Songtrix is designed to produce all types and forms of music.  For convenience, the music structures that Songtrix works with are called songs, but they are just as suitable for instrumental or classical music.

The song is the main subject of the workspace, particularly in Mixer View, Track View and Staff View, each of which presents and interacts with the current song in various ways.

A single window (session) of Songtrix works with only a single song, however several windows, each with a different song, can be open at the same time.  Chunks of music can be easily transferred between songs by copying and pasting between windows.

Song Structure

A song consists of several tracks, which appear vertically next to each other in both work sheets and staff sheets.  Tracks represent the parts of a song, which are played together.

Not all tracks produce sound during playback.  For example the Lyrics track contains text to support the Melody track, while the Chords track provides a harmonic context for the Rhythm track.

Songtrix offers eight tracks for use in a song, any of which can be added or removed with the Song Setup window.

In the horizontal direction are the bars of the song, representing the units of time.  A song can be up to 999 bars long (approximately 1 hour of music) with unlimited time signature changes.

Song playback typically starts at the first bar and continues through to the end, although several other playback options are available.  Sections of the song (verse, chorus, etc) can be indicated using markers.

Song Files

Songtrix stores songs in ChordWizard Song (CWS) files.  This file format has many advantages for storing and publishing music compared to other formats such as Midi files.

It stores the chords and scales used in the song, so the harmonic structure is preserved.  And it stores the high-level music events (such as strums and drum rolls) used by Songtrix, where Midi files can only store individual notes.

Finally, it makes an ideal format for publishing songs, since it supports encryption, song protection and embedded publisher links to ensure the origin of the song is always known.

Songs and Styles

Songtrix can be used as an empty canvas on which you place events to compose entirely original music.  However, it can also generate automatic musical arrangements, in a wide range of styles, for any given chord sequence.

The style engine is flexible and can be used to fill a whole song, or only the specific areas of a song which have autostyle segments.  You can use a different style for each track, giving a vast array of possible combinations.

Songtrix is supplied with a rich set of standard styles, but these can be extended by installing extra styles, perhaps by downloading them from the ChordWizard Network.

Style files provide a sample of a musical style, which Songtrix uses as a reference to generate the events in the songs where the style is used.

In fact, styles are simply a special type of song, stored in ChordWizard Style (CWY) files.  Although they have a specific structure, they can be opened in Songtrix in the usual way and edited like a standard song.

You will find it quite straightforward to create and use your own styles, to promote rapid and flexible musical development.