Roland has released Melody Flip, a new plugin for digital audio workstations (DAWs) that marks the company's entry into generative AI music. The tool offers around 250 "Palettes"—themed collections of musical ideas organized by genre ranging from standard options like "80s disco" and "90s R&B" to more esoteric choices like "Kawaii Future Bass" and "Anime World."
Unlike competitors such as Suno or Udio that generate fully polished songs with vocals, Melody Flip produces simple musical loops meant to serve as a creative spark. Users can start from scratch and generate melody, chord progression, bassline, or drums, or feed it a reference track to build upon. Control is limited—there's no text prompt feature; users simply choose genre, note density, BPM, and musical key.
The presets are mostly general MIDI tones, and Roland intends for users to export the MIDI data directly into their DAW to manipulate and pair with more powerful synth plugins. The article notes that despite recent successful hardware releases like the P-6 Creative Sampler, SH-4d, and Gaia 2 synth, Melody Flip is unlikely to earn much goodwill from the music community given the general negative response to generative AI in music.