Midi basslines and melodies

Sorry for the late reply. Find my answers below.

Keen for some automatic tools where I can adjust the parameters, that take a midi bassline or melody and make it less recognisable from the source. Rather than manually nudging notes up/down etc. What methods do you recommend?

Try the derange tool (mixer icon on the click board). It cuts the selected span into slices (pick size from the button’s menu) and re-orders all of them in a random sequence. This is great for rhythm variation.

In general, bass lines in electronic music are mostly rhythm and rhythm is not subject to copyright. If the bass line follows your chords, it is already different enough to be unique. You can import MIDI construction kits and build yourself a library with bass lines you want to use in your music.

How to fit 2 midi lines to play together at the same time, from different sources?

Unless you use static pitch symbols (brown), they will follow Harmony and work together automatically. That’s what Synfire is built for.

How can I use Synfire to automatically ‘simplify’ a phrase?

There is no automatic feature for this. This also depends on what your idea of "simple" is. You can delete symbols, set them all to the same length, or use legato, move most symbols to the same vertical position, etc. Use the click board for this.

If I make changes to the chords, will they also affect the bassline? Typically should basslines keep the root note?

Yes, of course. That’s what Synfire is all about. All instruments follow Harmony and you can replace everything at any time.

How to use the Derange function and it’s parameters?

The only parameter is the size of each slice to cut your selection, or the entire vector. You pick it from the button’s menu (see my first answer above).

Is there something I can apply to reduce a polyphonic melody down to it’s bass notes?

Try the Monophonic button („1“). That will reduce it to the top melody. If you need the bottom melody, invert the figure (upside-down button), do Monophonic, then invert again ;-)

Can you please tell me how to set the lower playing range of the instrument to get the desired sound (sweet spot) and let Synfire decide which bass notes to use?

On the instrument inspector, on the "Ranges" tab, just move the bright green key and/or the edges of the bright blue range with the mouse. Synfire always selects the bass note that best fits the pitch range, unless you force it to a particular note in the progression.

How can I setup the default sound to use to preview midi melodies? (eg. sylenth with a selected preset). Making previews better prior to import.

Be sure you have a global rack with default sounds you want to use. Then assign them to the global instruments. The generic piano sound is used for melodies. You can also assign sounds to each instrument on the import dialog before you start the import.

Easiest way to re-harmonise the composition, based on chord changes recommended by Synfire? Can I cycle through the recommendations and keep re-harmonising until I find something that works?

Re-Harmonization is done by setting the Harmony parameter. You do so by pressing „Apply“ on the Harmonizer. There is no way to cycle through recommendations, as there are thousands of them, or more. You’ll need to develop some intuition and pick any suggestion that sounds good to you.

How to generate basslines?
How to generate pads?

Besides Auto-Chords and Auto-Bass (Interpretation parameter), there are no parametric generators yet. We are working on some. It’s easy for techno/electronic, but a real challenge to make them work for all musical styles.

As said, the current workflow is copy/paste (or: drag/drop) and transform. Together with what Harmony does with the figures, this is already very powerful.

Thanks for posting your questions here. Others will certainly be interested and find this post through the search function.