AIVA is a popular AI-powered music production tool allowing users to customize the song that they are generating. Now, we will deep dive into its features to create our first song for free without any musical knowledge. Let’s say you are about to post a nice collage that includes photos from your latest vacation but you noticed something is missing, a nice, chill song that fits the mood. To be able to create your own song within minutes, first, you need to log in to AIVA and the website will direct you to its dashboard. A nice-looking and easy-to-understand interface welcomes you. You can also download the app by clicking the “Download App” button from the left panel.
Creating a song with AIVA
Step 1: Choose your composition method
As we mentioned before, there are multiple ways of composing a song in AIVA. One of them is the “Influences” option. It allows users to upload songs or MIDI files to influence AIVA’s composition process. Thus the song will be similar to provided ones.
The second option is “Compositions” which allows you to choose from hundreds of presets. You can search for any genre or emotion, such as “traditional folk” or “chiptune”. These profiles are both provided by AIVA and other users.
If it is still too confusing for you, by clicking “Preset styles” you can simplify the list. It includes two categories, “Emotion View” and “Advanced View”. From here, you can decide which song suits your vacation collage best. If it was full of new experiences and adventures, you can select “Epic Orchestral” or “Heavy Rock” maybe, or if it was a calm and romantic vacation, probably “Meditation” or “Alternative” can be better options for you.
Finally, the last option is for users who want more control over the song. By clicking “Generation profiles” you can create your own generation profile, which can be considered as the guidelines for music creation. Once you clicked the green “Create” button and selected a generation profile, AIVA will ask you to choose a mood to use as a template.
Step 2: Creating a generation profile
In the next menu, you can find everything you need before creating your own masterpiece. AIVA’s free plan allows downloading only 3 songs, but you can experiment as much as you want to find your perfect song. In this menu, you can change dynamic range, tempo, auto-mixing, time signature, a dataset for harmony, key signature, and instruments. Let’s say we want our song’s tempo to be 60 and 7th Chords I for our harmonic dataset. And our key signature is D Major. If you have already downloaded the app, you can listen to the preview of the harmony which will give you a general idea about your song.
As you can see, AIVA already added Pop Piano for our chords and bass partitions of the song. But you can change them or add new layers or instruments. Let’s say we want to hear some brass instead of piano. By clicking “Edit instruments” and then clicking the “x” button, you can easily remove the piano.
Now it is time to add some brass to the song. By clicking the “+Add instruments” button, and then you can find a full list of instruments. AIVA also helps users with recommendations. Now, let’s say we want to add some bass trombones for our song’s bass layer. When you click the final option for the instrument, it is added automatically.
We can also add new layers. By clicking on “Add new layer”, AIVA shows us all the options that can be added to the song.
I preferred the “Melody” option for the song and it appeared on the dashboard. Once again I add an instrument, the clarinet. AIVA also allows users to select the articulation for the instrument. For example, legato indicates that notes will be played smoothly and connected and staccato signifies a note of shortened duration or detached. You can also upload an influence for any layer of your song.
Step 3: Create your songs
Once you are satisfied with your generation profile, you can click on the green “Create” button to start creating your song. Once you clicked the button, AIVA asks for some final adjustments. From this menu, you can select your song’s key signature and duration. It also asks for a number of compositions, allowing you to choose from multiple songs that are created simultaneously. We can start creating our songs by clicking the “Create tracks” button.
Your songs are ready. Within minutes, AIVA creates the songs according to your generation profile and you can listen and change anything you want. At this point, you can download the songs, use them as influences to create new songs, edit them, or create new songs with the generation profile you have already created.
Step 4: Edit your songs
Let’s say we liked New Composition #13 but we want to edit it further. We can open the song in AIVA’s editor by clicking the three dots at the end of the line.
AIVA’s editor includes all the basic features enabling users to add or mute layers, change volumes of different layers, change notes and instruments, and many more. The editor can look complicated, especially for users who have no prior experience in sound editing software. But hopefully, it comes with a tutorial to help users.
By clicking on each layer, you can make multiple changes, including instruments. Once you have clicked “Save changes” the AIVA will mix and normalize the song once again with the changes you made.
Step 5: Download your song
Once you are satisfied with the result, you can return to the home page of the dashboard to download your song. By clicking on three dots at the end of the line and selecting the “Download” option.
Finally, AIVA will ask you which format would you like to download the file as. WAV and Stem files are only available in paid subscriptions. If you want to use the song in a social media post, MP3 might be the best option here. Once you selected the file type, it will start downloading.
