Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Generative Plugins Chords Harmony-Theory

Insta-Composer: Generate Chords easily

Tutorial | Mon Oct 11 2021 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

In this video, I explored the Insta Composer plugin and showed how it can be used to generate generic music for background music, streaming, and other projects. I demonstrated how to tweak parameters like chords, scale, population, and key. I also explored how to use the plugin inside Bitwig and how to export the generated music.

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Questions & Answers

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is Insta Composer?

Insta Composer is a music production plugin that automatically generates music using chords, bass lines, rhythm, and melody. It has adjustable parameters that allow users to customize the resulting sound. It is an ideal tool for creating music for stream backgrounds, shops, or TV commercials.

How does Insta Composer work?

Insta Composer works by generating musical elements such as chords, bass lines, rhythm, and melody from the adjustable parameters. These parameters allow the user to customize the sound to their liking. Once the user has adjusted the parameters, they can hit the ‘Go’ button to generate the music. The user can also insert chromatic notes, change the chord mode, and use inversions to further customize the sound.

What are the features of Insta Composer?

Insta Composer has several features that make it a powerful music production tool. It generates chords, bass lines, rhythm, and melody automatically, and all of these elements can be customized with adjustable parameters. It also allows the user to insert chromatic notes, change chord mode, and use inversions to further customize the sound. Additionally, it is

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00.000] Welcome back guys to another video on this channel, what you can hear on the background is generated by a plugin called the Insta Composer.
[00:07.500] And by generated I mean only the notes of course music itself is generated by some instruments I put on the tracks.
[00:15.000] And this plugin generates not only the ports, it also generates the bass line for it, the rhythm, the melody and some ads.
[00:25.000] And you can tweak this generation with some parameter so it's like a nice starting point for maybe a new song or maybe when you have a shop or maybe when you have a gaming stream and you need some music in the background.
[00:40.000] This is maybe something that you can generate some generic music with it or like I said use it as a starting point for a new song.
[00:48.000] So maybe let's switch over a bit we can show you how it looks like. As you can see here we have here a chord channel or chord track, a pad track, bass, rhythm and melody.
[01:03.000] And we have here some options at the bottom where we can change certain parameters.
[01:09.000] For instance here in general we have basic exotic chords where we can change if we want to generate more basic chords or we want to have more exotic chords, exotic chords means more like you know minor seven and you know all these multiple note chords.
[01:26.000] So this is something you can change here but you can see nothing happens in here. It's more like you have to tweak all the settings in here and then you have to press the go button then it generates something new.
[01:37.000] And you can also change your what you want to generate for instance if you click all then all these tracks are generated.
[01:47.000] And if you only want to maybe tweak only the bass line you go to three here and hit go you can see the bass now changes.
[01:57.000] And if you think maybe I want to have more notes in the bass line from the scale instead instead from the chords here you go to scale or you can choose something in between which is probably the best option here.
[02:18.000] You hit go and then it select some notes here from the scale and from the chords below.
[02:30.000] If you want to for instance more notes then you raise your the population you know you have more like 16th notes in there or go to less population.
[02:50.000] And it's more like a simple simple chord pattern or a bass pattern here.
[02:59.000] So down below here we have the chord progression and we can generate a new chord progression by maybe selecting here a scale which is minor and maybe a new key.
[03:11.000] Let's go for D. Let's stop this here.
[03:14.000] Let's go for D sharp here and also minor and then you can select your exotic chords basic chords I go in the middle and then just hit here all and go.
[03:26.000] And now we're generating new chords a new chord progression every time and also the melodies rhythm space pads and so on.
[03:38.000] So you can also generate only certain parts if you are happy maybe with the chord progression so let's listen to this one here now.
[04:05.000] Okay maybe go here for major and a different key maybe go for G something like this and generate new chord progression and everything alongside.
[04:32.000] Okay let's play this.
[04:44.000] Pretty happy and simple.
[04:57.000] Okay so as you can see you can generate here quickly new progressions and melody lines and bass lines to it. It's really fun actually to play around with all these options here down below and there's also your this option button.
[05:13.000] It's a bit hidden so you can click this here and you can see you can select your chord mode use inversions and chord mode at base notes this is disabled by default so make sure you enable this to get better sounding chord progressions.
[05:30.000] Then you can also here see you can insert maybe some chromatic notes or if you are bored with these diatonic chords and you want to have more like notes out of the scale inside your progression or inside your melody lines then you can just raise this number here.
[05:47.000] There's also so it's also possible to generate some chord progressions with some notes out of the scale which makes it quite more interesting in my opinion.
[05:58.000] Then we have things like all these tracks here are outputting notes at certain MIDI channels and inside bitvig here I have just one dedicated track for the insta composer and then I'm using here just a note receiver inside bitvig to get the notes from the insta composer track.
[06:22.000] Then I'm using here channel filter inside the source FX and you can see I'm only here enabled channel 5 so this is basically only getting or letting these notes here through to the polysense so this is the chord track here as you can see on the pad track on the pad track here I have a channel filter on channel 4.
[06:43.000] Bass track is channel 3. You can see it's channel 3. You can also change the MIDI channel up here if you want to have a different layout or want to send certain notes to different tracks.
[06:59.000] You can also change the mode of each track here so you can switch between chord track here you can have multiple chord tracks if you want, oscillator riff melody so you can change certain modes for these tracks here and then send out the notes.
[07:15.000] You can also I think drag out these things here to the door if you want I have to use this handle here so you get generate just a MIDI block or a clip with some note information in there so if you want to have that I think you can also export completely MIDI tracks if you want to and you can also save presets here or can load presets where you have your usual chord progression.
[07:44.000] The chord progression is already in there but I think it's not really needed you can just use your chord generator for that.
[07:54.000] Also if you generated some new chords in here you can also change the chords if you're not happy maybe you have a minor you can change it for maybe let's see here a minor 9th.
[08:11.000] And also as you can see here it's green some of these options are green these are chords that have all the notes inside the scale at least that's that's what I think it is and it changes when I change here the key and the scale.
[08:27.000] To something different then also here the options change to different yeah chords so I think the green ones are basically chords that within the scale you are choosing on the left here so this is pretty nice to have so you can choose here different exotic chords or change it for something else also the root note here is changeable you can see here or the root notes inside the scale are green.
[08:56.000] So you're never pick super out of place chord and if you want to do so then you can do that also of course then we have your CPR which is copy paste and repeat the last chords we can say just giving
[09:13.000] this position this chord here from this block so you can push this or now it's actually this way and then you can just copy this over and then you see nothing changes up here you have to press
[09:34.000] generate again so in this case we only want to generate you the fifth row we have to press five then hit go and then you can see it changes what you changed down here this is my only yeah my only problem with the with the block in so far that you have to use this go button quite often so anytime you change something up down here in the settings
[10:02.000] also in here you have to press go button to make it into the tracks or to generate notes from it I think it would be quite nice to have a check box anywhere that says any any
[10:16.000] anytime you change something on the settings instantly generates new notes inside these tracks I think this would be really great for it.
[10:27.000] So I want to encourage you to try out the demo version it's up on plug in boutique there's also a link down below in the description where you can get it for a bit cheaper I think when you use my my affiliate link I'm not sure try it out
[10:45.000] and yeah give it a go inside bitwig it works pretty nice here with the insta chords with the note receivers on each tracks and also the channel filters and I saved this here as a template as you can see so anytime I'm not inspired and I wanted to generate track or want to start something I use this template and yeah inside template
[11:09.000] I fix all for the beats here and of course all the wiring already set up and I can just start and have some dedicated instruments on each tracks for each of these note generators here setup.
[11:27.000] So yeah I just downloaded this I have not much experience actually actually with this plugin so I wanted to share this with you that you maybe try it out maybe it's interesting for you.
[11:40.000] Like I said it's maybe want when you want to generate some music for your stream backgrounds or for your shop or I don't know a TV commercial or something like this.
[11:50.000] And you have no idea this generates pretty generic nice sounding chord progressions and melody lines and it's quite fun to play around with and like you saw you can export everything then tweak the chord progressions even more the melody lines even more and maybe it's.
[12:09.000] You created a new hit from it I don't know so quite interesting thanks for watching this video leave a like and maybe some questions in the comments below what you think about this plugin and I see you in the next video thanks for watching and bye.
[12:39.000] you