Add Clip — Generated Drum & Melody Patterns

The Add Clip tool generates MIDI drum beats and melodic parts for you, then drops them onto a MIDI track. It’s a fast way to sketch an idea, build a groove, or fill a section — everything it makes lands as a normal MIDI clip you can then edit in the piano roll or drum sequencer.

Open it from ⋯ menu → Add Clip (disabled while recording).

[SCREENSHOT: Add Clip modal — Drums / Melody tabs with a live preview]

There are two tabs — Drums and Melody — plus a live preview you can Re-roll until you like it, and an Insert Clip button to place it.

Shared Controls

Bars — 1, 2, 4, or 8 bars of pattern.
Re-roll Preview — regenerate a fresh pattern from your current settings and audition it.
Insert Clip — drop the previewed pattern onto the track at the playhead.
Step skips (probability) — a 0–100% slider that randomly drops a portion of the hits/notes for sparser, more dynamic parts. Available on both tabs. Higher = sparser.

Many of the choices below are multi-toggle: turn on several options and each bar (or section) randomly draws one of them, so a longer clip stays varied instead of repeating.

Drums Tab

[SCREENSHOT: Drums tab — feel toggles and 16-pad grid]

Feel (multi-toggle) — choose any combination of 4-on-the-floor, Boom-bap, Rock, Trap, Half-time, Breakbeat. Each bar randomly picks one of the styles you enabled (at least one stays on).
Pads — a 16-pad grid; tap to enable which drums the generator uses (defaults to Kick, Snare, and Closed Hat).
Step skips — thin out the beat for space and groove.

Enable Boom-bap + Half-time together, for example, and each bar leans one way or the other — a groove that breathes.

Melody Tab

[SCREENSHOT: Melody tab — pattern, density, and note grid]

Pattern (multi-toggle) — Ascending, Descending, Walk, Wander, Arpeggiated, Pulse. Each section randomly draws one of the enabled shapes.
Density / note lengths (multi-toggle) — pick which note values are allowed: double-whole (2), dotted-whole (1.5), whole (1), ½, ¼, ⅛, 1/16. Enable only ⅛ + ½, for instance, and the part is built from just those two lengths. The new longer and dotted divisions make for slower, more sustained lines.
Notes (in-key grid) — a 12-cell pitch-class grid with in-key notes highlighted. Tap Set to key to snap the palette to your project’s detected key, or hand-pick the notes you want the melody to use.
Octave range — steppers around C4 to widen or narrow the range the melody spans.
Chord overlap — Off / Occasional / Downbeats / Always — how often the generator stacks a chord under a melody note.
Borrow chords — when overlap is on, a small share of chords are pulled from the parallel key for color (disabled when overlap is Off).
Step skips — drop notes for a sparser, more rhythmic line.

After Inserting

The generated clip is a standard MIDI clip. Open it (long-press the clip) to fine-tune notes in the Piano Roll or, for drums, the Drum Step Sequencer. Route the MIDI track to an instrument — Homecrate Drum for beats, Homecrate Synth for melodies — to hear it.

Tips

Generate a few bars, hit Re-roll until one grabs you, then edit from there — it’s faster than starting from a blank grid.
Use Step skips at 20–40% to turn a busy generated beat into something with pocket.
On melodies, restrict note lengths to a couple of values for a more intentional, less random feel.
Set to key first so generated melodies stay in tune with the rest of your song.