Orb Composer uses AI to help you make music

If creating your own music from scratch is proving to be just too dang difficult, Hexachords might have a solution in the form of Orb Composer. Said to be the first artificial intelligence software for composers, this is designed to assist you in various parts of the creative process.

It’s worth noting that there is still some human involvement here; it seems that the operator of Orb Composer takes on a ‘musical director’ type role. You can start by choosing a template (orchestral, strings, piano, electro, pop-rock or ambient) and then sketch out your song’s structure. It’s then possible to drag and drop chords and select different combinations of instruments. You can import MIDI data, and it’s possible to use Orb Composer in combination with your DAW and plugins.

The dynamics of your compositions can be changed by drawing Intensity and Momentum curves, and musical parameters can be fine-tuned to taste.  

Orb Composer will be available in two versions - Artist (€349) and Pro (€649) - for PC and Mac. It’ll be released on 2 April, but you can pre-order it now. There’s no demo to download at this stage, but we’re hoping that this will arrive in due course.

Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.