A good understanding of how styles work can be gained by simply looking inside one.

Styles can be opened in the workspace for examination and editing in the same way that songs can.

Songs vs Styles

Remember that a style is simply a specialized type of song.  To open a style in the workspace, you still use File-Open Song, but at the bottom of this window, you need to change Files of type to ChordWizard Style.

This redirects to the designated Styles folder and lists the style files within it.  These can be selected and opened in exactly the same way as a song files.

While a style is open in the workspace, it is still considered to be a type of song.  So the Song menu, and commands such as Save Song As and Export Song retain the same names, but they are in fact operating on the style.

Style Internals

When a style is open in the workspace, it appears as shown below.

The first difference you may notice is the suffix [Style] added to style title in the song banner, and at the top of the main Songtrix window.  This makes it clear that you are editing a style as opposed to a song.

The next obvious feature is the large number of sections, many of which have a duration of only one or two bars.

Each section is a fragment of the musical style, giving an example of how it should be played in different situations within a song.  Specific marker labels are used to identify the fragments that Songtrix will look for when generating autostyle events.

Note that there is no Melody track.  As with many styles, it is assumed that the user of the style will be supplying their own melody, and the style's job is to provide the accompaniment in the other tracks.

Style files cannot contain repeat segments or autostyle segments.

By Example

The crucial point that makes working with styles so accessible is that they simply demonstrate a musical style by example.

Look again at the first section Main A in the style pictured above.  This is a two-bar pattern of events that shows how Substyle A should be played over a Cmaj7 chord.

When Songtrix is generating events in Substyle A for a Cmaj7 chord, it simply transfers this pattern of events to the song, repeating as required.  A richer and more varied output would be possible with a longer Main A section.

Obviously, there are many possible destination chords or key centres, but you do not need to provide an example for each one.

As long as you declare the harmonic context of your example, Songtrix is able to reharmonize the style events to suit any destination.

This is why it is essential to provide a fully populated Chords or Scales track in the style.  This often consists of just a single chord or scale throughout, as shown.

Alternatively, a changing harmony will also work, which makes it very convenient to build styles simply by using Copy and Paste from a song whose musical style you want to emulate.