How to experiment with a chord progression for pianotrack

Jan,

 I think synfire has to loop round to the start of the selected playing area to take note of a new chord progression. I think you are right, you have to use a sketch if you want immediate feedback on your chord changes.

However if you cant hear when the chords change in the original, pick different chords so you can hear the difference. If you cant tell where the chord changes are in the original, who cares, make up some, choose ones that sound good. Together, you and synfire can come up with your own progression/tune that can be better than the original.

A quick tip... only use a very small part of the orginal midi, you will be amazed what you and synfire can produce when you create a great sounding chord progression. Most of my bass figures are all on the same note in synfire, but when modulated by the chord progression synfire can still come up with a great bass line.

be original ;) its one of the things Im amazed synfire allows you to be even when using other peoples midi clips as the basis of your own tune.

you have to use a sketch if you want immediate feedback on your chord changes

Yes, but not always recommended. A melodic piano phrase sounds a lot better with regular playback, because Synfire can anticipate the chords that come next. I would recommend dropping chords from the palette to the progression and then running full playback from that position. Use UNDO to get back to the previous progression:

1. Surf palette for chords
2. Drop chord to progression
3. Play
4. Undo

If you cant tell where the chord changes are in the original, who cares

I would say so too. Actually there is no such thing like the exact position of a chord change, except for strictly quantized and simple music. This is always a guess, more or less, and heavily depends on how the piece is arranged and played.

A quick tip... only use a very small part of the orginal midi, you will be amazed what you and synfire can produce when you create a great sounding chord progression. Most of my bass figures are all on the same note in synfire, but when modulated by the chord progression synfire can still come up with a great bass line.

Absolutely. That's the key. What looks and sounds complex in a MIDI file basically is the result of mapping relatively simple elements to a moving progression. You only need those basic elements and a progression to get similar results with Synfire.

i like to see a button for 4, 8,and 16 bar chordsections : i can choose how many chords i like to see here..4,8,16

Great idea.  I often find it difficult to manage chords in blocks of 4.  Also, it would be good to be able to define "sections", for example I may have a verse of 5 bars so I want to see bar 6 directly below bar 1 in the progression window so that I can define the next 5 bars in a similar pattern.  Currently, bar 6 would be below bar 2 so it's not easy to see the format of your song.

Does that make sense?

Also, it would be good to be able to define "sections", for example I may have a verse of 5 bars so I want to see bar 6 directly below bar 1 in the progression window so that I can define the next 5 bars in a similar pattern.

Containers are made for sections. Simply put the progressions for your sections in a container each. You can edit their rhytmic scheme individually.

Putting phrases along with them in the same containers is the easiest way of structuring a piece.

Janamdo,

have you tried changing the scheme in the progression window? You can change how many rows of how many measures are shown.

have you tried breaking up your 117 bar song into sections/containers then switching between sections/containers with a mouse click whilst viewing the progression window? You might have to snapshot the harmony into the containers for this to work.

have you tried looking at a chord progression for a section/container (or even the whole song) and noticing it repeats then shortening it back to just the base progression? E.g. CEGFCEGFCEGFCEGFDF#DF~ becomes CEGF in one section and DF# in the next (unfortunately synfire doesnt do this for you when you import a song). You can also use the info of when chord patterns repeat or change to help break the song up into sections/containers.

Im sure if you do the above you will gain more understanding of the chord progression of your imported song and its structure than by looking at a string of 117+ chords even if you only look at 1,4,8,16,32 bars at a time.

hope these suggestions help with what you are trying to do?

name the containers

If I get a chance Ill create a video...

'For this i like to see also all chords of the arrangement in one screen in a smaller size  (zooming ? ) or easy mode tab'

select the root container.

select the progression tab

lower down the screen select the scheme tab

change the number of bars per row (say 32 but depends on how big your screen is and how good your eyesight is)

change the number of rows (so you can see all the measures of the song)

Hey presto you can see all the chords of the root container/song in one view

'Adding songsection names in the progressioneditor for the rootcontainer makes it easier to work on the songstructure seems to me.'

select the root container

drag to mark out the time frame for the chorus

right click and select create container

select the new container

right click and select rename

enter 'Intro'

repeat the above steps selecting the verse span, chorus span, breakdown, outro, etc.

Now choose the progression tab

click on intro container.... you see all the chords and progression for the intro (use the scheme tab to change the display of chords to taste)

click on verse container... you see all the chords and progression for the verse

click on chorus container... you see all the chords and progression for the chorus...

This has the advantage that if you have changed the harmony paramter in a sub container, you will see the resulting chord progression in what ever section you select (intro, chorus, verse, etc). If you could do it the way you are asking you would only see the chord progression for the root container which might not actually be the progression thats playing.

The synfire way is a lot more flexible and makes more sense when you are trying to create a tune. What you are asking for might be simpler if you are trying to analyse some one elses midi file but will be less useful when you try to compose your own tune.

 As I mentioned above, if i get time I will try create a video to show this workflow. 

You can drag the chord progressions for each container into the embedded library

or

you can mark out the full length of the song and create a container, snap shot the harmony paramter. Then you can change the scheme as explained above so you can see the chord progression for the whole song.

However I think the way I suggested (and Andre designed) is better, with a mouse click you can examine the chord progression of any section of the song, you can see the complete song's chord progression by changing the scheme, you can look at the figures for any section with a mouse click. You can copy progressions from one section to another, use the palette or keyboard or midi keyboard to change any section's progression. you can do similar things with section/container figures using a library, another project or even a midi keyboard.

You can not work on the chord progression alone, it needs figures (unless you are using autochord/autobass) to produce a song. Picking chords without listening to how they impact the figure rendering is almost pointless.

If you are trying to reproduce what youve seen in midi jammer and its results, you will probably be happy with the sketch idea. I think Ive run out of suggestions and ideas for this thread, so I hope you do give these suggestions a try, think the thread should be considered closed unless Andre has something up his sleeve?

Well I've just read over all this and it's a very interesting thread now (at least for me).  Yet again I've learnt something new about Synifre (thank you blacksun).  I had overlooked the Scheme button in the progression editor before (perhaps because I thought it was just to change the time signature) and didn't realise you could change the rows and columns with it.  I was going to suggest a horizontal and vertical zoom option, but the scheme option seems to achieve something similar.

I haven't fully understood everything you've posted yet, but I'll try it out over the weekend.  But I'd still like to see the ability (perhaps in a new window) to view the progression according to containers, with each container starting on a new row.

For example, Intro 2 bars, verse 5 bars, chorus 4 bars, etc.  If each container started on a new row the song structure would be easy to see at a glance.

I've attached a picture to show what I mean, for a structure that has Intro 2 bars, Verse 5 bars, Chorus 4 bars, etc.

The top of the picture shows how this would look currently with the scheme set to 5 bars.  It could of course be a different number of bars, but no matter what, it still doesn't line up.

The bottom of the picture shows what it would look like if each conatiner (i.e. Intro, Verse, Chorus) etc, started on a new row, also with the scheme set to 5 bars (the longest container).  You can easily see the song structure in the bottom picture.

Perhaps this is not possible, I don't know, but I just wanted to explain what I meant.

Hi Janamdo,

as promised I did manage to make a rough video explaining what I was suggesting here.

(https://users.cognitone.com/content/breaking-song-examine-structure)

As to Cognitone not seeing the light, lets wait and see what they say. They have based the workflow of synfire around containers but what you are asking for goes against that and requires a view at the song level, but only they can say if it is possible.

Im afraid I dont understand what you mean?

Pete's picture and my video, both show the complete song in the progression tab if you adjust the schema. In the video it shows 40+ measures when the root container is selected. Not sure why you can only see 16 measures.

A container can be any length, I chose the lengths I did in the video as I thought thats where a change should occur between intro, chorus and outro. This wasnt done to fit in with any limitation of synfire.

The window at the top of the screen shows the container/section layout and you can size it to see all the 'sections' for the whole song.

As mentioned before, synfire is based on containers. You click on a container and can then see the figures it contains, the parameters (step, velocity, cc,etc) and the harmony. Not all these have to be present, they will inherit from the parent. The settings you look at for the selected container could be replaced by those in a container lower down in the heirerical structure. Containers can overlap, containers can be nested, containers can be aliased. All of these features provide a much more flexible way of arranging a tune, than just an intro, verse, chorus type arrangement. Unfortunately it doesnt map to a linear view where you can see everything at once.

Export it as midi, or transfer to a DAW and you can see the resulting fixed midi output.

If you want to use two screens to look at two different parts of the same project, just open the project a second time.

'then you have 2 screens...one....with the (songs) section's progression/figure and one screen with all songsections together
With this you can compose better.'

You may have problems with this if you are using a DAW that cant open two copies of the same project, but write to the DAW developers, Synfire can do this. You can always opt to have synfire use the engine for the second copy.

I think it's a bit harsh to say it's retarded and primitive!  Quite the opposite in fact, I mean you don't get this facility we're asking for in a DAW do you?

The only place I've seen something similar is in Band-In-A-Box.  I don't particularly like this program and don't really use it.  But it is useful for seeing song structure, as it allows you to click on any bar and it puts it on a new line.

This is what I was suggesting in my previous post.  It probably can't be done in the progression editor because (like blacksun said) it goes against the principle of containers, etc.

But I thought it could perhaps be done in a new window, such as a 'structure' window for example.

Spent some time thinking about this before replying and think Ive come up with an idea that might help janamdo and pete, plus also satisfy a need that a number of people have been expressing in different ways.

A new view/tab/window thats global in that it shows the whole song, but contains figures, harmony and other parameters, viewable via the different button/boxes as now. This would have to be based on the rendered output, i.e. at any point in the time line, the display is the result of all containers at that point and would be what got played if you pressed play.

If this view allowed the adding of named sections, this should then satisfy all our needs. There would probably have to be a button/menu item to render the full song and refresh this view. It would of course be read only although the sections spans could be changed/moved but the contents of a section would be static. This is because I can think of no way of working out which container to apply a change to if it were made to the rendered output.

If this sounds like an idea that would satisfy your needs, all it needs is andre to code it ;)

This is similar to the 'read-only' piano roll that has been discussed before, and that I think is already on Andre's list.  It could all perhaps be combined into a single rendered output screen with customisable views, etc.