Kiwisonic Features

Composition Canvas

Piano Roll

The piano roll is where you write melodies, bass lines, and synth parts. Click to place a note, drag to move it, drag the right edge to change its length. Scale guides and ghost notes keep you oriented while you work.

Out-of-key rows are dimmed, so you can see which notes belong to the key without being stopped from placing any note you want
The harmonic timeline above the grid carries your chord progression, and chord tones are tinted as the cursor moves through each chord
Ghost notes show what other tracks play in the same section, like tracing paper laid over another musician's part
A velocity lane below the grid shapes dynamics per note, and the quantise control snaps timing to the grid

The Kiwisonic piano roll, shown in the full app window with the compose and harmony panels

Theory Panel

FlowPad

The FlowPad answers the question every progression starts with: what chord comes next? It is a 3×3 grid laid out like a numpad, holding every chord in your key, with each chord kept at a fixed position so the layout becomes muscle memory.

Press a numpad key to insert a chord; after each pick the colors update, green for a smooth move, yellow for color, red for tension
A recommendation engine rates every chord from functional harmony, and re-ranks to the active genre
Switch between triads, sevenths, and ninths, with the genre setting the default
Insert a single note, a full chord, or an arpeggiated pattern at the cursor

Visual Harmony

Circle of Fifths

The Circle of Fifths is the theory panel's second view: a two-ring wheel of every major and minor chord, with the ones in your key lit. Where the pad answers what fits next, the ring answers how far apart two chords are. Neighbouring segments sit a fifth apart, the smoothest step in Western harmony, so you can read a progression's shape at a glance.

The outer ring holds the twelve major chords in fifths order, the inner ring each one's relative minor; only the chords in your key are lit, the rest dimmed
Click the outer ring to insert a major chord or the inner ring for its relative minor, and recommendation arcs rate every chord as a follow-up
Hover a segment for a plain explanation, such as "Dominant (V): strong tension, pulls back to I"
Mode and chord-size settings are shared with the FlowPad, so a change in one view carries to the other

Creative Starting Points

Generate, continue, and improve

When a section is empty or an idea has stalled, the compose toolbar gives you a starting point. It sits above the note grid in every melodic editor, with four ways to work: lay something down, continue what you have written, improve what is there, or shape it with a drawn curve.

Laying something down offers three sources. Pick a style runs a fast rule-based generator on your machine. From chords builds a melody around your progression. Describe in words takes a plain-text brief. On the piano roll you can also build a bass line straight from the chords, with shapes like root notes, walking, and arpeggio.

Continue extends a phrase you have started, keeping the same motifs and feel
Improve re-voices the notes already there or auditions variations, without rewriting your part
The Composed melody style and Background pads read your whole song, so a verse stays calmer than the chorus after it
Lock & Reroll protects the notes you like with Alt+Click and regenerates the rest with Ctrl+R, so you can iterate until the pattern works

The compose toolbar generating a pattern

Draw the Shape

Phrase Contour

Sometimes you know the shape of a phrase before you know the notes: a slow rise, a peak in the middle, a fall away at the end. The contour tool lets you draw that arc as a curve over the note grid, then generates notes that climb and fall with it.

Drop control points and the curve smooths between them: two points give a rise or fall, three an arch, more a multi-peak shape
Six presets load common shapes in one click: Arch, Rising, Falling, Wave, Late peak, and Plateau
Generated notes follow the curve and snap to scale and chord tones, so the contour sets the direction and the harmony sets the color
Locked notes survive, so you can anchor the start and end of a phrase and let the curve fill the middle

Drawing a phrase contour over the note grid

Guided Composing

Next-Note Suggestions

Next-note suggestions show a set of rated options for the next note, right at the cursor on the piano roll. Each option is labelled in plain language, so you choose by feel rather than by theory. It is a guided way to build a melody when you are not sure what comes next, and a fast way to sketch when you are.

Color is a rating: green is a strong choice, amber is fair, red is bold but still on offer
Labels describe the move, not the theory: "Comes home, releases the tension" or "Bright surprise, off the scale"
Hover an option to hear it, click to place it; the cursor advances and a fresh set appears
Suggestions follow your key, and grow more context-aware once you add a chord progression and a genre

Next-note suggestions at the insert cursor

Instant Musical Context

Genre Profiles

Pick a genre and Kiwisonic configures itself to match. Scales, chord preferences, rhythm feel, tempo, and typical instruments all shift to the style you chose, and the generators and recommendations follow.

Chord recommendations re-rank to the genre: jazz promotes ii-V-I chains and seventh chords, folk favors I-IV-V triads, blues leans on dominant sevenths
Each profile carries pattern presets for drums, bass, strumming, string bowing, and wind phrasing, tagged by section type
The energy curve behind song-aware generation is shaped by the genre, so a chorus lifts the way that style expects
Set the genre early and the whole project starts from a coherent musical footing

Song-Level Thinking

Section-Based Song Structure

Kiwisonic organises a song into sections on a timeline: intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro, and your own. You place section blocks on the arrangement to say what plays and when, and the whole structure stays visible at once.

Each section holds its own pattern per track, so a chorus can differ from the verse on every instrument
Sections have their own length in bars; drag blocks to move them, Ctrl+drag to duplicate
Double-click a melodic block to open its editor; the loop region repeats any range while you refine it
Song-aware generation reads the section roles, so labelling a section as a chorus or a breakdown changes what gets generated

Real Guitar Voicings

Guitar Chord Track

A guitar track keeps two layers apart: the chord progression, and the rhythm that plays it. Place chord blocks on a timeline, set a strum pattern, and the engine resolves a playable voicing and spreads each strum across the strings the way a real pick does.

Three voicing styles: Open for acoustic warmth, Barre for consistent electric, Power chord for driving rock
A 16-step strum grid sets direction, velocity, technique (palm mute, mute, scratch, slap), and strum speed per step
Per-section strum overrides let one track fingerpick the verse and drive the chorus
Built-in presets include Rockabilly Boom-Chicka and Folk Fingerpick; an auto-wah and per-section fills add movement

Rhythm

Drum Step Sequencer

The drum editor is a step sequencer: a grid of on/off buttons, one row per drum sound, sixteen 16th-note steps per bar. Click a cell to place a hit, and the pattern loops for the length of the section.

The default kit covers Kick, Snare, Closed and Open Hi-Hat, Crash, and Ride; Toms, Clap, Rimshot, Cowbell, and Percussion add on
Set velocity per hit with the scroll wheel or a vertical drag, for ghost notes and accents
Patterns are per section, so the chorus can run busier than the verse
Voices follow the General MIDI drum map and can be remapped to match any drum plugin

Play It Right

Wind and Bowed Strings

Wind and bowed string tracks use a piano roll with controls built around how the instrument is really played. Each editor constrains the instrument to its real range and gives you the articulations that shape its expression.

Wind: tonguing per note (slur, tongue, accent, staccato), tone modes (full, subtone, muted, flutter), and a pitch bend lane for scoops and falls
Bowed strings: bowing presets (detaché, slur, spiccato), seven tone colours from arco to pizzicato and harmonics, and per-note vibrato and glissando
Dynamics strips shape volume across a phrase, from a gentle swell to a hard accent
Bass parts live on a melodic track, with chord-driven bass-line shapes built straight from the progression

Shape Your Sound

Mixer, Effects, and Automation

Every track has a mixer channel strip with volume, pan, mute, and solo, plus a fifteen-slot effect chain processed in standard mixing order. Some effects stay fixed for the track; others change per section, so a verse stays dry and the chorus opens up.

Shape, color, space, and character: from compressor, saturation, and tone through filter, delay, and reverb to vinyl and gate
Automation draws a parameter across a section as an envelope, for a filter sweep that builds or a reverb that swells into the chorus
Note effects act on a single note: a per-note override, a stutter retrigger, or turning a note into a chord
A master bus chain processes the whole mix at once, for glue compression and final polish

The Sound Source

Built-in Instruments and Your Own Sounds

Kiwisonic ships with built-in instruments ready on first launch, nothing to install, and plays your own sounds alongside them. Assign any of them to a track and start writing.

Three fixed instruments with a set character: an Electric Piano modeled on the Rhodes, plus the TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, both fully synthesized
KiwiSynth, the built-in synthesizer, ships with a library of editable presets covering bass, leads, pads, and keys, plus a blank engine for building your own
Load your own SFZ sample instruments and VST3 plugins, with articulations mapped from a shared catalog
Audio clip tracks drop recorded audio (WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG) straight onto the timeline for vocals, loops, and field recordings

Flagship Synth

Kiwisynth: a wavetable synth that breathes

Kiwisynth is the flagship instrument, bundled with Kiwisonic and also sold as a standalone VST3 and CLAP plugin. Every preset has motion built in, so a sound feels organic from the first note. Shape sounds by feel in Simple mode, or open the full editor for three wavetable oscillators, dual filters, and a deep modulation system.

Four oscillator modes (Wavetable, SuperSaw, Karplus-Strong, and Modal for bell- and chime-like tones), with unison voices that drift independently
Add modulation by right-clicking any knob and picking an intent, or drag an LFO or envelope straight onto a knob
Bloom sources respond to how you play: the chord you hold, how long a note sustains, how often you repeat it
48 factory presets across Bass, Keys, Lead, Pad, Pluck, and Texture. Explore Kiwisynth →

Backing Parts That Follow

Generated Tracks

A generated track writes its own part by following another track, and rebuilds it whenever that track changes. Point one at a pad holding your chords and it lays down a layer that stays in step: edit a chord and the layer follows on the next edit, without you touching it directly.

When you add the track, choose which track it follows and a starter recipe such as Octave shimmer or Fifth above; only melodic tracks can be followed
The part is read-only and shaped by a short script, so it re-derives whenever you edit the master track
The editor stacks two piano rolls, the source clip above and the generated notes below on the same pitch range, and auditions both together so you hear the part in context
A small BASIC-style script language places notes per master note or per bar, so you can tune the part by changing a number or adding a line

The Add generated track dialog: choosing the track to follow and a starter recipe

What Kiwisonic does