Four requests, one real session: what monody's assistant changed and how long it took

The short answer. Four plain-language requests on monody's demo project: a bassline (6.1 s), a darker bass (3.6 s), a chord progression (8.3 s) and a melody (7.4 s). Each request landed as real notes, devices and settings, was listed in the app, and was one undo step. Nothing was rendered to audio, and every note and knob can be edited by hand afterwards.

"AI assistant" can mean anything from a chatbot to a song generator. The fairest way to show what monody's assistant does is to show one real session. Everything below comes from a session recorded on 30 September 2026: the prompts as typed, the assistant's replies word for word, and the changes and times the app reported.

The setup

The session ran on monody's demo project (monody demo): 124 BPM, A minor, a Drums bus with a Kick and Hats, and a Lead. The times are the app's own numbers, from pressing Enter to a finished edit. They depend on your connection and on the model's load, so read them as one real run, not a benchmark.

Two things matter for reading the requests:

• Focus. The assistant knows what's selected. "Locks with the kick" was asked with the Drums bus selected, and "in this clip" was asked with the chord clip open.
• Undo. Every request was one transaction. After each one, Before/After could flip the whole request on and off, and ⌘Z could take it back.

1. "Add a rubbery bassline that locks with the kick"

• Selected: the Drums bus
• Time: 6.1 s
• Changed: 1 new track, 1 clip, 32 notes, 4 devices, routing

The reply:

"Added a Rubber Bass track with a 32-beat A-minor line. It plays on the off-beats between the kick hits, so the kick keeps the downbeats and the bass fills the gaps. It has octave pops and a small turnaround in each four-bar phrase."

What it actually wrote:

• A new MIDI track, Rubber Bass, with a sound chain of four devices: the synth (set to the Rubber Bass sound), Drive, Utility (bass kept mono below 130 Hz) and a Limiter with a −1.0 dB ceiling.
• 32 notes over 8 bars, every one starting on the "and" of a beat, so none of them land on the kick. Short notes (0.3 to 0.4 beats), velocities between 90 and 105.
• Roots that move A, C, A, G over four bars, with an octave jump on the third note of each bar.

2. "Make the bass darker"

• Selected: Rubber Bass
• Time: 3.6 s
• Changed: 3 settings

The reply:

"Made the bass darker. I lowered the filter cutoff, reduced how far the filter envelope opens on each note, and rolled off the highs after the drive."

The three settings, as they read on the devices:

This is the kind of request the assistant is best at: you describe a sound in a word, and it turns the word into specific settings you can see, keep or nudge further.

3. "Write a warm 4-bar chord progression"

• Selected: Rubber Bass
• Time: 8.3 s
• Changed: 1 new track, 2 clips, 32 notes, 5 devices, routing

The reply:

"Added a Warm Pad track with a four-bar progression: Am7, Cmaj7, Am7, G. The chords follow the bass roots and stay in A minor. I repeated the four bars to fill the 32-beat arrangement."

What it wrote: a new track with the Warm Pad sound and its five-device chain, and a 4-bar clip of four-note chords (Am7, Cmaj7 with G in the bass, Am7, G), each held for almost a full bar, repeated as a second clip to cover all 8 bars. The roots line up with the bassline's A, C, A, G.

4. "Add a simple melody on top of these chords, in this clip"

• Selected: the open chord clip
• Time: 7.4 s
• Changed: 15 notes

The reply:

"Added a simple 4-bar melody to the top of that clip, in A minor pentatonic above the chords. It starts on E, dips to C, moves up to G in bar 2, and returns to A. It ends on a held G over the final chord. It plays on the same pad sound as the chords, so you may want it on its own track with a brighter preset."

The 15 notes sit between A4 and G5. One honest detail: a B at the start of bar 4 isn't in A minor pentatonic, as the reply says. It is the third of the G chord under it, so it sits fine. The reply also points out its own limitation: the melody is on the pad sound because the request said "in this clip".

In the recording, the app's changelist for this request also counted device changes made by sound rolls we triggered between requests. They weren't part of this request, so they're left out here.

What the four requests add up to

• 25.4 seconds of waiting in total, for a new bass track with its sound, a darker version of it, a pad track with a progression, and a top line.
• Four undo steps. Any one of them could have been flipped off with Before/After or taken back with ⌘Z.
• No audio rendered. All 79 notes and every setting are in the session, editable like anything you'd played in yourself.

What it's good at, and what to keep doing yourself

Where it earns its place:

• Sound in words. "Darker", "warmer", "more rubbery" become specific settings on specific devices, and you can see each one.
• Setup chores. A new track with its instrument, effect chain and routing in one step. The same goes for buses, routing and a tempo-synced delay. The Library's built-in recipes include "Sidechain-style pump", "Dub delay throw", "Club-ready low end", "Drum bus glue" and "Balance the mix".
• Typing in parts. 32 off-beat bass notes is a minute of clicking. Asking for it lets you hear the idea first and decide whether it's worth keeping.
• Trying things you'd skip. Because every request flips with Before/After, a "what if" is cheap to try and cheap to drop.

What to keep doing yourself:

• Deciding what the song is. The melody here is a placeholder, and the reply says as much. Hooks, toplines and the parts people remember are your job.
• Deciding what sounds right. The assistant works from your project's notes and settings, and with the Finish view from measurements of the render. Whether it's better is still a call for your ears.

Related

• What is an AI DAW?: generators, audio-to-notes editors and assistants that edit your session
• Suno Studio vs monody: making a song from a prompt versus finishing your own
• Claude for music production: driving monody from Claude Code over MCP

Checked on 1 October 2026. Suno is a trademark of Suno, Inc.; Claude is a trademark of Anthropic, PBC. monody is not affiliated with or endorsed by either.