Music in Ideovex: lyrics, style tags and instrumentals

Music generation splits cleanly into two jobs, and they want completely different inputs. Decide which one you are doing before you type anything.

Job one: an instrumental bed

For anything sitting under a video or a podcast, turn on instrumental and leave the lyrics field empty. Then describe function rather than genre:

warm analogue synth pad, slow pulse, no drums for the first sixteen bars, sits under dialogue, resolves gently

Words like sits under dialogue, no drums and resolves gently are doing real work — they tell the model about arrangement space, which is what makes a bed usable instead of distracting. Naming a genre alone will get you a full mix that fights your voiceover.

Job two: a song with vocals

Write the lyrics yourself and put structure tags on their own lines. The tags are instructions, not lyrics:

[Verse]
Neon on the wet glass, engine idling low
Nobody waiting for me but the radio

[Chorus]
Drive till the morning, drive till it's gone
Headlights and static, the only thing on

Use [Verse], [Chorus], [Bridge], [Outro]. Two verses and two choruses is plenty for a first pass — long lyric sheets get compressed and rushed. Keep lines short enough to sing at the tempo you have in mind; if you cannot say a line out loud in one breath, the model cannot sing it either.

The style field is not the lyrics field

Style carries voice and production, lyrics carry words. Style entries that work well:

• female alto, close-miked, indie folk, fingerpicked acoustic, room reverb
• male baritone, 80s synthwave, gated reverb drums, analogue warmth
• choral, wide stereo, cinematic strings, no percussion

Name the voice, the era or genre, two or three instruments, and the space. Four dimensions is enough; ten will average out into nothing.

Practical notes

• A run costs 10 credits and typically returns two variations of the same brief — audition both before re-running.
• Runs take longer than images. Start one and go do something else; you will get a notification when it lands.
• Every track lands in History with its prompt and style intact, so a near-miss is one small edit away from a keeper.
• Share links work for audio the same way they do for images and video — one link, no account needed at the other end.

Getting the length right

Short lyric sheets produce short songs. If you need ninety seconds, give it two verses and a chorus; if you need fifteen seconds for a sting, go instrumental and ask for short cue, one motif, clean ending. Trying to trim a three-minute generated song down to a sting almost never lands on a musical boundary.