Home
Concepts
Introduction to the terms and fundamentals of Synfire
Audio System
About instruments, devices, racks, Drones and the general architecture of the Audio/MIDI system
Racks
Hosting your sounds.

Concepts
Introduction to the terms and fundamentals of Synfire
- Music Prototyping
  What it's all about
- Parameters
  The components music is rendered from
- Figure Notation
  The most influential parameter that intuitively denotes musical expressions
- Harmony Concept
  About scales, chords, keys and everything that constitutes harmony
- Phrases
  A bunch of parameters bundled together
- Rendering
  Mapping the entirety of all parameters to MIDI output
- Arrangements
  About tracks, containers and everything that goes with an arrangement
- Snippets
  Small containers for live performance and improvisation
- Palettes
  Surfing the space of harmony
- Libraries
  Collections of phrases and parameters, the building blocks for arrangements
- Factories
  Generating random parameters and phrases based on musically meaningful rules
- Sketches
  Conducting music in real-time
- Audio System
  About instruments, devices, racks, Drones and the general architecture of the Audio/MIDI system
  - Instruments
    Instruments interpret phrases to render MIDI output.
  - Devices
    Device Descriptions keep important meta-data for sounds
  - Racks
    Hosting your sounds.
    - Rack Modules
    - Global Rack
      Shared sounds for palette surfing, progression preview and arrangements
    - Global Instruments
  - Audio Engine
    Background application that hosts audio plug-ins on behalf of Synfire
  - MIDI Routing
    About the signal flow of MIDI data
  - Cognitone Transport
    ReWire module for synchronizing the transport of a DAW with Synfire
  - Drones
    Plug-ins that operate in a DAW on behalf of Synfire
- User Interface Basics
  Fundamental principles you should know to get started more quickly

Racks

Hosting your sounds.

A Rack holds one or more Rack Modules. Such a module may host an audio plug-in, the Embedded GM Synthesizer, a Drone in a DAW, or a MIDI port that connects to some external hardware.

There are three types of racks.

The Global Rack is hosting sounds that are available to the entire system and all open files.
The Arrangement Rack that is included with every Arrangement to host sounds for the arrangement's instruments.
The Library Rack that is included with every Library to host sounds required by its phrases in order to best demonstrate their character and usage.

Racks are loaded automatically with their respective files. The only rack you would open manually is the Global Rack. When a rack is unloaded, all its audio plug-ins are also unloaded from memory.