Song-aware generation
When you generate a melody with the Composed style, or a pad with the Background source, the section is not treated in isolation. The generator reads the whole song and shapes the part to fit: a verse comes out calmer than the chorus after it, the pad opens up where the song peaks, and the layers stay out of each other's way.
It works through the compose toolbar and there is nothing to switch on. This page explains what is happening so you can get more out of it.
Your song has a shape
A song is not a flat run of bars. It has a form: an intro that sets up, verses that hold steady, a chorus that lifts, maybe a bridge, an outro that lets go. You lay that form out as sections on the arrangement timeline, each with a role.
Those sections are read once and planned as a single energy curve across the whole song: low at the intro, rising toward the peak section, easing down at the end. Every section sits somewhere on that curve, and generating a part looks up where its section falls.
Because the curve is planned for the whole song rather than the section in front of you, parts generated at different times still agree with each other. A chorus melody today and a verse pad tomorrow were shaped against the same plan.
What follows the curve
A Composed melody. In a high-energy section the phrases push to a stronger peak; in a calm one the line stays gentle. The shape of the line, whether it is a near-flat plateau, an arch or a steady rise, is picked to suit the section. High-energy sections also sit the melody higher in its range.
A Background pad. A low-energy section gets a plain, open triad. As energy rises the pad adds the seventh, then stacks ninths and thirteenths and opens out its top end. How full and wide it is tracks the section: sparse under a breakdown, lush under a chorus.
The drums. A calm section gets a spare kit and the groove fills in as energy rises. Roll the same drums into a verse and a chorus and the chorus comes back busier, because the curve says it should.
The genre you have chosen feeds into all of it, since a genre carries its own idea of how energetic a verse or a chorus should be.
Seeing the curve
You do not have to take this on faith. The generate page draws the energy curve along the bottom, one bar per section, taller where the song lifts, with the section you are working on highlighted. The four layers it generates sit directly above it, so the parts and the shape they were written against are visible at the same time.
Sections stay different from each other
A verse and the chorus straight after it should never feel the same. When two back-to-back sections would otherwise come out alike, one is nudged so they contrast on at least one dimension: register, density, harmonic richness or melodic shape. It happens automatically, and it is what stops a long song flattening into one texture.
Layers fit together
A Background pad listens to the rest of the arrangement. In the Background pane you point it at your melody track, and the pad thins whichever part of the range the melody is crowding, so it supports the tune instead of fighting it. A busy arrangement gets a more restrained pad and a sparse one gets a fuller pad, because the pad fills the space that is actually free.
What uses it
The Generate page shapes all four layers, melody, bass, drums and pad, to the curve at once, and draws the curve while it does.
The Composed melody style shapes the melody's climax, contour and register to the section's place on the curve.
The Background source shapes the pad's voicing and richness, and leaves room for the melody.
The other melody styles and the catalog sources generate perfectly well without the plan. Song-awareness is what Composed and Background add on top.
Getting the most from it
Lay out real sections. The plan is built from your structure, and a song that is one long block has no shape to follow.
Give the sections honest roles. A section marked Chorus is treated as a lift and one marked Breakdown is stripped back, so label them as what they are.
Pick a genre early, because the genre decides how steep the curve is and how each role behaves.
Generate the chorus before the verse. The parts cohere whatever order you work in, but hearing the peak first makes it easier to judge whether the quieter sections are leaving it enough room.
Composed has the most to work with on a structured song. On a single flat section it still generates, it just has nothing to shape against. And when you want one specific phrase to do something the curve would not, draw it with phrase contour instead of arguing with the plan.