Sinfonia is what i call Sibalus for beginners, only you can't program the music into the computer. Sure you can control tempo's and keys and even repeats and vamps. You can also control individual volumes on instruments as well as muting them. Sinfonia is supose to be a orchestra suppliment, meaning you have 3 or 4 musicians in your pit and the computer plays along with them. We didnt do that.
I'm glad we didn't. While the orchestrations are nice, the issue was volume with the tracks themselves. Example, when you open the program for the first time all instruments are at 100. If you think of it like a soundboard 100 actually is 0, 0 would really be -100 and 200 would be +100, Understand.
So lets start the first song.
Oh thats sounds nice, wait where did the music go?, Oh there it is, HOLY CRAP WHY IS IS SO LOUD.
No joke that was the first 2 minutes of the first number. Now imagine having to sit down and edit every song and every point where the music could be at a more constant level. I'm not talking equal volume the whole show, I mean barely anything showing up on the sound board sensors to everything peaking in the matter of a measure.
So for 2 weeks I edited and fixed and worked on everything. Then load in occured and we went into the theatre.
Everything I had mixed and edited was trash, but the problem was the show didnt sound right at all. I called Sinfonia and they didnt know what the problem was, in fact they still don't.
While our audience likes the orchestrations and they sound good, my suggestion, ude at your own risk first. It may make your life a lot harder as a sound designer. I didnt get a decently sounding run thru until the night before opening, and after rehearsals it would be the director and myself in the parking lot working on 2 to 3 hours of notes on just sinfonia.
