Synfire 2.7 Preview

Yes, we definitely need more hands-on videos that take a practical approach from the perspective of musicians, rather than the condensed information for tech-savvy early adopters we have now. That's much, much harder than I ever thought. 

Before someone can appreciate the potential of "you can do everything", they must first have experienced a number of small rewards in digestible increments. Think about how almost everyone today has learned to create and edit sounds for synthesizers with VCO, ADSR, LFO, VCA, wavetables and whatnot, which was once esoteric niche knowledge. That took a very long time to become mainstream. I don't expect it to be different with semi-algorithmic music composed from parameters.

Synfire has a virtually unlimited supply of "how to" and "wow" topics, which is both good and bad (agony of choice). To sort that out we'll have to sit down with beginners first hand to be able to return to that perspective.

I'm inclined to make the 'Matrix' page an option (hidden by default). Not sure how much it is being used (we don't collect usage statistics) but I didn't use it meaningfully in years and it's a distraction and source of confusion for new users. 

It can be useful if you are searching for parameters that you can't easily spot otherwise. But basically the parameter trace and the 'Structure' and 'Tracks' pages provide the same functionality.

It won't go away, just not be visible until you make it so.

Development progresses fine so far. The big picture is emerging now that we are wrapping up and testing. There is one thing that still bugs me though.

The term 'Phrase' as it is currently used everywhere does no longer suit what we are dealing with in the 'Tracks' view. Especially if we are going to have audio regions some day, 'Phrase' will no longer be meaningful. At first I thought about 'Region' in analogy to DAWs, but that's a pretty warped term too (probably stemming from non-destructive clipping).

At any rate, calling the same thing 'Phrase' in one view and 'Region' in another is a total UX no go. Going forward I'd rather use 'Phrase' only for phrases in a library, which is 100% intuitive. Phrases placed in an arrangement should be called something else.

So how would you call the resizable things placed on a track in the 'Tracks' view that also appear listed per container in the 'Structure' view?

Yeah, Clip may work.

Brainstorming with Claude suggested (among others) Element, Component, Block, Node to imply a more structural thing. But it doesn't seem far fetched that a "Clip" may include multiple parameters.

Claude: 

I'd lean toward "Phrases" - it's musically intuitive, suggests something with dynamics and expression, and clearly conveys that these aren't just audio clips but musical ideas that can be transposed, harmonized, and varied. "Cells" would be my second choice - it's concise, suggests something that can reproduce/vary (like biological cells), and is used in some music theory contexts for small musical units.

So interestingly it arrived at our original term. Wouldn't be surprised if this is because it was trained on our websites ;-)

Still pondering whether to use "Clip", or stick with "Phrase". But here's something beautiful - New rack module controls on the sidebar. Which is basically the entire channel strip with FX insert slots.