Understanding the new concepts and workflows of Synfire takes some time. The one-time effort will eventually reward you with hugely increased creative output and fun. Synfire is based on an established consensus of the theory of music. That knowledge will benefit you for the rest of your life as a musician.
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Synfire intelligently generates and renders musical phrases in different harmonic contexts for you. You are still in charge of selecting and arranging these phrases according to your taste and musical style.
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It doesn't matter how you compose your music. Only the final result matters. If an unsuspecting listener recognizes your work as that of someone else, you may be in trouble. There is no copyright on chord changes and harmony, nor on rhythm, so all these are free to use. What's critical is melodies. Respect other people's creative work. If you are importing melodies, make sure you modify them to a sufficient extent, such that your results will be something new and original. With Synfire, this is very easy.
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No. The music you make is completely yours.
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That's a great idea, because the immediate physical experience of making music is something you can't get from using software alone. Your new musical skills will enable you to feed Synfire with much better input and make your results more unique and personal.
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You merely need a basic understanding of chords and scales. It is not necessary to know all the names and memorize the details, because that's what Synfire is sorting out for you anyway. You also need to know a thing or two about the musical style you are about to compose and arrange, that is, which instruments and kind of phrases it is typically associated with it. Just carefully listen to a lot of music and you will find that out.
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This depends on the instrument plug-ins you are using and the creative decisions you make along the way. Nothing is hard-wired. Synfire is ready for every musical style. You are free to follow your wildest imaginations.
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You'll need some VST/VST3/AudioUnits instrument plug-ins in order to get beyond the basic sounds that come with Synfire out of the box. An external MIDI keyboard is needed if you want to record your own phrases. A mouse with a secondary (right) mouse button, or an equivalent mode of operation, will be handy.
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If your email or Internet service provider happens to block all our emails, you will not be able to create a user account, or receive any replies from customer support. Find possible solutions here.
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The login form may accept your name and password, but won't let you in after you submit. If no error message is displayed, the last login cookie stored with your web browser may have become invalid. This is what you can do to fix it:
If the above does not help, please also try a different web browser (Firefox, Chrome), if available, only for a test. Sometimes cookies seem to get stuck, especially with Safari. Usually the cookies expire after a few hours, though.
You probably created two users accounts and are now confusing them. Please check your email history for messages from Cognitone. You will likely find the other account that you created earlier. Please contact customer support, so we can flag the obsolete account to avoid future confusion.
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Login to your account, goto "Settings" and enter a new password. Your email address can be changed there too.
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Your name is embedded with your personal copy of the software. This proves you are a legitimate owner of a license. Your name is also used to embed a copyright notice with all documents you create, which protects your work. If you do not provide your real name, license and copyright notices may be legally invalid.
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A valid billing address is a legal requirement for taxing and customs. Pseudonyms, P.O. boxes and fake addresses may be considered a fraud attempt by your credit card supplier or payment provider and could possibly lead to problems with your local tax authorities.
Your name will also be embedded with your personal copy of the software as proof that you are a legitimate license owner. A default copyright notice is embedded with the documents you create, in order to protect your work (you can change this preference).
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Please consult files accompany your download. On Windows, please make sure you extract the entire ZIP file to a new folder before you install. Running SETUP.exe from within the ZIP will not work. Find more troubleshooting tips here.
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Harmony Navigator 2 Advanced Edition came with a license for LoopBe30 Internal MIDI Ports, a MIDI Loopback driver (You don't need that on a Mac: Use the Apple IAC Driver instead). When you install, be sure you don't miss the tick box for LoopBe30. You can repeat your installation, if you accidentally missed to include LoopBe30. For more information on the driver, please visit www.nerds.de.
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Authorization, also known as activation, is a simple means for copy protection. Without measures to limit piracy, small specialized products would no longer survive today (this may possibly be different with mass products for big audiences, but that's not what we have here). Moreover, a working copy protection also has avantages for you as a customer:
Simply run the installed software. If your installation is not yet activated, a dialog will show up offering you the option to authorize. Select "Activate Now" and follow the instructions. Alternatively, you can run the original SETUP program from the Help menu of the running software (Harmony Navigator only, Synfire doesn't require this).
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The SETUP program offers several alternative methods for authorization. You may submit your authorization data on another computer (using a standard web browser), send an email to us or print out and fax or snail mail a registration form. The online authorization however, is the quickest and most convenient of all (recommended).
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(Harmony Navigator only:) A re-authorization is only required when main components of the hardware configuration change significantly (Harmony Navigator only, Synfire doesn't require this). This is the case when replacing, for example, the mainboard, the system hard disk or the operating system. When your computer is online, re-authorization is as easy as entering your login and password.
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(Harmony Navigator only:) You can have Harmony Navigator installed and activated on up to two computers at the same time. Synfire uses the iLok, so you can install and run Synfire on as many computers you like.
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(Harmony Navigator only:) In the event that your hardware happened to crash or you needed to install a new operating system from scratch, it was probably impossible to properly deactivate your old installation. You may visit your account under "Installations" and permanently discard the installation as "lost" to make room for a new authorization. This, however, can not be undone. Please carefully read the instructions on the website before submitting such a deletion.
Synfire uses the iLok, so you can install and run Synfire on as many computers you like.
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(Harmony Navigator only:) Any significant change of the hardware configuration will start a new 30 day grace period during which you may run the program almost without limitations. You merely need to authorize your installation for the new hardware at any time within that period.
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(Harmony Navigator only:) You can 'park' a currently unused installation by deactivating it. You should deactivate an installation before installing a new operating system, for example. You may also use the same installation on multiple computers by deactivating the currently unused installation respectively.
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Yes. A Cognitone user account is required to store your licenses and installations, which means that you also need an email address.
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(Harmony Navigator only:) Your product's serial number and a hardware key. The hardware key is kind of a random number computed depending on the presence of hardware components in your computer. This number doesn't contain any particular information about the hardware or software installed on your computer, nor any personal information. It's sole purpose is to distinguish your computer from other computers.
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(Harmony Navigator only:) Cognitone uses your hardware key and serial number solely to keep track of how many installations are active for each software license. The information is useless for other purposes.
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(Harmony Navigator only:) Authorization data transfered over the wire is useless for third parties. It makes sense only in the context of your particular hardware and can not be abused. As it doesn't contain any sensible information anyway, there is nothing to worry about.
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The license you upgrade from (e.g. Harmony Navigator) is retired and replaced by the new license you upgrade to (e.g. Synfire Pro). After the upgrade, the previous license is no longer available. You can not sell, transfer, or use a license that was upgraded already. This is very much like returning your old car in order to get a new one at a discounted price.
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In this case you would need to purchase the new license separately, rather than upgrading it. However, with a few marginal exceptions, the product you upgrade to includes all the features of the smaller product anyway. Under normal circumstances there should be no reason to keep the old product around after you upgraded.
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The license you originally purchased is personal. Therefore, you can't just hand it over to someone else. If you want to sell it or give it away, please let us know once you found a buyer. Please deactivate and uninstall the software on all computers prior to selling it. We will terminate your license after that and the buyer will obtain a new license from Cognitone. This service is free of charge for downloadable products. For products that require the shipment of a new DVD to the buyer (Synfire Pro), we might eventually ask for a small fee that covers the costs involved (at this time we don't).
Note that the same license can not be resold more than two times. A second hand owner may resell it once, after the second resale, the license receives NFR status (not for resale). Please if you have sold your license or have any further questions.
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Please consult our technical knowledge base.
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Please consult our technical knowledge base.
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