Music Composer

Compositions and interpretations

A piece in the Music Composer has two layers.

The composition is the notes as written: the beat each one starts on, how long it lasts, its pitch. It's what a score would show.

An interpretation is a performance of the composition: its tempo, how each note is played, the instruments, the tuning, the colours. Changes to an interpretation leave the notes alone, so one composition can have several interpretations, each played its own way.

Collections and artists

The Music page's Collections tab holds albums and works that contain pieces, such as the Goldberg Variations, and Artists the composers and arrangers credited on your compositions. Each opens as a sheet over the page. Click a name or detail to change it; it's saved when you leave the field. Click the cover to upload an image or Choose from an artwork...: an artboard, frame or sprite of one of your artworks, drawn from the artwork as it is now, so the cover follows your edits. A sprite plays. Edit cover opens that artwork with the cover's artboard, frame or sprite selected.

Rules

An interpretation keeps its changes as rules. A rule can apply to one note, a group, a bar, a section or a whole part, and the most specific rule wins. You don't write rules by hand: dragging a note's handles, or changing a value in Properties, adds one to the current interpretation. Browse, beside the count of rules in Interpretations, opens the Interpretation rules panel, which lists them all.

Write targets in Settings chooses whether new notes and ornaments go into the composition or the current interpretation.

Setting up

A new piece asks for a title, a key and scale, a time signature, an instrument and a theme. The theme cards offer four looks, and Shuffle four more; From a document... takes one from an artwork's palette (its ground, foreground and accent, with the other swatches as the voices' colours) or from another composition's theme instead. The Composition panel contains these afterwards, with the subtitle, composer, arranger, the collections the piece is in, and the Slug, the piece's address (Match title sets it from the title); and at the bottom, under Record, when the piece was created and last updated, its version and its id. AI-assisted there turns on by itself the first time Robot edits the piece; once you set it yourself, it stays as you set it. Each interpretation has the same mark in its menu.

To start another piece set up like an existing one, right-click it on the Music page and choose New composition with same setup. It takes the parts, the instruments and which part plays which, the mixer and effects, the themes and visualisers, the time signature and key, and each interpretation's base tempo, with none of the notes.

The Interpretations panel switches between interpretations and contains each one's tempo, tuning and how its notes are drawn, and the silence before the first note and after the end (Lead-in and Lead-out, in beats or seconds). With the loop on, a whole-piece loop plays the lead-out before it starts over. Duplicate, in an interpretation's menu, lets you try something without losing what you had.

Lock notes in Composition, or the lock beside the loop button at the top, protects the written music from accidental edits. While it's on, notes can't be added to the composition or deleted from it, and their pitch, start and length stay as written: they have no resize handles, and dragging them does nothing. Their velocity, part, groups and ornaments can still be changed, and so can everything an interpretation does to them. Notes written to an interpretation (see Write targets) can still be added. Bars can be added after the last note, but not where they would move notes.