User Guide

Chapter 8: Automatic Music Features
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In songs with an AABA form, it is common for the second “a” section to be transposed.
For example, the first “a” section might be in the key of Eb, and the second would be
transposed up to the key of Gb. Melodists store these settings, and some Melodists are
set to transpose the A2 sections. If you don't want to allow Melodists to transpose the
form in this way, set the A2 transpose to none.
If set to “section plus” it will transpose the A2 section, and might transpose 2 bars early
or 2 bars late. The song will only be transposed if the particular Melodist is set to
transpose the section.
The Song Key area determines the key for the song. If
set to Any Key, the program will randomly pick a key
for the song, weighed more heavily toward the popular
keys like C and F.
The Minor Key % setting determines what % of songs
would be generated in minor keys (vs. major keys).
If set to 20, then 20% of the songs would be generated in minor keys. You can also set
the Song Key Pop-up to a specific key, or set it to use the current key of the previous
song.
The next section of the Melodist Screen allows you to
select whether you want to generate the “Whole Song”
or just part of the song. If you select part of the song,
you can specify which bar and chorus to start at, and
how many bars to generate. An easy way to set the
range of bars is to select the bars by dragging the mouse
over the chord area prior to launching the Melodist
dialog. Then the “Generate” form will be automatically
set to “Part of Song” and the range of bars will be set to
the selected area.
If you were generating a song from scratch, you'd want to set “Generate Whole Song.”
After you listen to the song, you might want to improve on a certain section of the song
(say bars 5 and 6 of the first A section). To do this, from the chordsheet window, select
bars 5 and 6, and press the Melodist button again.
You'll notice that the “Generate Part of Song” radio button is set, with the range set to bar
5 and 6. Pressing OK at this point will cause only bars 5 and 6 to be regenerated,
preserving the rest of the song. This allows you to repeatedly generate/re-generate parts
of the melody and/or chords until you get the Melody/Chord progression that you're
looking for!
If you have set the Melodist to “Generate Part of
Song” this would (in the example above) generate only bars 5 and 6 of the song form (in
the A section of an AABA form). If the form of the song were AABA, you'd normally