Making Music

This article introduces Amper Score’s approach to composing original music and outlines some tips for integrating it into your workflow, including:

• Initial Render
• Re-rendering
• Instrument Edits
• Timeline Edits

 

Initial Render:

Score composes new music from scratch based on your genre, mood, instrumentation, and structure selections through a process called “rendering”.

Once you have defined your project’s structure you will be asked to define genre, sub-genre (if applicable), mood, and select a band. Bands are sets of instruments curated for your musical style.

Note: You are asked to pick a band upfront, but you will be able to further customize instruments later in Score’s “Workspace”. 

Each band listing displays:

• a band name
• a preview button so you can hear what the instruments sound like together
• a list of instruments
• a tone tag (this tells you about the vibe of the band)
• a compose button

Click “Compose” to render a track in the style and with the instrumentation you have defined:

Tip: You can also add multiple renders of the same genre, mood, and band combination, which is an excellent way to get several “related” tracks in a very similar style. Simply wait for the “Added!” notification to change back to the “Compose” button and click again.

While Score is composing your track, you will see a yellow spinning icon next to that track’s tab. After a few seconds, your track will be ready and you will see a notification at the top of the screen. Click the notification or the tab to go to the workspace and download or edit your track further:

You can add up to 10 tracks to a project. If you have fewer than 10 tracks and would like to re-open the composition panel, click the yellow music icon at the top left of the workspace.

Tip: While the number of tracks you can add to a project is limited, Score’s composer is not. To experience the endless variability of Score’s output, simply delete tracks that you are not using and render replacements to your heart’s content!

 

Re-rendering:

Because Score takes user edits made in Score’s Workspace (for example, the removal of an instrument or a change in climax position) and updates the composition itself, all edits must be rendered to be implemented. When edits are made, the “Render” and “Undo” buttons are illuminated, and the “Render counter” will reflect the number of unrendered changes that will be applied to the track upon rendering.

Undone edits can be redone if you change your mind. When you are satisfied with your changes, click the Render button to compose them into your track. The render counter will be replaced by a series of bouncing dots to indicate that your changes are being written into the track:

Tip: We recommend rendering changes often to avoid losing track of the edits you have made since your last render.

Note: Once edits have been rendered, they can no longer be undone via the undo button. Instead, you will have to reverse the action (e.g. by adding an instrument you removed back in) and re-render.

 

Instrument edits:

Please note you must render all instrument changes (adding, removing, changing timbres) for them to be implemented.

Differences between different instruments or timbres can be subtle, so we recommend rendering only a couple of changes at a time so you know where the changes you hear are coming from.

Tip: While you are learning which of Score’s instruments you prefer, you should make only one edit per instrument family (e.g. “percussion”) before rendering. This will allow you to hear how subtle differences between instruments impact your track more clearly.

See Editing Instruments for more information.

Timeline edits:

Changes to the position of timeline spots (intro, climax, outro) must be rendered to be implemented.

Note: You must also render after toggling climax accents on or off.

Tip: While you are getting familiar with how different activity levels affect a tracks' instrumentation, you should only change one spot at a time, render, and listen to the results before deciding if you would like to make further updates.