Posted
Hi. I have HN. Very happy with it. Want to know if Synfire is appropriate for me.
1. Are the patterns that play in HN as accompaniments generated by a process that is visible in synfire. By visible I mean is the underlying technology available to the user to make new accompaniments in synfire, while in HN it is hidden and not available but the patterns that are "stored" in HN were originally generated by such technology. I like the accompaniments and it appears that this is exactly what synfire adds to HN?
2. Confirm that synfire does not come with a pattern (or "figure" or "motif") library but can import (from any midi file) and can record midi notes.
3. does synfire have robust song creation support. ie. can create parts, loop over some, perhaps annotate. This is very important to me, and HN has a limited capability - with promises made (a long time back!!) about "new feature in HN coming up", but perhaps this has been implemented in synfire and perhaps it is even more full featured.
4. Supposing that a take a phrase from Bach and put it in a different context in my song. Do I understand that it will sound quite different, but will in fact be recognizable. Sort of like Frank Sinatra singing a Led Zeppelin song? Is this the appropriate analogy?
5. I want to use synfire as a creative tool (all the advertising about inspiration, new musical surprises is exciting!), but the purpose of all this is 2 fold for me: (a) create new parts - e.g. breaks - in my song and (b) create (really good) accompaniments (which I export to a DAW and superpose audio (e.g. vocals). I expect this to be a very doable (possibly the prime function)? My concern is practical as well as musical.
Appreciate answers/comments.
Fr., 23.01.2009 - 18:36 Permalink
Your questions are welcome. I think many visitors are interested in the same topics.
Re 1: Yes. You can make your own accompaniments (realtime-patterns) and edit them at the figure level. Synfire Pro is the most complete, all-inclusive technology we have to date. We are using Synfire Pro ourselves to create HN content. However, Synfire adds a lot more to HN than this. Actually, HN is only one of its tools.
Re 2: Yes. We did not yet have the time and/or budget to create much ready to use example content. The issue here is that there are so many different musical styles out there, we will certainly need to hire a person for that job alone.
Re 3: Yes, that's what it is made for.
Re 4: Yes. Listen to the attached example, which uses a 6/8 Bach theme (the flutes) over a 4/4 piano figure with entirely different harmonies.
Re 5: Creating new parts for existing works fine, although you might need to import your existing stuff first to have everything under control with Synfire. I would not recommend synchronizing two apps and switching back and forth between them during the creative process. This would mean losing most of the incredible power that Synfire offers you.
The more work you get done in Synfire, the better. This is where your creativity is free to do the most crazy things. Once your stuff is moved to a DAW, it becomes static (in a technical sense: With Synfire you have the source code, in a DAW, you only have assembler).
Andre
Example combining 6/8 Bach flutes with 4/4 piano (morphing) (RachelsRadiation_0002.mp3)
rachelsradiation_0002_837.mp3
rachelsradiation_0002_837.mp3