problem. I see that it could be helpful. There should also be no significant speed problems, as Synfire renders the output for playback anyway.

The question is rather how to avoid confusion ("why cant I edit this?") and how to integrate it seamlessly with the rest. The experiments I was doing do far were not convincing. This requires some more time to breed.

Trust your ears!

Absolutely. 

I am again and again surprised how extremely simple melodies can be so touching and beautiful, depending on the context in which they occur. If I had my eyes judge them, I would probably have wanted to make them "more sophisticated". Trusting your ears is the best way to avoid overdoing something.

Less is more. And your ears know it best.

The question is rather how to avoid confusion ("why cant I edit this?") 

I'm not quite sure if it is really necessary to completely prevent editing in the piano roll. I was thinking about this for a while and I came up with this:

Suppose you could move a note in the piano roll vertically. The corresponding symbol in the phrase editor then could get greyed out to indicate that this is an edited symbol. On rendering this symbol would be treated as usual. The only difference would be that directly before the MIDI note is generated the pitch offset from the piano roll would be added. In the same way as the already existing Chromatic parameter does. Actually this would be a kind of an extension of the Chromatic parameter.

I use the Chromatic parameter quite often to realize dissonances that otherwise hardly could be achieved in Synfire. An extension of this parameter to get more control over the creation of dissonances would be useful anyway. 

Suppose you could move a note in the piano roll vertically. The corresponding symbol in the phrase editor then could get greyed out to indicate that this is an edited symbol.

There is no link from a symbol to a rendered note. One symbol renders many notes in different contexts. If the symbol was altered, this affects all dependent notes. Since those are in different harmonic and VL contexts, it would mess up everything.

Synfire would be pretty boring, if there was a strict 1:1 mapping from Figure to MIDI on the time line. Most of its power comes from the same figure being re-interpreted over and over in a changing context. Actually, this is algorithmic composition in a way.

 If the symbol was altered, this affects all dependent notes.

Hmm, yes...the repetition feature. Would probably be too tricky to achieve that only a specific repetition of the symbol is to be affected by the alteration. You are probably right, a piano roll can not be editable. 

Prado,

don't you think having the rendered notes in a piano roll on the figure display would confuse people even more?

 

Perhaps I am just confusing myself. But I will try again.

Isn't a phrase a set of musical notes with timing information of note lengths (i.e., i/4, dotted 1/4, 1/8, etc.), with rest lengths (i.e., rests or 'notes off' of 1/4, dotted 1/4, etc., etc.); and scale intervals (i.e., 1-3-5, or 2-4-6, etc.) WITHOUT pitch or specific scale information? There may be other parameters, such as velocity, etc., that are in the phrase, but the harmonic information does not appear until SFP/E has rendered the harmonic information based upon the entered harmony and scales.

So, in the example of 1-3-5, this could be C-E-G if a C Major scale, but it could be E-G-B if E Minor (now 1-3b-5, of course). I must believe that SFP/E takes the phrase and renders it to pitched midi notes according to the harmony and scales, but preserves the intervals' relationships.

So, a phrase is really two things. One is the phrase in the library either imported or recorded. I must suppose SFP/E has a method of stripping the harmonic content (if it is not already done so on import or record) when a phrase is pulled from the library to the arrangement.

At some point in the process ... probably when first dragged into the arrange view, this phrase must have its harmonic content added. This is the second meaning of phrase. So when we open a phrase in the phrase editor, that phrase must already have had its harmonic content attached. How else could it be? If it wasn't attached, then we couldn't play it 'hamonically' in the phrase editor.

So my idea is simply that the phrase editor should at least as an option show the actual interval structure and time base of the phrase. It could show it in real notes, i.e., the actual rendered midi note or it could show it symbolically with the 'C' note representing the root of the chosen key and the phrase under the current chord transposed up or down accordingly.

I don't see why this would be confusing against a grid similar to what you see in a key editor in a DAW. If people preferred the current design, there could simply be a 'toggle' to go back and forth between the views.

One other thing I would like to be able to do in such a view is add a non-diatonic passing note. I don't believe this is possible at present ... but then, I am wrong about many things! :) Anyway, that could not be represented in the current phrase editor design.

Jürgen, don't you think it would be better if the information was displayed directly  in the phrase editor?

I'm not sure, how exactly this could work. You say that the actual notes should be displayed in the background of the phrase editor. But how? On what scale should the notes be displayed? Horizontal scale? Vertical scale? Chromatic Scale? In any case I think that I wouldn't get an easy oversight over the notes this way. I would have to count lines and do some calculations to find out what notes actually are played. 

It would be probably better, if the rendered notes would be displayed in a separate traditional notation system or in a piano roll. A piano roll display has been requested by me and many others for some time. (this was discussed for instance in this thread:

https://users.cognitone.com/de/content/help-bring-composers-vision-alive ). We will certainly get it sooner or later.

But anyway, you should not think too much about the actually played notes when you work with Synfire. To me, it's almost irrelevant to know what notes are actually played. I only care how it sounds. And that's my recommendation: Trust your ears!

Jürgen ...

Your advice is excellent as always. I tried to answer this more fully below.

You ask how, on which scale? They should be displayed as they have already been rendered on the key/ chord/ scale that attached the harmonic content as the actual notes you hear being played.

I wouldn't intend to change those attributes in the phrase editor. I would only want to change the melodic lines or transpose the chordal positions while maintaining the other harmonic structure. A phrase is the motif, melody, etc, positioned within the chosen harmonic content/ context. That is what it means to me and what I think it means to SFP/E.