Posted
Hi,
I am currently using Synfire for composing microtonal music (i.e., not 12 equal divisions of the octave). I am using customised palettes and catalogs. That all works in principle, but a single Synfire chord type/extension played over different roots (i.e. different transpositions of the same MIDI note interval structure) can obviously result in rather differently sounding chords with a microtonal tuning.
Synfire catalogs allow for alternative chord names, and that could be a suitable workaround. Is there perhaps a way to control which alternative chord names are used for certain chords in palettes and resulting progressions? EDIT: For the harmony parameter, I guess I can overwrite (type with text input) arbitrary alternative chord names, but ideally I would have alternative chord names in palettes, and progressions and the harmony parameter would "inherit" such names from there.
In case of key changes (modulations), I would then like to preserve the chosen alternative chord names for the corresponding transposed scale steps if possible (in case of modulations, my whole tunings change on the fly in a MIDI controlled way).
Any advice is much appreciated!
Best,
Torsten
PS: In palettes I am also already using the available colour markings, but there are only 2 different colours available, which is not enough for such purposes.
Mi., 30.03.2022 - 16:12 Permalink
You can relabel all interval structures in the Catalog and add new ones as you need. These names will show up in palettes and progressions everywhere. So yes, that should be doable.
Whether the built-in enharmonic spelling of notes (D# vs. Eb) still makes sense in a microtonal setting, I don't know. You can relabel interval structures, but not the 12 pitches.
Thus, if you have a 19-step microtonal scale, you can't define 19 distinct pitch names. Harmony logic in Synfire requires no more than 12 tones per scale (less is fine). It also helps if scales repeat every octave, but I would not rule out that you might get interesting "effects" from violating that rule.
Mi., 30.03.2022 - 18:02 Permalink
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond! Unfortunately this does not yet answer my question.
> You cannot relabel the 12 pitches.
Understood and accepted. (I can change the tunings on the fly, so in reality I have access to many more pitches for a single piece.)
> You can relabel all interval structures in the Catalog and add new ones as you need.
Yes and I used that already, thanks! But this is not sufficient for my purpose. What I need instead is a way to basically select different labels for the same chord (interval structure) with different chord roots (because on different roots the same MIDI interval structure can sound rather differently with my tunings).
Synfire catalogs support alternative chord names, and I thought perhaps I could control for some chord which of its alternative names is shown in the palette etc.
Here is an example of what I want to do. In my current tuning some of the minor thirds (MIDI interval 3, like in the standard tuning) are tuned to minor thirds, but others are tuned to subminor thirds (a lovely interval). I would like to use different chord names or some other different markings for chords using either. Again, these chords would share the same MIDI interval structure, so I cannot simply relabel the chords as you suggest, as Synfire only allows for a single chord definition per interval structure (in contrast to RapidComposer, BTW).
Still, Synfire allows for specifying alternative chord names. So, I was hoping that I could enter alternative names for my different chords that share the same MIDI interval structure and then somehow select one of the alternative names for individual chords in palettes, progressions and Harmony parameters.
If what I ask for is not directly possible, how exactly can alternative chord names be used in Synfire? Perhaps I can find some workaround to get this working otherwise.
Mi., 30.03.2022 - 21:17 Permalink
Thanks for clarifying.
Synfire can't distinguish different names for the same interval structure (only different spellings of the same thing in a different context). Alternative names are for parsing input only.
The relationships in a microtonal harmony model are more complex than 12TET and would require additional dimensions (possibly based on absolute frequency), which Synfire is not prepared for. Even if there was a hack to display different names depending on scale set, that would only touch the surface. The power of Synfire's harmony model lies in the set-theoretic inferencing it can do based on a consensus established for mostly Western music during the past 200 or so years. It doesn't model physical things like frequency, harmony and dissonance, etc. I'd think the latter would be needed for dealing in a meaningful way with microtonal music.
Do., 31.03.2022 - 06:13 Permalink
> Synfire can't distinguish different names for the same interval structure
Thanks. I will then continue to use the colour markings (though more colours could be helpful).
> Microtonal harmony model are more complex than 12TET and would require additional dimensions
Sure, those things are not the same, but depending on the microtonal scales chosen, traditional harmony models can actually still help a lot, as I know from computationally modelling such things from scatch for years. I feel its worth a try doing this with Synfire -- I like its editing capabilities ;-) The scales I am currently using are not 12-EDO, but they are also not too far from that, so standard voice leading rules still kind of work. Intermediate chords occasionally inserted by Synfire may sometimes be more dissonant, but with suitable voice leading and as only a passing event that is not a problem. Instead, it adds interesting colours (perhaps like some less-well tuned chords in historic tunings).
If it does not work out so well I can always go back to hacking my own (non-GUI) models from scratch again. ;-)