User friendly for Pop-Rock formats

Hi David,

I'm by no means an expert or even close when it comes to Synfire but I can tell you this: Andre listens, and implements ideas. He is aware that Synfire is being used for more than orchestral music and I have complete faith that he is working on making Synfire an even more powerful compositional tool that will be useful for all types of music. I'm sure he'll tell you that himself shortly.

Take care:)

The quote you cited refers to the use of virtual instrument plugins with Synfire. It is currently easier to handle if you have a lot of sounds that you can share among many projects, so you dont need to setup a new rack for each. Apart from that, the inner mechanics and the user interface of Synfire is great for all styles of music.

With full VST/AU support already appearing at the horizon, this will no longer be an issue for a long time anyway.

Andre recently noted that pure Rock music heavily depends on guitars and real people performing it (and I could not agree more), so midi synths possibly can not convey it anyway. Although this does not mean you can not use Synfire to write cool rock songs and later perform them with our band.

I see no reason why Synfire wouldn't excell at pop music.  Have you checked out the Yamaha motif series, or the Virtual  instrumentI, real guitar? These us 'XG' midi format that implement a system of using octaves 6 - 8 to produce string slide, pops, fret noises etc. They also make use of velocity to individual notes to add glissandos, slides, harmonics. 

To implement this with Synfire, you will need a XG instrument or Real-guitar. All you need to do is set up a 2nd instance of one of instruments ( I use RealGuitar and a Yamaha Tyros). For XG instruments, n the first track sends the midi notes for guitar pitches, on the 2nd track send MIDI that is in octave 6 - 8.  Use this as a static  imput (treat like a drum track). Add some vibrato, and pitch bend and you can have a screaming killer guitar. 

On RealGuitar, the  first track blocks out chords, the 2nd track consists of notes in the C -1 to C 0 range and also up in C  7 - C 8 range.  Note that Real guitar uses a a slightly different approach, you must indicidually tailor a midi file to be used on one particual instrumet.  The high and low octaves in real guitar trigger the rhythm pattern, guitar picking, strumming, etc. Again you would import this 2nd track as a static 'drum instrument'.  I often take a drum part, hats, toms, cymbals, transpose to proper octave, thin and I have a unique patterns of pops, scratches, 

Spectrasonic's Trillian also uses a similar approach, low notes to change instrument patch, etc. Again this will need individual messaging to get desired results. You might save this work to do in your DAW, but you could also try it in Synfire. 

Look into Yamaha .sty files or Band in a box .sty files.  These are short  midi files that consist of  several 1 - 4 bars. A style will contain up to 8 instruments. There will up ro 14 sections, each labeled with a marker, that will displayed when Synfire imports it. The more creative yamaha s tyles use XG format. To get full benefit you will need an instrument that reads these patches (other wise you lose the top octave sound effects. 

You can cull lots of patterns, to use in your rock/pop creation.

i recently submitted 10 tunes to pumpaudio.com for licensing. i used synfire heavily for these tracks. mainly R&B, Hip Hop/Pop type music. anytime you deal with chords/melody/harmony in any style Synfire is the ultimate tool. the ability to listen to diffenent progressions at the click of the mouse is close to priceless. it comes down to taking the time to learn the software and then producing for the genre.

the tracks are waiting review. i dont have them on a site. here is one. all the music except drums and fx were prototyped in synfire.

(http://soundcloud.com/dude-ranch/bolly-1)

cant figure out how to upload mp3s here. here is another pop type tune using synfire and ableton live.

(http://soundcloud.com/dude-ranch/tghop)

XG came out in 90's as a response the growing number of sample players.  The XG component added little samples to make the output sound more realistic. It has grown and evolved on it's own. 

You want to finad an instrument that "responds" to XG MIDI It doesn't necessarily mean it's named with XG. The Motif series and Tyros synths both make use of do. 

There are no hardware XG controllers per se.  The XG components are generated by the style generation of Tyros, and the sequencers/arpeggittors of Motif.

Roland uses GS technology, similar results, Yamaha also uses SA and SA2 technology, again similar but more advanced. .  You have to dig in and search out the various ways. I would imagine Korg has a similar technology. You have to search out 

I"m only aware of RealGuitar, Trillian, that generate instrument artifacts via MIDI.  You can use Kontakt voices by importing a MIDI file as a drum track and assign to same Kontakt voice to activate instrument changes.  

I think the more we all search around, we might 'artifact generators' that are triggered by MIDI.  I sometimes keep MIDI files just dedicated to that, and incorporate them with other instruments to get a more realistic sound.

I really like the solo that comes in at 40 seconds, it has a lot of energy, and keeps repeating on  itself.

 I too had trouble uploading a song here.  I'd upload it and then it would disappear before I got to post message. I didn't understand the 'inline' thing.  it seemed easier to upload to 'box' or a similar site, and then link it.

Perhaps someone could explain this fuller.

To upload MP3s, just add them as a file attachment. If you enable the "List" checkbox for the file, it will be listed for download. If you type Could not find [image 1] (for the first attachment) a Flash player will be shown for convenient playback.