There are several design considerations and tips you should keep in mind when creating new styles.

Design Method

The easiest way to create a style from scratch is to use the New Style option of the New Song process to create an empty structure of style sections to place the pattern events into.

An alternative (and very effective) way to create a style is to open a song, add marker labels as required (to indicate the sections) and then use Save Song As to convert it to a style.

Substyle Themes

There are no fixed requirements about how each substyle should sound, but there are conventions (and remember other people may be using your styles).

• Substyle A should be a medium strength rendition of the musical style, suitable for verses and other general use.

• Substyle B should be a stronger dynamic of the same style, suitable for choruses and other climactic sections.

• Substyle C should be a milder dynamic of the same style, suitable for reprises and other gentler sections.

Time Signatures

For styles to natively support multiple time signatures, each section in the style must be repeated for each time signature to contain the alternative patterns for the additional meters.

If you do not want to provide this level of support, you should simply design your styles in 4/4 to allow Songtrix to do the best possible job of synthesizing other time signature patterns from this single source meter.

Track Inclusion

Styles can include any or all of the tracks that a song can, but some tracks are never accessed, while others are required for the style to work correctly.

There is no point to including the Lyrics track in styles, as it is never used.  Lyrics tracks in songs cannot contain autostyle segments, because automatically generating lyrics does not really make sense.

Styles can include the Melody track, which is then available for use by songs.  However, songs usually employ the Melody track for their own melody, and so many styles do not bother to define a musical part for it.

Either (or both) of the Chords or Scales tracks must be included for the style to work correctly.  If the Scales track is present, this will be given preference, otherwise key centres will be automatically found to suit the specified chords.

The other tracks - Riff, Rhythm, Bass and Drums - should all be included and filled with event patterns to define the fullest musical style possible.

Track Setup

Remember that the track setup parameters you specify for the style (including the controls and the scope) are by default copied into the songs which use it, to replicate the effect.

You should therefore carefully choose the combination of settings such as track level, pan position, voice and reverb  to give the best overall effect.

Change Mode

There are special considerations for the Change Mode setting in the track controls.  This specifies what happens when events fall across changes in harmony, such as chords.

Normally in songs, this setting only affects the Rhythm track, whose event tones usually change at chord boundaries.  But when using styles, the generation of autostyle events in Melody, Riff and Bass tracks are also affected by a change in harmony. 

From the style's perspective, you cannot predict where harmony changes will occur when it is used in a song, and so you cannot minimize the impact with event placement.

Therefore the Change Mode setting becomes more important to best accommodate the part played by the track.

Continue - generally unsuitable and likely to cause regular harmonic clashes, particularly with chordal parts.

Truncate - suitable for melodic or busy chordal parts, such as riffs, bass lines or strumming rhythms.

Retrigger - suitable for slow melodic or chordal parts, such as background padding chords.