Skip to main content

Fiddling with Synfire

Posted

I suspect that this software has a great potential, although I still do not know well what. Tonight I went randomly, copying and pasting short blue segments on a base of four chords.

Perhaps with softwares like Synfire it's the wisest thing to do: first, improvise something with the mouse. Time will tell.

 

random_piano.mp3

Sat, 2017-11-04 - 01:54 Permalink

One thing is certain. Nice or ugly that it is, like it or not, to write these four measures with paper and pencil I would have employed much, much more time than with Synfire. This is already something.

Sat, 2017-11-04 - 11:11 Permalink

I always thought that one "problem" with synfire is that the life of a human is too short to be able to discover and actually apply all possibilities.

But the frequency with which you are sharing your insights seems to disprove that Image removed.

Sat, 2017-11-04 - 19:05 Permalink

Random drawings only get you so far (and can get disapointing at some point).

The most productive way to learn and use Synfire is

  1. Learn about its countless features by lots of experimentation (as Roberto is currently doing)
  2. Let that sink in for a while
  3. Now that you know the tool, ideas of workflows will emerge (in the morning, just as you wake up)
  4. Start building your first work from very simple figure elements
  5. Focus on rhythm first - melody emerges with the next step:
  6. Transform, distort, transpose and repeat those
  7. Copy/paste some you like best into containers
  8. Build a narrative from those containers

Obviously, building your own figures from scratch is more work than importing and refining them. We're currently working on a new feature that will make building new figures more fun.

Sat, 2017-11-04 - 19:22 Permalink

Yes Andre, I already reached step #6 working on very short, handcrafted midi snippets. To me, it makes no sense working on long flowing phrases in Synfire. And I do not want it. To me, the best and funniest part of your software is getting rid of every autobiographical temptation and watching the music take shape almost by itself. A big sense of freedom ;-)