Song Arrangement

The Song Arrangement system organizes your composition into a timeline of sections, each referencing a scene.

ARRANGEMENT VIEW

Open the full editor with F10 or View > Arrangement View. Press Escape to exit. This is where arrangements are built.

• Toolbar - Enable the arrangement, toggle Loop, add sections, generate a
• structure, zoom in/out or fit the whole song in view
• Ruler - Numbered bars across the top
• Timeline - Section blocks showing name, scene, length, repeats and follow
• action; the current section is outlined while playing
• Lanes - Each automation source gets its own labelled lane underneath
• Inspector - Every property of the selected section, on the right

• Click to select; Cmd/Shift-click to add to the selection
• Drag a section body to reorder it
• Drag either edge to resize (dragging a left edge resizes the section before it)
• Double-click to rename in place
• Right-click for rename, duplicate, mute and delete
• Delete removes the selection, Cmd+D duplicates it, Cmd+A selects all
• Left/Right arrows move the selection; Shift+Left/Right changes section length
• Scroll to pan, Cmd/Ctrl+scroll to zoom

ARRANGEMENT MINI-MAP

A read-only strip in the transport bar shows the sections and the playhead while you work on the canvas:

• Click "Arr" to enable/disable the arrangement
• Double-click or right-click the strip (or click "...") to open the full view
• Scroll to pan, Cmd/Ctrl+scroll to zoom

SONG STRUCTURE GENERATOR

Use File > Generate Song Structure to automatically create arrangements:

• Template - Select a structure (Verse-Chorus, ABAB, Build-Drop, etc.)
• Intensity - Controls overall dynamic range (0-1)
• Seed - Random seed for reproducibility

SECTION PROPERTIES

• Name - Display label for the section
• Length - Duration in bars
• Repeats - How many times to play the section before moving on
• Mute - Skip the section during playback without deleting it
• Scene - Which scene to recall (None = no scene change), picked from your
• scene names. Scenes are numbered 1-16 throughout Noemi.
• Crossfade - Transition length in beats, run BEFORE the section starts
• Role - Musical role (Intro, Verse, Chorus...), published to the conductor
• Energy - Target energy for the conductor's energy curve (0-1)
• Seed - Random seed for generators (0 = free)

By default sections play in order. Noemi recalls each section's scene as the section begins.

A crossfade runs during the END of the previous section, not the beginning of this one, so every section starts cleanly and fully transitioned. Give a 16-bar chorus a 2-bar crossfade and the blend occupies the last 2 bars of whatever came before it; bar 1 of the chorus is already the chorus.

FOLLOW ACTIONS

"When finished" decides what plays after a section's repeats are done:

• Continue - Move to the next section (the default)
• Repeat self - Play the section again
• Random other - Jump to any other unmuted section, chosen at random
• Jump to - Jump to a specific section

Chance sets how often the action fires; the rest of the time playback just continues to the next section. Set it below 100% and the same arrangement takes a different path each run.

Turn on Loop to send playback back to the start instead of stopping at the end. Note that a song using loops, repeats, mutes or follow actions has no fixed length, so the total duration readout only appears for a straight linear arrangement.

CONDUCTOR ENERGY

Each section carries an energy value (0-1). When the conductor is active (any Generator has Follow Conductor turned on -- see Generator), the arrangement drives the conductor's shared energy curve from these per-section values. Energy ramps smoothly toward each new section's target over a couple of seconds, so following generators swell and settle in step with the song's structure instead of jumping abruptly.