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Working with chords and separate strings

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Synfire allows to work with string instruments, which is great, but how to work with individual strings into phrases ?

If I have five instruments for five different strings, how can i build chords for that the different phrases work as chords and not as separate instruments for Synfire Engine ?


Fri, 2010-06-11 - 18:04 Permalink

I think there's an option in the harmonizer for what you are trying to do. I can't remember the name right now. "Layer" maybe?

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 18:22 Permalink

Thank you for the suggestion but it seems that it won't do the trick.

As far as i understand the manual, layers are about surimposition of chords into a progression, which means different instruments can play at the same time different chords, and those chords depend each one on a layer.

What i was looking for is a way to make different instruments play not different chords, but different notes of a chord, so the whole into a same layer for reusing this particular concept.

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 18:24 Permalink


What i was looking for is a way to make different instruments play not different chords, but different notes of a chord

Hmm. That's how I thought it worked. I haven't tried that much.

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 18:36 Permalink

I just regave it a look and apparently it works for "polytonality" and "surimposition" of chords (or subchords) into a progression, at the level of the harmony parameter, but not with notes of chords, at the level of chords figure parameter.

A same layer function for notes of chords could work fine. One could also imagine a way to introduce octaves for each particular note of a chord for polytonality into a same chord.

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 18:39 Permalink

Maybe if you setup the harmony that way, you can then draw the chord figures (or other figures) to control how exactly the figures work for each instrument?

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 18:53 Permalink

It seems a little bit tricky for me: it would involve to enter into the chord catalogue as much as false chords composed of one single note of a chord as there is notes into the required chords, and that for all chords that i want to play into separate phrases for each string of an instrument :shock:

No, i request for an easy chording functionality, not for an eternal head-wall loop impacting :toobad: :!:

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 19:07 Permalink

In the case of keyswitches, one solution would be to have the possibility to assign an articulation at the symbol level:

one draws a chord, and then gives to each part of it an articulation corresponding to the different strings of the instrument.

But one limitation is that actually, articulations into Synfire doesn't support the switch between separate instruments, only program changes, or internal keyswitch of a main instrument.

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 19:46 Permalink

one way is to assign a string articulation at the symbol level for a chord into a phrase

but one could think it by the way of a new parameter which would be a chord parameter.

The chord parameter would look like to the drawing of a chord figure into a separate "layer" and would apply to the figures underneath into the time bar.

It would imply that several phrases would be dynamically linked by this parameter.

If i have five different instruments on five phrases. The five phrases would have the same chord parameter, and at one intant t, the figure underneath a chord symbol would play the chord in association with other instruments having also at this instant a figure associated with the chord symbol.

:thumbsup:

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 22:37 Permalink

If I correctly understand what you want to do ... have you tried using the purple [a] symbols? These map to the n-th note of the current chord (inversion is considered).

For each instrument you can draw a figure that uses a different [a] symbol. All instruments together will then render the full chord.

Fri, 2010-06-11 - 23:36 Permalink

Wow. If that works the way I think it does, I'll be really stoked! I'm glad I'm following this thread.

Sat, 2010-06-12 - 07:39 Permalink

It is true that Arpeggio may be more convenient for string instruments (generally and mainly with strings of orchestra) and bring some advantages, like discussed here:
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But as Andre said:
[quote]It would also be cool if there was some feature that could distribute the four voices across different instruments.
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Sat, 2010-06-19 - 12:07 Permalink

I can't set up chords from more than one octave into the catalogue...

Sat, 2010-06-19 - 18:29 Permalink

I can't set up chords from more than one octave into the catalogue...

You don't need to. All of the possible pitch classes are already covered. If you want a chord with notes from different octaves, then you make that in the figure, not a part of the chord description...

Sat, 2010-06-19 - 20:00 Permalink

Not sure if this is what you have in mind, but there are chords spanning two octaves, e.g. Cm13. I haven't tried right now, but it should be possible to create new chords of this type in the catalog.

Sat, 2010-06-19 - 20:05 Permalink

The use of sustained, full chords is more common to electronic music, aka "carpet" or "pad". It is rarely used for orchestral or other counterpoint music, as it sounds a little bold and static. For that musical style, one would be more interested in ornamenting different voices with interacting rhythms. That can be done with figures quite well.

What I am still missing is the ability to tell the anchor to follow a certain symbol scheme (e.g. the arpeggio chord indexes) and have the other symbols of the segment be relative to that.

Tue, 2010-06-22 - 12:25 Permalink


What I am still missing is the ability to tell the anchor to follow a certain symbol scheme (e.g. the arpeggio chord indexes) and have the other symbols of the segment be relative to that.

Horizontal vector-based counterpointing ?