How to tune a song and arrange it for orchestra

Orchestra Studio is a music director's workbench in the browser. It goes from a lyric to a tune, and from a tune to a full arrangement, with nothing to install and nothing uploaded.

1. Start with the words

Paste the lyric in Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or English letters and leave a blank line between sections. Each line is split into the syllables a singer actually sings and placed on the taal, with an empty slot waiting for each swara.

If a word splits wrongly, a hyphen splits it and an underscore joins it: kan-nan, pey_yum. Hindi drops vowels it does not say, so दिल counts as one syllable; for Sanskrit, turn that off under Sound.

2. Set the tune

The line works like a line of text, and the caret moves as you write. There are several ways in, and you can mix them:

• Type sargam. Press S R G M P D N. Each note lands on the next syllable, in the octave nearest the last note.
• Play it. Use the keys on screen, or connect a MIDI keyboard, in Chrome or Edge.
• Record it. Press Record, wait for the count-in, and play the line in time.
• Hum it. Press Hum and sing. Each step of time is moved to the nearest swara of the raga.
• Tap the rhythm first. Tap each syllable in time, then fill in the swaras.
• Draw it. Drag on the ink line of the open line, or paste sargam text from the ⋯ menu.

The melody is drawn as an ink line above the lyric, and that same line steers the voice you hear, so a gamaka looks the way it sounds. The guide voice sings the vowels of your lyric. It cannot say consonants, so treat it as a sketch of the singer and not the singer.

3. Fit it to the raga and the singer

Choose a raga and any note outside it turns red. Notes taken the wrong way through a raga are flagged too, such as climbing onto a swara it uses only coming down. Nothing is blocked unless you turn on raga lock, because a good tune may step outside on purpose. With no raga chosen, the Checks panel names the ragas your tune fits so far.

Set each singer's lowest and highest notes, and the Checks panel shows whether the song fits them. Changing the shruti moves the whole song, and the orchestra with it, in one tap. No swara on the sheet changes. If a note is out of range, the Checks panel offers the best shruti. Duets work too: give each line to a singer and set the second singer an octave up or down.

4. Call the orchestra

Press Orchestra and choose a style. Full film orchestra seats fifteen players. There are also lighter ones, such as Strings and flute, Old film song, Light music and Devotional, as well as Pop band, Rock band, Electronic, Chamber, and Carnatic and Hindustani ensembles that play around a drone with no harmony.

Every player has a job: long chords, answering the singer in the gaps, broken chords, bass, or doubling the tune. Change the job, swap the instrument, set the level and the place on the stage, or mute and solo a player, even while it plays. Press the pencil on a player to change its notes by hand, one line at a time. Other parts follow your tune automatically, so a changed swara or shruti reaches the whole orchestra at once.

Chords appear above the swaras. Press one to choose another. Film styles may borrow from the raga's parent scale, as arrangers usually do, so a five-note raga can still have its IV and V chords.

5. Shape the song

Press Make a full song form in the Song map. It adds an intro, interludes and an outro, all grown from the opening rhythm of your pallavi and moved through your raga, then sets a running order that brings the pallavi back. Press Write again on a section for a different version, or change its notes like any other line. The running order can be changed freely, and a section can be played as many times as you like.

6. Take it away

What it will not do

This is for writing, demos and scores. It does not replace players. Recorded instruments have one dynamic level, sampled instruments cannot play a Carnatic gamaka the way a violinist does, and the guide voice has no words. Indian melody instruments, saxophones, guitars and the choir are modelled, not recorded, so they sound less real than the strings and brass. Scores are written in concert pitch, and Khandam and Misram rhythms are rounded to the nearest sixteenth on the staff. MIDI keeps them exact.

Where your song is kept

Songs are saved in your browser on your device, and nothing is uploaded. Download a song from the Songs menu to keep it safe or move it, and use Share to send the whole song in a link.

Credits

Recorded instruments come from VS Chamber Orchestra: Community Edition by Versilian Studios, released under CC0. The upright piano was sampled by Simon Dalzell of Ivy Audio.

Related tools: Song Maker for a quick loop, Staff Notation Editor, Sargam Notation Writer, Raga Finder and Tanpura.