Ingredients

A song is made from the list of ingredients on the Ingredients tab. ComposerFlex reads the list from top to bottom, and every note in the song comes from an ingredient in it.

The main kinds of ingredient are:

• Generators write the notes: tunes, left-hand parts and chords.
• Shaping ingredients work on the notes the generators wrote: runs and figures, ornaments, the touch, how the song builds, how loud it is, and more.
• Pedal ingredients work the piano's pedals. "pedal legato" changes the sustain pedal with each new chord and lifts it at the ends of phrases. "pedal wash" holds the sustain pedal down deeply across several chords, for music that floats, such as impressionist or ambient pieces. "pedal touch" gives the sustain pedal short, light touches on the strong beats, so the music keeps its edges but rings a little on the accents. "pedal soft" uses the soft pedal in quiet phrases. For "pedal legato", "pedal wash" and "pedal touch", the Strength is how far down the sustain pedal goes: 0 leaves it up, 50 puts it half way down and 100 all the way down (a little less in full or low passages). Most of the ballad, lyrical, film and classical presets use them; the rhythmic styles, such as ragtime, swing, blues and funk, play without pedal. In PianoFlex and PianoFlex Player, you can watch the pedal bars move as the song plays.
• Settings play no notes themselves. They set the song's tempo, its scale, how many beats are in a bar, its chord plan, and its form (its intro, verses, choruses and so on). The generators follow the chord plan.

A list needs at least one generator. Without one, there are no notes to play.

Adding an ingredient

Beside the list is the panel of all the ingredients you can use.

• Show narrows the panel to one kind, such as Generator or Harmony.
• Click an ingredient, or move to it with the arrow keys, and the box on the right describes it.

To add an ingredient to the list, double-click it (or press Enter), and it goes in after the last row, above the last three rows. Or drag it onto a row of the list: it goes in there, and the rows below move down.

The columns of the list

Each row of the list is one ingredient. The columns set how it's used:

• On: click to turn the row off or on. A row that's off keeps its settings, so you can turn it back on later.
• Ingredient: the ingredient's name. Drag a row by its name to move it up or down the list.
• Player: which part of the music the row works on: all of it, the melody, the bass, or the voices in between. Click to choose.
• Mix: how much of the song the row works on, from 0 to 100. For a generator, it's how many of the bars it writes. For most others, it's how many of the notes or bars it shapes. For a setting, it's the chance that a song uses this one.
• Str: the row's strength, from 0 to 100: how strongly it does what it does.
• From: the Dynamics setting at which the row comes in. A row with From 65 plays only when Dynamics is at 65 or more. If it's empty, the row always plays.
• Song %: how many songs the row is in. A row with Song % 60 is in about six songs out of ten. If it's empty, the row is in every song.
• Energy: the row plays only where the song's energy is at least this high. A row with Energy 80 plays only at the song's biggest moments. If it's empty, the row plays everywhere.
• Phrases: which parts of the song the row works in: intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, final chorus, or outro. Click to tick the ones you want. With none ticked, or all of them, the row works in every part.
• x, at the end of the row, deletes it.

To change a number, click it, type a new value, and press Enter. On the selected row, you can also turn the mouse wheel over it.

When you select a row, the box on the right also tells you what that row does in the current song: for a row with a Song %, whether it was in the last song you started, and, when Dynamics changes the row, how it plays at your current setting.

The last three rows

Every list ends with three rows that make the playing sound human: they vary the loudness and the sustain a little, and keep the loudest notes in check. New ingredients go in above them. Like any other row, you can change them or delete them.

Random

Random puts together a whole new list of ingredients for you. The new rows are ordinary rows, so you can change them, and save the result as a preset of your own.

The slider beside Random runs from Smart (0) to Wild (100):

• At 0, you get a plain, complete song: a tempo, a scale, a form, harmony, a tune, a left-hand part, and usually chords.
• Higher up, you get more shaping ingredients, rows that come and go from one song to the next, and second tunes.
• Near the top, from about 90, extra tunes, left hands or chords start to play over one another.

Every setting of the slider gives a song that plays.

Random never adds "ornament grace slide", "loudness ghosted" or "texture rolled chords". You can still add them to the list yourself.

Random also chooses the pedaling to suit the music it has drawn. Slow, lyrical, film and classical lists usually get one sustain pedal ingredient: "pedal touch" for classical playing, now and then "pedal wash" for slow, floating music, and "pedal legato" otherwise. About half the slow lists also get "pedal soft". Rhythmic styles, such as swing, stride, boogie and Latin, usually play without pedal.

• Back brings back the list you had before you clicked Random. You can go back up to twenty times.
• If clicking Random would lose a list you've worked on, ComposerFlex asks you first.

Clear list empties the list, except for its last three rows. It asks you first.