With the Melody Generator, you can create brief musical ideas and sketch out a phrase right inside of your web browser. Drag or tap on the primary grid to draw notes. Or use your computer’s keyboard to move around and make edits. All the tools is built into an interface that features both a visual runway and controls for things like rhythm, scale, and even musical setting, allowing you to get precise control over melodic shaping.
Let’s start with the central, eight-step runway. Notes is placed by clicking or dragging onto it. The horizontal position indicates the beat and the vertical pitch. The grid lines indicates the scale degree of the note you are holding in whichever key you have chosen. While a step has focus, you can also use the arrow keys to move up and down through the steps (and therefore the beats) and alter the pitch. Hit Space or Enter to play current note.
How to Use the Melody Generator
The musical context is set via the flight deck controls up top. The key dropdown let’s you select the tonal center; there’s a full range of major keys plus sharps/flats (C to B). Next you choose the scale language, which determines available notes: Major, Natural minor, Dorian, Mixolydian etc. Then you change the Home register to move the melody up, down, or to the middle. Finally, you set the pitch runway span to restrict vertical area in which you draw.
With these two sliders, you have a lot of control over how fast the music plays back (air speed) and the size of leaps between notes (largest leap). Air speed is the tempo of the piece in beats per minute. You can set it to play slowly for studying purposes but faster for playing or performing. Largest leap controls how far notes can jump when they are created or smoothed, which keeps them singable. This will be applied to anything that’s generated or played back as soon as you make the change.
Below the runway is the inspector panel where you refine each note individually. A series of dedicated buttons let you raise and lower the pitch degree that’s been selected. By choosing a rhythm for the current step, you can pick between quick eighth notes, cruise quarter notes, or long dotted quarter notes. You can pin a note into place so it won’t move when transformed or generated. The audition button sound the chosen pitch on its own.
The Design Board Options allow you to shape the whole phrase. The contour guide (rising, falling, arcing, waving) influences the shape. Opening and landing gravity determine whether the phrase begins or ends on the tonic, a chord tone, or a note that moves freely. The motif development method change the first four notes during the second half. It does this through rhythmic reversal, mirror, sequence, or literal echo. The last of these design controls adds movement and harmonic support. There is an option for a bass foundation; either no drone, tonic plus fifth or tonic triad. The master level slider allow you to control the volume. The check harmonic floor button allows you to hear just the accompaniment by itself. This way you can hear how your melody sounds in a more complete musical texture.
With those action buttons along the bottom, you transform things into something else, then come up with an idea for it. You use gravity and contour to build the melody as a guided phrase that you chart. Snap the end points of where you start and land to certain anchors by pulling to them. Extend the pattern from the initial motif you develop. Tame oversized leaps so big interval jumps becomes smoother. Invert the contour, flipping the melodic direction. Follow the path back to reverse the sequence. Rotate the rhythm cells to shift their duration. Lift unlocked degrees to raise the pitch. Undo your last stroke if you make a mistake.
The flight phrase is the one you launch to hear the full melody. As each note plays, an orb travels over the runway. At the top of the screen is the status bar that gives you some feedback about what you’re doing including the duration, note name, and current beat. There’s also a fullscreen button to give yourself a bigger space to draw in. Finally, you can turn the “how to play” panel on or off to use it as a quick reference guide.
It’s an exploration. How do I form interesting shapes through combining motifs and contour? What does it sound like when I just have the first and last note pinned down and create a phrase to fill in the middle? How does it feel in Major versus Dorian (switching the scale language)? Can I draw something erratic, then use the smooth button to clean it up? It responds immediately and lets me try things fast. If you find yourself going down the wrong path it will remember what was typed and let you undo several steps back in time.
Faster editing is done via keyboard shortcuts: launch with F, undo with Z, generate with G, and pin with K. Jumping right to certain beats is as simple as using the numbers 1-8 on your keyboard. With this kind of workflow you’re able to concentrate on musical ideas instead of the mechanics of interface.
First, you sketch a simple rising line and hear it back. Then you tweak the rhythm so that it flows naturaly with the melody. Next, you add a drone that grounds the pitch. After getting comfortable with these basic elements, you might mirror or reverse the contour to vary things. Since the Melody Generator invites you to explore, feel free to try odd combinations of settings and see where they take you. One click away is your next phrase.