Music Prototyping

What it's all about

Modern audio production gear is very powerful and affordable for everyone. But in order to do something useful with it, you need to already have a song or composition at hand that you can record and arrange. A DAW is mainly just a recording device that can only support you to a very limited extent in the search for chords, melodies, transitions, phrasing and variations.

Composing music from scratch is very tedious because most current music programs are static. The longer you work on a project, the more difficult it becomes to make substantial, sweeping changes. Thus, more often than not, you find yourself settling for a mediocre compromise because starting over would be far too tedious. That's a shame, because you fall way short of your creative potential.

The idea of Music Prototyping now is to render music from dynamic components that you can edit and replace freely until you eventually decide that your work is done. And even beyond that point, you can still make sweeping changes with only a few mouse clicks to achieve dramatic effects.

• Build music from reusable components that can be generated, sketched, collected and combined in countless ways.
• Get results fast and assess them more objectively.
• Get inspiration from happy accidents and surprises.
• Master all the different instrumental parts that breathe life into your music.
• Discover musical styles beyond your routine and habits.
• Escape writer's block.

Music Prototyping can break up your routines in an exciting new way and give rise to fresh ideas and new motivation.

Rendering Music From Models

The rendering process of Music Prototyping works somewhat like Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), where individual pictures (frames) are generated from 3D models, textures and light sources. Likewise, Synfire renders MIDI output from models by mapping Figure against Harmony and many other dynamic parameters. Altering any of these parameters leads to different music output.

Any Style

Some popular music apps are custom-tailored to a specific style of music and put an emphasis on entertainment value and instant gratification. They are fun to use, but the music pretty much sounds all the same.

Synfire is not hard-wired to a specific style and workflow. It is an extremely deep and powerful tool. We could have flattened the learning curve by baking in a lot of assumptions about workflow and style, but we didn't want to do that at the expense of artistic freedom. What's wrong about taking the time to make yourself familiar with something new and revolutionary if it can eventually take you everywhere? It will get second nature sooner than you might expect.

Your Decisions

Synfire is great at inspiring you with an endless stream of new ideas. The ultimate creative decisions however are yours to make: Which style to choose, which of the many emerging elements to keep or discard, which path to take from first draft to finished work. And most importantly, to understand what makes your particular style work in the first place.