Raèld Compose

Raèld Compose writes complete, original song ideas as editable MIDI: a song's form and every part its style needs (drums, percussion, bass or 808, chords, keys, guitars, pads, strings, the lead and counter-lines). Choose a style, or blend two or three, press GENERATE, shape the idea until you like it, hear it on Compose's own sketch sounds, and drag it into your DAW.

It holds no songs. It writes from style patterns (tempos, grooves, harmony, bass movement, melody habits, instruments, arrangement and energy), kept as editable files, and checks every new line against melodies it knows so it stays its own.

Installing

1. Close your DAW.
2. Unzip Raeld-Compose-1.0.0-Windows.zip from the download page or your purchase email, run Raeld-Compose-Setup.exe and follow the steps. The plugin goes into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, where every DAW looks; a standalone app can be installed too.
3. Open your DAW and rescan plugins. Raèld Compose is an instrument: in FL Studio, add it to the channel rack (Generators). DAW plugin lists show it without the accent, as "Raeld Compose", so type "raeld" in the plugin browser.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and any VST3 host that loads instruments, for example FL Studio, Ableton Live, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper or Bitwig, or the standalone app. Sample rates 44.1 to 192 kHz, any buffer size; a stereo or mono output.

If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" when you run the installer, click More info → Run anyway.

Activating your license

1. Open the plugin. The activation screen appears; if it doesn't, click LICENCE in the toolbar above the unit.
2. Paste your key and click ACTIVATE: the Raèld Compose key from your purchase email, or your All Access key. You need an internet connection for this step.
3. That's it: Raèld Compose is unlocked on this computer.

Each key covers 3 computers. To move to a new one, open the license screen on the old one and click DEACTIVATE THIS PC first.

Without a key the plugin runs as a demo: the preview's sound drops out briefly every 45 seconds. Everything else works.

Quick start

1. Choose a style from the list at the top of the GENERATE page (67 styles by family, then the blends).
2. Press GENERATE, the big key on the deck. A new idea appears on the screen: its form, its parts, its chords.
3. Listen: press PLAY, or play your DAW. Turn SURPRISE towards SAFE or ADVENTUROUS and the same idea is made again at the new setting.
4. Shape it on the SHAPE page: lock what you like, regenerate what you don't, change the key, the chords, the tempo.
5. Drag it out: drag IDEA (MIDI) from the deck onto your DAW's playlist or arrangement, and put your own sounds on the parts.

The unit

Raèld Compose is built as a composer's desk console: a petrol-teal hammertone bay holding a green phosphor screen, over a brushed-brass control deck.

Knobs: drag up or down (Shift for finer steps), use the mouse wheel or the arrow keys; double-click resets. The value shows while you turn and when you point at a knob. Every control explains itself when you point at it.

The toolbar

Above the unit: LICENCE (the activation screen), UNDO and REDO (every change to the idea; Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y), EXPORT... (everything written to a folder) and SIZE (85 to 200 % of the window's opening size; you can also drag its corner). The size is remembered.

The GENERATE page

• Pick a style. Each idea has a seed: the same style, seed and SURPRISE always make the same idea. Type a seed to go back to one. SAME SEED AGAIN makes it again (after a change to the style's DNA, say).
• The idea: its tempo, key and length; the form as blocks (wider is longer, brighter is more energy); which parts play in which section. Click a block to see its chords bar by bar. NEW CHORDS FOR THIS SECTION changes that section only.
• Under the chords, the section: its first two bars part by part. Drum parts as hits, where they really land with the swing; the bass, the lead, the counter-line and every instrument as lines of notes.
• The lead is built from short motifs through phrase forms such as AABA, in the style's scale; a returning chorus sings its first tune; the chorus sits higher than the verse. Keys, guitars, pads, strings, organ and plucks play the harmony in the style's own patterns (held, stabs, comping, strums, arpeggios, skank, bubble...).
• DRAG IDEA (MIDI) and DRAG THE CHORDS, at the top right, as on the deck.
• The line at the top right says whether the idea is ORIGINAL (see Originality).

Blends

• The style list ends with the blends: the factory's (Afro-fusion, Afro-R&B, Afro-dancehall, Afro-gospel, Afropiano, Afro-trap, trap-soul) and yours, marked "(yours)".
• BLEND opens the panel. Choose two or three styles and how much of each. Under WHO LEADS, click the style that leads each dimension. A leader gives its structure: the groove's leader sets the tempo, grid, swing, kick and backbeat; the harmony's leader the modes and how fast chords change; the bass's leader the bass (bass, 808 or log drum); the melody's leader the way of singing; the arrangement's leader the song form. The other styles' choices are mixed in by weight. A leader always keeps at least half the say.
• Styles at very different tempos meet through half or double time: in trap-soul, R&B's chords and phrases are stretched over two of trap's bars.
• GENERATE THIS BLEND makes an idea from it. Name it and press SAVE BLEND to keep it: it joins the style list.

The SHAPE page

• The idea as a timeline: sections across the top, a row per part. Select a part and bars by dragging along its row, a whole section by clicking its head, a part's whole length by clicking its name.
• REGENERATE SELECTION draws the selection again (the selected part and the lines that follow it, or every part, in those bars only). NEW CHORDS draws new chords for the sections the selection touches; the parts there follow; the rest of the song stays exactly as it is.
• Beside each part: L locks it (its notes stay, whatever else you change), M mutes it, S solos it. Muted parts are left out of the drag. The square in a section's head locks the section.
• The selected part's DENSITY, COMPLEXITY, REGISTER, SWING and HUMANISE (with nothing selected: every part), and REMOVE PART. ADD AN INSTRUMENT suggests parts the idea doesn't have, each with its reason: the role it plays and the range it fills.
• Across the top: VARY (new details, the tune and chords kept), SIMPLIFY, BUSIER, DARKER, BRIGHTER, MORE ENERGY, CALMER; the KEY, MODE and TEMPO, every part following them.
• Under the timeline, the chords of the bars shown (click one to choose another) and a piano roll of the selected part: click to add a note, drag one to move it, right-click to remove it. A part you change by hand is locked, so your notes stay.
• IDEAS lists this session's earlier ideas. OPEN one, or BREED it with the one you have: the lit dimensions (form, harmony, drums, bass, melody, parts) come from the chosen idea. FAVOURITE keeps an idea for every session.
• Every change is saved with your DAW session as a short list of edits: reopening the project gives exactly the same song.

Hearing it and taking it out

• The idea plays with your DAW's transport, looping over the song. When the DAW is stopped, PLAY plays it from the selected section or bar. A playhead shows where it is.
• The sounds are Compose's own, made in code: sketches to hear the idea by, not production sounds. Muted parts aren't heard.
• MIDI OUT sends the notes out of Compose's MIDI output, each part on its own MIDI channel (drums on 10). In FL Studio, set Compose's MIDI output port and another instrument's input port to the same number, or use Patcher.
• IDEA (MIDI): one file with the tempo, a marker per section, the key, a chord track (chord names and chords) and every part on its own named track (drums as General MIDI notes on channel 10). EACH PART (MIDI): every part as its own file, all at once. AUDIO: the preview's sound as a WAV (ready a second after each change). On SHAPE, drag a part's name for just that part. EXPORT... writes everything to a folder.
• When other parts play the harmony, the chords part is called Raeld - Chord Guide: it's there to read and drag; you don't need a sound on it. An 808 or log-drum slide is written as a note overlapping the next one: a mono synth with portamento (legato) slides there.

Originality

Raèld Compose holds no songs: it writes from style patterns. As a second line of defence, every new idea's melodic lines (the lead, counter-lines, riffs, hooks) are checked against public-domain melodies built into the plugin, your favourites, this session's earlier ideas and any MIDI files you put in %APPDATA%\Raeld Audio\Compose\References\ (your own songs, or anything you want ideas kept away from). The check ignores the key and the tempo.

• ORIGINAL: nothing close. If a line had to be drawn again, it says how many.
• TOO CLOSE: 8 notes with the same intervals and rhythm as a reference (12 for a line on three pitches or fewer). A new idea, or a part Compose draws again, never stays like this: the line is drawn again on its own, as an edit you can undo. You'll only see it after a change of your own, such as notes you placed; then it's your call.
• CLOSE (a warning): 10 notes with the same intervals in another rhythm.
• The chords are a note only: when 8 chord changes with their lengths match an earlier idea.

Point at the line to read the whole report: the part, the bar and the reference. The check is a filter, not a legal clearance: it can't know songs it hasn't been shown, so judge every song by ear, as you would any song you write.

The STYLE DNA page

Every style is a file of numbers you can tune by ear.

• Left: every style by family, then the blends. * marks one you've edited, [!] one with a problem.
• Top: the dimensions (groove, harmony, bass, melody, instrumentation, arrangement, sound, energy, rules, meta).
• Values the style sets itself are bright; inherited ones are dim, with the style they come from on the right.
• Numbers: drag up or down (Shift: finer), click to type, wheel to step. Patterns: draw the chance of a hit on each step (Shift or right-click clears). Weights: drag the bar, × removes, + add adds. ↺ takes a style's own value away so the inherited one comes back.
• Your first edit makes your own copy of that style in %APPDATA%\Raeld Audio\Compose\DNA. The factory style never changes; REVERT TO FACTORY deletes your copy. A parent's edit carries into its subgenres.
• Problems show underneath with their place in the file, and the style is set aside until it's fixed; the others keep working.
• To hear a change, go to GENERATE and press SAME SEED AGAIN.

The FL PROBE page

Five small MIDI files to drag onto FL Studio's piano roll, channel rack and playlist, and a switch that sends a test phrase out of the plugin's MIDI output while FL plays. It shows what your FL Studio does with MIDI dragged out of a plugin, which helps if a drag doesn't land the way you expect.

What we measured

The styles' patterns come from documented research on each genre; the newest subgenres are informed generalisations, tuned by ear. Nothing from another company's product, and no recording or score of anyone's song, was used.

Troubleshooting

• I can't find it in my DAW. Rescan plugins and search for "raeld". It's an instrument: in FL Studio look under Generators, not Effects.
• No sound. Check PREVIEW is lit, LEVEL is up and the DAW's mixer channel isn't muted. When the DAW is stopped, press PLAY.
• The sound drops out every 45 seconds. That's the demo. Activate your key with LICENCE.
• The drag lands in the wrong place. Drag onto the playlist or arrangement for the whole idea, onto a channel or piano roll for one part. The FL PROBE page shows what your FL version does.
• MIDI OUT does nothing. Your DAW has to route a plugin's MIDI output to another instrument (in FL Studio: matching MIDI port numbers, or Patcher).
• A style sounds wrong after my edits. Open it on STYLE DNA and press REVERT TO FACTORY.
• The window is too big or small. SIZE, or drag the window's corner.

Uninstalling

Windows Settings → Apps → Raèld Compose → Uninstall. Your own DNA copies, blends, favourites and references stay in %APPDATA%\Raeld Audio\Compose; delete that folder to remove them too.

Support

Questions, problems, ideas: info@raeldaudio.com, or the support page.