Posted
Hi,
I'm still having trouble working the harmony in order to achieve a near exact match of a melody.
I am converting themes from a cartoon short i did a while ago, that is being made into an episodic. I want to get them as close as possible without resorting to chromatic alteration, so they will be more viable as assets in a library for reuse (I LOVE THE NEW CHROMATIC FEATURE BTW)
I pulled a Blues1 scale into an EMaj pallet. There is only one melodic instrument playing over a E Major chord. In the real version the other instruments are vamping on E.
I have a little bluesy trill, eigth notes, A-Bb-A, starting on the and of one, over an E7(9,#11) context. The blues scale is not listed in the scales in the parameters for Harmony. When I dragged the chord in from the pallet it was there, but changing it to a #11 erased it.
I am never able to get the A to play, even with voice leading off.
How do I force Synfire to consider the E minor blues scale over the EMaj chord with out resorting to layers?
(BluesHelp.cognac)
blueshelp_119.cognac
Do., 24.09.2009 - 06:32 Permalink
I was able to get it with a || E7(4,#11,no3) which I entered in as a Esus4(7, #11). I changed the chord to just be E7(4,#11)
I've read the chord notation section in the manual several times but I really don't understand the notation. I often try to catch notes in the context by adding them as chords of addition (#4, 5, #5, 11) but I usually get an error... I was surprised when it brought up E7(4,#11,no3)
Its still not using the blues scale but I get the right notes.
Is there any difference internally if its using the blues scale?
Do., 24.09.2009 - 15:55 Permalink
Hm. The fact that all other instruments play E doesn't necessarily imply that the progression is just E (or that all chords are based on root E). It is however likely that the notes of E are always present in all chords.
In your example, I doubt that E7(9,#11) is the right chord accompanying your trill/grace note melody. Judging from listening to the melody alone, I would rather expect a real function shift, e.g. something like
E Dm Bm7 E
This is what the harmonizer comes up with. Add the notes of E to each of these chords, and you'll get more complex "blues" chords.
Admittedly there is no convenient way to do this yet. The feature suggested in the "Estimate Extensions" thread would come in handy. It would jazz up the chords in order to match the melody. Doing this manually is a lot of work.
Concerning chord notation, IIRC, you can't type chords that are not yet in the catalog, that is, Synfire won't create a new catalog entry only by typing it into the progression editor.
EDIT: It just see Synfire can! Wow. Sometimes even I forget some of its capabilities. It adds the parsed chord as a temporary item (not visible by default).
Fr., 25.09.2009 - 02:08 Permalink
I tried your suggestions.
I entered in Dm/E and Bm7/E and got Dm(9) and Bm(7,11). I wasn't able to get the Bb though, right now I set it to a chromatic note. The chords do work better, definitely the way to go.
Is there not a way to make a part play in the blues scale specifically? Are the scales only for the pallet, in order to derive chords? This is the area I'm a little hazy with.
How can we play in an exotic scale?
Also
You said "synfire can," what do you mean exactly? Can we enter in arbitrary pitch sets? It only seems to work some of the time. I do appreciate that it does seem to convert some of them though... It wouldn't be easy to pick through a whole progression of Dmin(4, #7, b9, #11) type chords and understand their quality, but it is nice to enter them that way.
Fr., 25.09.2009 - 12:41 Permalink
How can we play in an exotic scale?
:teach: Make it the base of a scale set, i.e. double-click the scale in the catalog and you'll get a palette based on that scale. Another way is to add the scale to a standard palette (copy & paste). The latter ensures you can pick the scale or any of its rotations as the vertical scale in your progression.
Basically the above method is like defining you custom "key" to work with. That's what scale sets are made for.
You said "synfire can," what do you mean exactly?It can parse a new chord expression from user input and will add that to the catalog if it doesn't match any existing interval structure. The current parser implementation is not based on a BNF/grammar definition yet, so not all errors will be detected properly. The parser will be overhauled in later versions, though.