Song-Aware Generation
When you generate a melody with the Composed style or a pad with the Background source, Kiwisonic doesn't treat the section in isolation — it reads your whole song and shapes the part to fit. A verse comes out calmer than the chorus that follows 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 — there's nothing to switch on. This page explains what's happening so you can get the most from it.
The idea — your song has a shape
A song isn't 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 (Intro, Verse, Chorus, …).
Kiwisonic reads those sections and plans one energy curve across the whole song — low at the intro, rising toward the song's peak section (usually a chorus or drop), easing back down at the end. Every section sits somewhere on that curve. When you generate a part for a section, the generator looks up where that section falls and shapes the part to match.
Because the curve is planned once for the whole song, parts you generate at different times — a chorus melody today, a verse pad tomorrow — still agree with each other. They were both shaped against the same plan.
What follows the curve
A Composed melody
- Climax intensity — in a high-energy section the phrases push to a stronger peak; in a calm section the line stays gentle.
- Contour — the shape of the line (a near-flat plateau, an arch, a steady rise) is picked to suit the section's energy.
- Register — high-energy sections sit the melody higher in its range.
A Background pad
- Voicing — 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.
- Richness — how full and wide the pad is tracks the section's energy: sparse under a breakdown, lush under a chorus.
The drums
- Density — a calm section gets a spare kit; as energy rises the groove fills in. 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've chosen nudges all of this — its idea of how energetic a verse or a chorus should be feeds into the curve.
Seeing the curve
You don't have to take any of 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're working on highlighted. The four layers it generates sit directly above it, so you can see the parts and the shape they were written against at the same time.
Sections stay different from each other
A verse and the chorus straight after it should never feel the same. If two back-to-back sections would otherwise have come out alike, Kiwisonic nudges one of them so they contrast on at least one dimension — a different register, a busier or sparser feel, a richer or plainer harmony, or a different melodic shape. This is automatic; it's what stops a long song flattening into one texture.
Layers fit together
When you generate a Background pad, it listens to the rest of the arrangement. In the Background pane you point it at your melody track; the pad then thins whichever part of the range the melody is crowding, so it supports the tune instead of fighting it. A busy arrangement also gets a more restrained pad, a sparse one a fuller pad — the background fills the space that's actually free.
What uses it
| Tool | Where | What song-awareness does |
|---|---|---|
| **Generate** page | The Generate tab | Shapes all four layers — melody, bass, drums and pad — to the curve at once, and draws the curve so you can see it. |
| **Composed** melody style | Compose toolbar → Boilerplate → Pick a style → *Composed* | Shapes the melody's climax, contour and register to the section's place on the energy curve. |
| **Background** source | Compose toolbar → Boilerplate → *Background* (piano roll) | Shapes the pad's voicing and richness to the curve, and leaves room for the melody. |
The other melody styles (Chord Tone, Stepwise, Arpeggiated, …) and the catalog sources generate fine without the plan — song-awareness is what the Composed style and the Background pad add on top.
Getting the most from it
- Lay out real sections. The plan is built from your section structure. A song that's just one long block has no shape to follow — give it an Intro, Verses, a Chorus, an Outro and the generator has something to work with.
- Give sections honest roles. A section marked Chorus is treated as a lift; one marked Breakdown is stripped back. The roles drive the curve, so label them as what they really are.
- Pick a genre early. The genre colours how steep the energy curve is and how each role behaves — set it before you lean on Composed or Background.
- Generate the chorus, then the verse. Whatever order you work in, the parts cohere — but hearing the peak first makes it easier to judge whether the quieter sections are leaving it enough room.
Tips
- Composed shines on a structured song — on a single flat section it still works, but it has the least to shape. Reach for it once your arrangement has a few sections with distinct roles.
- Re-generate freely — change a chord, re-roll a track, and generate again; every part re-reads the same plan, so the song stays coherent.
- Pair it with Phrase Contour — let the plan choose the section's overall shape, then draw a contour when you want a specific phrase to do something the curve wouldn't.