Computer music generators come in various shapes. Some will let you make mind-blowing creations with artificial intelligence, like the brilliant Computoser that we’ve written about previously. With others, you’ll be the musician, working like a maestro who changes each element to play a tune that sounds good to you. Each one needs different skills, so pick the one that’s most apt for you.

1. Musenet (Web): Mix Classics and Musical Legends to Create Your Own Song

What would it sound like if The Beatles were to play the Harry Potter movie theme? Or how about Lady Gaga delivering Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5? Well, you can find out at Musenet; and not just that, but you can control how they play.

Musenet is a project by OpenAI where a deep neural network generates a song based on how you set it. The AI’s database includes artist styles like The Beatles, Lady Gaga, Frank Sinatra, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Video Games, Frank Sinatra, and many more. Use the Advanced Settings rather than the simple settings if you really want to have fun.

First, you choose the style or the artist. Then you choose the intro, followed by which instruments to include from the piano, strings, winds, drums, harp, guitar, and bass. Finally, choose the “tokens” meter to dictate how close to the artist it’ll sound.

Once you generate a part of the track, you get four options. Listen to all four, pick the one you like, and then generate the next part of the song. Keep doing this till a four-minute time limit to produce your own song with musical legends. It’s so much fun, you’ll spend hours trying permutations and combinations. And once you’re done, you can download it as a music file to use in your projects. It’s brilliant!

2. Melobytes (Web): Turn Lyrics Into an AI-Generated Song

Most online music generators only deal with instrumental sounds. But not good old Melobytes here. This ambitious AI app is ready to sing along as well, as it analyzes lyrics and turns them into unique, procedurally-generated melodies.

In the basic version of Melobytes, you can set the language of the lyrics for it to analyze, tonality, tempo, time signature, and a type of singer (male, female, robot, duo). Add your lyrics in the dialog box and generate an original song with your words! Or hey, use a popular song and generate a robotic cover.

It’s really up to you. If you don’t like the first version the app makes, feel free to click that Generate button again and again till you like what you hear. Melobytes songs can be downloaded as a MIDI file and saved to reuse as you see fit.

And if you like this, check out Melobytes Pro. The advanced version of the app is also free but lets you customize almost every aspect of the song, including the time length, instruments, musical styles, types of vocals, and audio settings like reverb, echo, and distortion.

If you’re still feeling experimental, Melobytes will also generate a video to go with your song. So there you have it, go from just lyrics to a full-fledged music video using AI with Melobytes.

3. BeepBox (Web): Create and Download a Free Musical Track

BeepBox is a fantastic little tool to create your own free musical track which could serve as the background score for a video game or a YouTube video. You don’t need to know music, just play with the controls and be creative.

The app offers you four channels of instruments, which include a wide variety of guitars, trumpets, drums, vocals, and other strings, brass, and percussion. Set an instrument in a channel, and then click on different points of the virtual scale to produce a sound from it. A click keeps the sound alive, another click switches it off. Press play to hear the whole sound.

You can change the tempo, reverb, and rhythm at any time. BeepBox also lets you tweak how and when each channel plays through a simple interface based on numbers. Play around with it to get a sound that you like, and then download it as a WAV file for free and use it as royalty-free music for YouTube videos or video games.

And all of this is just the basic interface of BeepBox. Once you’ve fiddled with this and mastered it, jump into the deeper settings where you can see all channels in one view, add piano scales, save and use presets, and so much more. BeepBox can be really powerful if you want it to be, or basic for any novice who wants to create a quick track.

4. Typatone (Web, Android, iOS): Turn Each Letter on a Keyboard Into a Musical Tone

What does your name sound like if it’s turned into music? Typatone has a melodious answer as it turns your keyboard into a musical instrument. The idea is to map text to tunes so that you can make songs by typing.

Here’s how it works. Typatone used a study on how often some letters are used from the English alphabet and mapped it to the most melodious notes on a standard piano. Type any letters or words into the app, and it’ll make a sound. You can even copy-paste big chunks of text. The cool part is how Typatone uses its AI to not just map the sounds but turn the sequence of letters into a harmonious tune.

You could turn anyone’s name into a custom little tune as a notification alert or ringtone. Take someone’s favorite book and turn it into a song for them. Or you could use Typatone to compose music as you walk around. The mobile-friendly website makes it easy to have a musical instrument always with you, so when a tune pops into your head, just type to make it happen.

5. Beepster (Web): Simplest Music Generator With Four Tracks

Beepster is a funky little music generator with a few neat twists. You don’t need any musical expertise to play it, just fiddle with the settings and see what you like.

First, choose from the scales: major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, blues major, blues minor, and suspended. You’ll see four rows, each of which is a track/voice. Clicking the track image will change what plays.

You can adjust the speed, volume, and pitch for each track. And you can turn a track on or off. If you want a random selection of all settings, click the circular arrow. Beepster also randomly changes the notes each track plays, giving you a little variety in your tunes.

There is no way to download the track, but you can share it as a link with others.

6. ToneMatrix (Web): Simple Tone Sequencer to Create Your Own Music

ToneMatrix is the simplest of these musical generators, but somehow, that makes it more appealing. You aren’t fiddling around with a lot of settings here, all you have to do is click on blocks in the matrix.

Each block generates a tone. ToneMatrix will play the active blocks sequentially, starting from left to right. There are 16 columns, and if you select multiple blocks in a column, it’ll play with more impact.

It’s actually very cool to play around with, and you can even create a simple, soothing Lo-Fi musical track to play in the background while you study or focus. Unfortunately, you can’t download the tracks on ToneMatrix, but you can share your creations online.

All of the above music generators are free to use and download. But there is also a new crop of AI music generators that you should check out. These apps are excellent for creating your own music by telling a robot what you want. In fact, they’re much easier than the music generators above and offer a great variety of sounds. But there’s a catch about royalty and copyrights.

Most of these AI music generators like Boomy, Evoke, or AIVA require a paid subscription if you want to download and use the tracks in your creations for monetization. There are a few that offer a free variant, but it’s too restrictive to recommend wholeheartedly. But yes, if you’re willing to pay some money, AI music generators are what you should go for.