Compose toolbar

The compose toolbar sits above the note grid in every melodic editor. It is a four-icon row that drives pattern generation: pick one of the four and a pane opens with its controls, pick the same icon again and the pane collapses.

Only one pane is open at a time. The leading slot on the left holds editor-specific tools, currently the piano roll's next-note suggestions toggle. In editors with nothing there, the slot collapses and the four peers sit flush left.

The four peers

Boilerplate lays something down, filling a section from scratch. Reach for it when the section is empty, or when you do not mind replacing what is there.

Resume continues what you have written. It extends an existing phrase in the same style, keeping the same motifs and feel.

Improve makes what is there better. Use it when you like the rough shape but want to re-voice it or audition variations, either of the whole part or of just the notes you select.

Contour shapes the part to a curve you draw. See phrase contour.

The melody sources

Inside Boilerplate you choose a source. These are not flavours of one path; they are different generators with different strengths, and the pane only shows controls the chosen source actually uses.

Your choice sticks while you stay in the same editor. Moving to a different editor clears it, because the controls there are not the same.

Pick a style

A rule-based generator running on your machine. You pick a style from one list, and on the piano roll that list has two groups.

Melody styles are approaches: Chord Tone, Stepwise, Arpeggiated, Pentatonic, Phrase and Rest, and Composed. The engine builds a motif and develops it across the section, and your locked notes are kept. Composed also shapes the part to the section's place in the whole song, described in song-aware generation.

Bass-line shapes, on the piano roll only, build a line straight from the section's chord progression. Root Notes gives one root per chord, the simplest line. Root-Fifth puts the root on beat one and the fifth on beat three. Octave does the same with the root an octave up. Walking connects chord tones with stepwise motion. Arpeggio runs the chord tones up across the bar.

A bass-line shape is deterministic and rebuilds the whole pattern from the chords, so the seed lock and lock and reroll do not apply to it. Give the track a bass instrument so it sounds right.

This source is instant, needs no network, and preserves locked notes. It has less musical depth than the catalog source. Use it when you are iterating and want the pattern to land now.

From chords

Sends the section's chord progression to the catalog and gets back a chord-aware melody. It is richer and longer-form, and it knows about chord changes and voice leading. It needs catalog access, and it does not preserve locked notes.

Use it when you want a melody that sounds composed, especially over a chord progression that is doing something.

Describe in words

A free-text intent, something like "dreamy uptempo line over the verse", sent to the catalog or, for guitar, wind and strings, to a language model. The variations slider asks for up to four alternatives, which come back as pills at the bottom of the panel; click one to swap the active take.

It is network-bound, and it does not read the Resume sliders, because the prompt is the whole specification. Use it when you have a clear intent that is awkward to express with sliders.

What each pane shows

Boilerplate

The source picker, the controls that source uses, then More options with the variations slider and the seed lock. Apply replaces the section's notes from the start.

Resume

Resume has no source picker. It always continues your existing notes, reading the phrases you have written and extending them in the same style, so it needs something to continue and has no offline path.

Strict to Wild sets how freely the continuation departs from what is there. Length sets how much to add. Apply appends the result after your existing notes.

On the piano roll, Resume also keeps the chord progression tab described below, since laying a progression in from the cursor is a genuine continuation.

Improve

Improve refines the notes already in the section rather than composing new ones. Select notes first to scope the edits to them; with nothing selected they work on the whole part. Locked notes are always kept.

Fix stray notes finds notes outside the key and snaps each to the nearest in-key pitch. Chromatic passing and neighbour tones, the steps between two scale tones, are kept.

Try a variation reshapes the part into a variation of itself, learning the phrasing and motion of what is there and resampling it. It generates up to four takes; the first is applied and the rest appear as pills.

Resolve ending lands the final note on the active chord's root, or the key's tonic when there are no chords, so the phrase closes instead of hanging.

Follow chord contour looks at chord changes where the melody leaps against the direction the chord roots are moving, and octave-shifts the incoming note so the line moves with the harmony.

Critique grades every note against the chord progression and marks the ones it cannot account for. It needs chords, and it always covers the whole section rather than a selection. See critique.

After a selection-scoped edit the new notes stay selected, so you can re-roll them again straight away. The edit actions are local and offline, and they leave earlier work alone, unlike a reroll, which regenerates every unlocked note from scratch.

Chord progressions on the piano roll

On the piano roll, Boilerplate and Resume show a Melody and Chord progression switch at the top of the pane. In chord progression mode the source picker is replaced by a rhythm style, Block, Strum, Arpeggio, Genre groove or Organ comping, and a list of progressions recommended for the active genre. Resume adds a start slider, counted in bars from the cursor.

Apply writes the progression as block-chord notes. Organ comping instead configures the track's comping profile, so the rhythmic figure plays at runtime.

Feedback while generating

The pane reports back in place. A progress bar appears while a network call is running, and problems such as a network failure or a section with no chords surface as a label rather than a dialog.

For Describe in words and for Try a variation, the alternatives appear as pills below the pane. Click one to swap the active take; they disappear when you generate again.

If applying would overwrite notes you did not ask to overwrite, the pane asks you to confirm before the result lands.

Composing more than one part at once

The compose toolbar works on the part you are editing. To lay down a melody, a bass line, drums and a pad together, all shaped to the same song and visible at once, use the generate page.

Getting the most from it

Lock before you generate. Alt+click the notes worth protecting, or Ctrl+Shift+L for all of them, and the local rule-based generation will keep them. See lock and reroll.

Running Boilerplate twice gives a different result, because the seed is regenerated on each call unless you lock it.

Treat Improve as the polish step: generate a draft, lock the moments that work, then refine the rest. When one phrase is not working, select just those notes and re-voice them.

Compare sources on the same section. From chords and Describe in words interpret the same material differently, and hearing both tells you more than reading about either.