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Music Gen

Compose looping chiptune music for your levels, then shape it: note volume, effects, remixes and more.

Music Gen (F4) makes looping chiptune music for your levels. A song has four tracks, Lead, Bass, Chords and Drums, each with its own note grid. Press ▶ Play to hear it loop; every change plays as you make it.

Everything above the tracks stays in place while you scroll: the name, Play and Save, Compose, the song settings, the picked bars and the zoom.

#Compose and remix

• Click a style under Compose, such as Adventure, Dungeon, Battle, Haunted or Synthwave, to write a whole new song. Click again for another. Songs come in sections (A, B, C…), each with its own chords and rhythm.
• Each track also gets a note shape, effects and a dynamics strength picked at random from what suits the style. Open its Shape ▾, FX ▾ or Dynamics ▾ to see which.
• 🎛 Remix ▾ writes new notes using the song's current key, scale, tempo, length and style. Each track keeps its instrument, volume, effects and pan.
  • Remix: new notes, same chords.
  • Remix — keep the rhythm, new notes: the same timing with new pitches.
  • Remix with new chords.
  • Remix as another style ▸: keeps your key.
• 🎲 Remix on a track writes new notes for just that track, or just for its selected notes.

#The song

Set the Tempo (BPM), Length (up to 64 bars), Key, Scale, Swing and Master volume. A limiter keeps a loud mix from clipping. Songs play in stereo.

#Tracks

Each track has:

Moving any slider in Shape or FX makes the preset read Custom. These windows close when you click anywhere outside them.

#Notes

• Click the grid to add a note, and drag right to hold it longer.
• Drag a note to move it earlier or later, higher or lower. You hear each new pitch.
• Right-click a note to remove it.
• Every row is in the scale, so it always sounds in key.

Selecting notes: hold Shift and drag a box. The notes inside get a gold outline.

• Drag one of them to move them all.
• Delete removes them.
• The track's 🎲 Remix, Dynamics ▾ and Clear work on just them.
• Esc, or a right-click on any empty space, unselects them.

#How loud each note plays

• The Vel strip under each grid has a bar per note. Drag the bars up or down, or hold Ctrl and turn the mouse wheel over a note. Quieter notes look paler.
• Dynamics ▾ on a track:
  • Strength: how far apart the loud and soft notes are, from 0% (all the same) to 300%.
  • Back to normal: the natural dynamics Compose writes, with strong downbeats and soft off-beats. Use it to undo the others.
  • Humanize: small random differences, a new take each time.
  • Accents on beat 1, beats 1 and 3, or every other 8th.
  • Ramp up and Ramp down, and All the same.

These work on the selected notes, the picked bars, or the whole track.

#Working on a few bars

Drag across the bar numbers above the Lead grid to pick bars. ▶ Play then loops just those bars. Untick Loop these bars to hear the whole song again. You can also:

• Copy, Paste here and Clear every track's notes in those bars.
• Use Dynamics ▾ on just those bars.

Right-click any empty space, or press ✕, to unpick them.

#Undo, save and export

• ↶ ↷, or Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y while the tab is open, undo and redo your changes.
• Save puts the song in the Sound Library as music. Use for this level also makes it the level's background music.
• Export… saves a .vgmsong to open in other projects, a .wav to play anywhere, or a .mid with the notes for any music program.