Pre-Release Feedback: Snippets

How to record snippets to arrangement?

I have watch the video you made , Preveiw of snippets, you play live with all the snippets and the " Voila saved as an arrangement.So how did you do that?

You have to remember to say 'voila', and make sure your mic is on ;)

I have made arrangement from session, then saved to a-f, then press the record button, and press a-f, result synfire freeze.

I played around with the snippets page some today. When I discovered that you can drop various harmonies into the grid view and the armed one gets used, I was absolutely amazed.

I have some usability concerns with the page:

1. If I arm a few snippets and hit play, then arm more while playing, it seems that the snippets are out of sync. That is, the newly playing one starts from the beginning, instead of where it would be "in the mix".

2. When I hit stop, all the snippets get disarmed. I think they should remain armed, so I can hit play and hear them from the beginning again. There's already a button to clear all armings, so there's no need to do that on stop.

3. It would be nice to be able to rename the A-E buttons. Also, the current right-click/left-click save/load interface to those buttons is... odd? It's quite easy to clear one accidentally.

4. If I have the green link icon enabled when I drag items from a phrase pool, then I disable the link, those snippets' instruments seem to be locked it to whatever instrument was in the structure view at the time of dragging. If I try to change the instrument after that, it changes it for all snippets that I did this to, even if they are in different rows.

5. I should be able to select the instrument for a row before it contains any snippets, and it should be the default for new snippets in that row.

6. It would be nice to create a phrase pool with many figures, then drag the entire phrase pool into a row and have each of those figures become a snippet on that row. For example, you generate 8 melodies, 8 basslines, etc, then you can quickly hit the randomize arm button to try many combinations. Currently, I can only do this a single snippet at a time.

7. I don't know why this happens, but I get asked what instrument I should use in snippet view a lot more than I should. For example, a figure uses the global piano when I click on it in the library, and when I drag it into snippet view, I see "no instrument for acoustic piano, please select one". But, it was just playing the piano fine, so...? It doesn't seem consistent though, sometimes it works fine. As mentioned in #5, a default would be good.

8. I understand that a row can be a mixture of instruments. You might want a French horn snippet and a Cello snippet, and never have them play at the same time. However, this is a pretty confusing feature. Things might simplify a lot if each row is just one instrument.

9. Is it possible to move the "last session" into a container instead of the main arrangement in structure view? I wasn't too sure. I could see it being very useful to generate new containers with each session you come up with on the snippets tab. (Perhaps from the A-E buttons)

10. The help mentions putting parameters into snippets view. I tried this with a velocity parameter snippet, but it seemed to have no effect. Does it go on the same row as a playing instrument? Maybe I just misunderstood what it meant.

Anyway, it's very interesting as is. I think it could be a bit easier to use though.

Is there a video for working with this snippets ?
No idea what you are explaining here.

I give a tip for better explaining : imagine to explain this for someone who is totally new to Synfire and see this for the first time.
Problem also is that it is a explanation  for mac users and windows users  

Example : There's a not-so-obvious gem to be found here: 
Make Snippets From Arrangment

See a screenshot ?  : says nothing  

Try that with your existing arrangements and then have fun with the snippets. :  ?

Be sure to drop some progression on the Harmony outlet to use as the default harmony. ? 

For me:  i cannot do something with this information...

"There is huge potential with Snippets for the future. This is just the beginning."

If this is well explained, otherwise its a problematic for users like me

There's another way.

Encourage and signpost members to edit the wiki.

Janamdo, I plan on creating a video around my experiences learning snippets for the first time. I can post a link here when it's complete.

Andre, thanks for the answers. While I understand the concept behind "play newly armed snippets from the start", there's no way to then record the timings of those armings and then put them into the arrangement. I guess a user could just move the figure in time to where they think they armed it. I agree, it gets odd when the snippets are lengths that aren't multiples of each other. Where would you start the newly armed snippet if it's 2/3 the length of other snippets? I don't know!

For the velocity parameter test, I did exactly that. Put it in a one row while drums were playing in another. The drums just kept on hitting with their original velocity. Perhaps, does the drum figure need to lack a velocity parameter for this to work?

Also, multiple instruments per row. I guess my issue here is that every snippet I add to the row adds two popups to the screen. Which instrument? And also, "move phrase to instrument X or create group"? I'll try dragging an entire phrase pool into a row though. If that works without a bunch of questions, then this isn't much of an issue anymore.

"Janamdo, I plan on creating a video around my experiences learning snippets for the first time. I can post a link here when it's complete."

Great , thanks.

Here's the video, hope it helps you get started! :)

Thanks , and it makes it easier to understand