Creating a song

A relanote piece is just a graph of relative things played together. A song is the same primitives — blocks, chords, transformations — at a larger scale. There's no new syntax. You just keep composing.

Material first, structure second

Write the smallest reusable phrases first. Don't think about the song shape yet:

rela

scale Major = { R, M2, M3, P4, P5, M6, M7 }

let melody = | <5> <6> <7> <8> <8> <7> <6> <5>  <5> <6> <7> <8> <8>:2 - - |
let bass   = | <1>:2 <5>:2 <4>:2 <1>:2  <1>:2 <5>:2 <1>:4 |

Each of those is a single value. They can be transposed, repeated, reversed, concatenated, layered — anything you'd do with any other relanote expression.

Develop a theme by transforming it

A song that goes somewhere usually does so by transforming the same seed:

rela

scale Major = { R, M2, M3, P4, P5, M6, M7 }

let theme = | <1> <3> <5> <3> |

let answer    = theme |> transpose P5         ; harmonic answer up a fifth
let inversion = theme |> reverse              ; play the contour backwards
let echo      = theme |> repeat 2             ; double it

let development = theme ++ answer ++ inversion ++ echo

Reading the code is reading the structure: you can see at a glance that the second half answers the first, then inverts, then echoes.

Build the arrangement bottom-up

Once you have phrases, the song is the concatenation of the sections that use them:

rela

scale Major = { R, M2, M3, P4, P5, M6, M7 }

let main      = | <1> <2> <3> <4>  <5> <5> <4> <3>  <2> <1> <1>:2 |
let answer    = main |> transpose P5
let recap     = main

let song      = main ++ answer ++ recap

song

Stack the song with a bass line as a layer (covered in the Layers guide), or set up a synth so each part lands on the right instrument.

Render to MIDI

When you're ready:

bash

relanote render song.rela -o song.mid

Drop the MIDI into any DAW for instrument choice, mix and master. The relanote source is the durable copy — the MIDI is one render of it.

A short checklist

Reuse before you write more. A small theme transformed four ways

is denser than four unrelated lines.

Move by intervals, not by pitches. Transpose, don't rewrite.
Let density change the feel. Switching from | a b | to

| a b c d | doubles density without touching timing config.

Concat for structure, layer for texture. ++ builds form across

time; layers build form across instruments.

Continue with Adding synth sounds when you want something other than the default tone.