Posted
I haven't used chromatic planing myself yet, so I wondered how that could be done with Synfire. It turned out to be so super easy that I wanted to share this with you as a quick tip for your inspiration.
For those not familiar with the term, chromatic planing (or chord planing) is a composing technique that uses a series of chords that are transposed by chromatic steps, usually moving by half tone steps up and/or down. Obviously, this totally goes out of key. It adds tension, color and mistery and is commonly used in film scores and jazz.
Simply use Chromatic in Global Parameters and you are done. Really, that's all. And the greatest of all things is that not only does that transpose chords, it also transposes all other instruments and thus keeps them all in harmony no matter how extreme the chromatic shifts.
Here's how to do it.
It's just one simple example with sustained chords in 1/4 steps. These are the chords.
This is a Chromatic parameter sketched in Global Parameters.
And this is what you get as Output. The many red colored notes indicate out-of-scale notes.
And this is what it sounds like. Again, this is a very simple example done in literally three minutes, just to illustrate the idea.
atmospheres.mp3
Tue, 2023-11-07 - 07:58 Permalink
Wow was just watching a video about this on youtube. ANY iDea how to quickly implement passing chords?
Tue, 2023-11-07 - 08:43 Permalink
Interesting idea. Almost every chord with at least one note a chromatic step away from any note of the previous chord is a passing chord. Also very much depends on voice leading.
How about this: Select any chord in a progression and do Transform >> Insert Passing Chords. Maybe also enter a number 1-4 or something. Pretty experimental I guess. There are so many potential matches that it will be difficult to select the best (whatever "best" means to the composer).
Tue, 2023-11-07 - 08:49 Permalink
Here's an alternative way to do chord planing:
Split a chord into slices in the progression editor. Then transpose each slice with Command+Up, Command+Down.
This method doesn't require sustained chords and works with any kind of phrases. But it may be necessary to have some chords, I guess. Otherwise the chromatic detour might not be obvious enough to make sense. It's a matter of experimentation.
Tue, 2023-11-07 - 17:19 Permalink
Very interesting. Yea, something experimental like that would be great. I just purchased an entire course on passing chords so that I can create progressions in Synfire and save them. The ability to easily enter passing chords like that would be very great. They could even be picked by function in relation to the selected chord.