Song composition

Composition guidance for songs written as song2 .abc scores and generated with the song2 model.

This repository is the one home of that guidance. It covers:

• song form, sections and phrase lengths;
• bar counts;
• key, tempo and time signature;
• melody range, contour and rhythm against lyric syllables;
• chords, chord rhythm and progressions;
• how lyric lines sit over phrases;
• the style description for the generation request;
• choosing what to change before a regeneration.

It does not teach the song2 text format and it does not edit scores. The format authority is @neta-art/score-dialect-song2: read its WRITING.md before writing a score and its RULES.md when a rule is unclear. Editing, drafts and handoff belong to @neta-art/score-editor.

Install and use

By npm:

npm install @neta-art/song-composition

The skill is then at:

node_modules/@neta-art/song-composition/skills/song-composition/SKILL.md

By repository path:

git clone https://github.com/netaart/song-composition.git

Point the agent at song-composition/skills/song-composition/SKILL.md.

The skill is plain Markdown. Agent Skills hosts load the SKILL.md and its references/ pages; other tools can read the same files directly.

Use it with the score packages

The skill writes guidance, not code. To read, check or edit a score, install the dialect and editor packages at the same version:

npm install @neta-art/score-dialect-song2 @neta-art/score-editor

Then follow the dialect's WRITING.md for the text and this skill for the musical choices.

What is here

skills/song-composition/
  SKILL.md                    the short route
  references/
    song-form.md              form, sections, bar counts, phrases
    melody-and-lyrics.md      range, contour, rhythm, syllable fit
    harmony.md                chords, chord rhythm, progressions
    keys-tempo-meter.md       key, tempo, time signature
    style-description.md      the generation brief
    revising.md               what to change before regenerating
  assets/
    verse-eight-bars.abc
    chorus-eight-bars.abc
    ballad-eight-bars-3-4.abc
scripts/
  check-examples.mjs
  check-links.mjs

Check the examples

npm install
npm run check

The check reads every .abc under skills/**/assets/ with the dialect's parse and check, and exits non-zero on any diagnostic. It installs nothing itself; the two packages are devDependencies.

To check that every relative link under skills/ resolves to a file:

npm run check:links

License

MIT. See LICENSE.