Styles and feel
A band style is a recipe for four players: a drummer, a bassist, and a guitarist or keyboard player comping. Six more styles are players of their own, to put under a melody (Players beyond the band). Every Smart part plays one of the 31, and its settings say how hard, how busy and how loose. This page is the detail behind the settings in Smart Tracks.
Styles, feel and variations
Available on every platform.
The styles
The drums play a groove from the same library as the drum track’s Insert Pattern menu (Drum patterns), a different one as the intensity rises. A guitar or keys track added with Add Smart Track comes with the sound in the last two columns.
| Style | Drums, soft to full | Guitar | Keys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rock | Half-Time → Rock → Rock, Sixteenths | distorted, power chords | piano |
| Pop | Half-Time → Rock → Four on the Floor | clean | piano |
| Jazz Swing | Jazz Ride | jazz guitar | electric piano |
| Bossa Nova | Bossa Nova | nylon | piano |
| Funk | Boom Bap → Funk | clean, muted chucks | electric piano |
| Blues Shuffle | Shuffle → Half-Time Shuffle | overdriven | piano |
| Reggae | Reggae One Drop | clean, offbeat chops | organ |
| Country | Rock → Rock, Sixteenths | steel | piano |
| Ballad | Half-Time → Rock | steel, arpeggios | piano |
| Metal | Half-Time → Rock, Sixteenths → Metal, Double Kick → Blast Beat | distorted, power chords | pad |
| House | Four on the Floor | clean | electric piano |
| Hip Hop | Boom Bap → Trap | clean | electric piano |
| Disco | Four on the Floor → Disco | clean | electric piano |
| Punk | Rock → Punk | distorted, power chords | piano |
| Soul | Half-Time → Motown | clean | electric piano |
| Samba | Bossa Nova → Samba | nylon | piano |
| Reggaeton | Dembow | nylon, arpeggios | piano |
| Trap | Trap → Trap, Rolls | clean, arpeggios | pad |
| Drum and Bass | Half-Time → Drum and Bass → Drum and Bass, Busy | clean, arpeggios | pad |
| Folk | Half-Time → Train Beat → Rock | steel | piano |
| Waltz (3/4) | Waltz → Waltz, Ride | steel | accordion |
| Jazz Waltz (3/4) | Jazz Waltz | jazz guitar | electric piano |
| 6/8 Ballad | Six Eight | steel, arpeggios | piano |
| Phonk | Memphis → Phonk → Phonk, Rolls | clean, arpeggios | the 808 Cowbell |
| Funk Carioca | Funk Carioca, Sparse → Tamborzão → Tamborzão, Busy | clean, arpeggios | the 808 Cowbell |
A few things set styles apart beyond their grooves:
- Jazz Swing and Jazz Waltz walk the bass from intensity 3, with chromatic approaches into each chord, and comp in short chords.
- In Pop, Funk and Hip Hop, the bass locks to the kick from intensity 3.
- Bossa Nova, Reggae and House have no fills, so Fills changes nothing there.
- Phonk and Funk Carioca play an 808: Add Smart Track gives their drums the 808 machine, their bass an 808 (a Synth track playing the 808 Phonk preset) and their keys the 808 Cowbell. Their keys play the hook, the chord’s notes picked out an octave up in a syncopated riff, and their bass glides into a new note now and then (from complexity 2, more as it rises). Funk Carioca’s bass locks to the tamborzão’s kick from intensity 3.
- A Smart bass plays on a bass, or on a keys track with a synth bass’s sound: there it plays a bass line from C1, not chords.
Players beyond the band
These play on any track but a kit, from the song’s chords, with two settings of their own: Register (where in the instrument’s range: Low, Mid, High, or Auto, the player’s usual place) and Density (how busy: Auto follows the intensity, so verses come out sparser than choruses; or 1 to 5). Intensity sets how hard they play, Complexity how much they vary.
| Style | Plays | Density, sparse to busy | Complexity adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fingerpicking | arpeggios: the thumb on the chord’s bass and its fifth, the fingers on the three top notes, fretted as a hand would (on keys, a harp or piano’s spread) | a chord held, quarter notes, eighths, sixteenths in places, running sixteenths | from 3: the fingers’ order changing bar by bar, a walk into the next chord; from 4, on a guitar: hammer-ons |
| Travis Picking | the thumb alternating on the beats, the fingers between | as above | as above |
| String Section | voice-led chords: a cello and bass line on the roots, three voices above, no parallel fifths or octaves with the bass | a chord held while it lasts (swelling), a bow a bar, half notes, pulsing eighths, sixteenths | from 2: swells; from 3: open voicings, the seventh, a swell into each section; from 4: suspensions; at 5: the top doubled an octave up |
| Chant | a choir on the chord: open fifths (organum) at 1, with the octave at 2, three voices from 3, four from 4 | held with a breath, sung each bar, then a reciting top voice moving every two beats, every beat, in eighths | the voicing, as said; Drone adds the key’s note under it |
| Ambient | slow, open pads (the root and fifth, a tenth, a ninth and the chord’s colour as complexity rises), long swells; on a bell, celesta, music box or glockenspiel, sparse motifs from the chord | held long, then a moving shimmer over the pad (half notes to eighths); bells from one note every two bars to eighths | colours, swells, passing notes in the bells |
| Drone | the key’s note (its fifth from 2, its octave from 3) held under everything, struck again at each section | held, struck each bar, then pulsing in quarters, eighths, and eighths in 3-3-2 | the fifth leaves out a chord a semitone away from it |
A string section can be one Strings track or a track per instrument: on a violin, viola, cello or double bass track (a second violins’ track has “2” or “II” in its name), each plays its own voice of the same voicing, so together they sound as one section. Swells are heard on sounds that follow a note’s level (sampled instruments, the Synth); the General MIDI sounds play each note at the level it starts at. Fills don’t apply to the players.
Other time signatures
Waltz and Jazz Waltz are written in 3/4 and 6/8 Ballad in 6/8; the rest in 4/4. Any style plays in any time signature: in a shorter bar, its rhythm stops at the bar’s end; in a longer one, it starts again for the beats left over.
Intensity
How hard and how full a part plays, from 1 (soft and sparse) to 5 (loud and full): the drums change groove as in the table, the bass and the comping play more notes, and everyone plays louder. Auto reads each section’s marker name, as Smart Tracks explains.
Complexity
How much the players vary, from 1 to 5; a new part plays at 3. At 1 and 2 they play the style as it’s written, with none of the following. Higher, they add:
- From 3: in Phonk, the hats roll in 32nds into the bar’s end every other bar (every bar from 4; beat two’s end too at 5, where the drops’ groove pushes extra kicks instead); a bass run into each new section, stepping through the key to its first chord; in a lock-to-the-kick style, a fifth or an octave now and then; in Rock, Pop, Punk, Soul, Folk, Country and Ballad, the drummer moves to the ride in big sections (intensity 4 and 5).
- From 4: ghost notes on the snare (more at 5); in Funk Carioca, the congas answering in the gaps (more at 5); now and then a kick on the last eighth of a bar; busier walking lines; and in Rock, Pop, Funk, Country, Folk, Soul, Ballad, Punk and Disco, the comping plays a chord change an eighth early, ringing over the barline.
Fills
On drums: None, Sections, Every 8 or Every 4 (Smart Tracks). Each style has one to three fills of its own, and the take decides which plays where.
Feel
Where the notes sit against the beat. The notes are drawn on the grid either way; only what you hear moves.
- Straight: exactly on the grid, as drawn. A new part starts here.
- Natural: the style’s own pocket, a few milliseconds of give (shared by the notes of a chord or a hit, a little more for each note), and levels that swell gently over two bars. Hip Hop, Soul and Trap lay the backbeat and the comping back, Phonk the clap and snare further still; Funk Carioca sits on the grid like a machine; Reggae, Reggaeton, Ballad, 6/8 Ballad and Blues Shuffle sit behind too; in the jazz styles the ride and the walking bass sit on top of the beat with the comping behind; Punk, Metal and Drum and Bass push ahead. The other styles sit just behind.
- Loose: the same, with more give.
The feel is the same every time the song plays. The track’s own Swing, Groove and Humanize settings, where its sound has them, apply on top (Drums and kits).
Another Take
Another Take plays the same recipe with a different seed: other fills, other walking lines, ghost notes and extra kicks in other places, and a different give in the feel. Choose it again for another; undo goes back to the take before.