SPAWN: An AI MIDI Plugin By Sauceware + Lemonaide
- Ezra Sandzer-Bell
- 7 hours ago
- 6 min read
Lemonaide was the first serious AI midi generation company to enter the plugin ecosystem back in 2023. They received a seed round from BeatStars, a popular beat marketplace where producers license instrumental tracks to rap, r&b and pop artists.
The classic Lemonaide plugin creates 4 and 8 bar loops in a variety of styles. Users choose an artist model (trained fairly in partnership with popular beatmakers) and then configure the BPM and key. After hitting generate, they can preview and edit the MIDI with a built in piano roll.
MIDI files can be dragged right from Lemonaide into a DAW, or bounced as a .WAV file using sounds that comes the plugin. That collection of instruments was a bit limited, but it works for the purpose of getting an initial sketch.
Roughly one year later, in October 2024, Lemonaide released SPAWN. This new plugin was developed in partnership with Sauceware, a sound design plugin company specializing in synth textures for rap.
In SPAWN, text prompts are constructed from preset tags that correspond to Sauceware's virtual instruments. MIDI generation is controlled by BPM and Key rather than text (in contrast to a text-to-MIDI cryptogram plugin like AudioCipher).
In this article we'll walk you through the interface and share some ideas about how you can use it in your workflow. Thank you to the Lemonaide team for getting us a free copy of the app and covering our time spent testing it out. All opinions in this article are our own.
Table of Contents
SPAWN: A general overview of the MIDI plugin
I found SPAWN's interface to be intuitive and easy to use. The rich feature set and capabilities of the product never felt overwhelming, even during the early phases when I was just getting started.
That being said, I thought it could be helpful to break down the interface into its sections so you can really see what it's made of and how it works.
After installing the plugin, create a MIDI track in your DAW and you'll load it as a virtual instrument. Find it located under the company "Sauceware x Lemonaide" as shown here:
The AI Text-to-MIDI generation layer
The text prompt area is located at the top-center of SPAWN's interface. It's always visible, whether you're viewing the piano roll, spectrogram, or sound preset list.
Clicking on the text area will cause this dropdown screen to appear. The majority of this view focuses on text presets that guide the sound design of the MIDI generation. As you can see in the annotated screenshot, those presets are grouped into instruments, genre/style, and mood.
It's important to note that the instrument tags are used to guide the virtual instruments rather than the MIDI. Selecting "bass" ensures that you have a dedicated bass synth in the lower register of your final MIDI generation. However, it will not cause the MIDI generator to focus on crafting a bass line.
At the bottom of this screen is Lemonaide's classic Key & Scale parameters. These are turned off by default, so you won't be able to click the root note or scale until you've activated the feature. Once it's turned on, you'll be able to interact and control the key signature as expected. Scales are limited to major and minor.
Hit the "SPAWN!" button to generate your MIDI and you're off to the races!
Lemanaide will generate eight different ideas to explore with each pass. Find the MIDI pattern section, shown in the screenshot above, and use the left/right arrows icons to load each of those options. If none of the compositions are doing it for you, return to the "SPAWN!" button to get eight new clips.
Virtual instrument sound design screens
This is the first screen you'll see after generating MIDI in SPAWN. Hit the play button to audition your loops and you'll see the audio spectrogram displayed in the bottom third of the product.
The colorful strip at the center of the plugin can be used to control the pitch and audio effect layers of your choice. Click on the white dot (surrounded by layers or yellow, orange and red) to drag it around the interface. Vertical movement will cause the entire loop's pitch value to move up and down by semitones.
Horizontal movement across the interface can be used control up to three different audio effects. When the dot is centered, none of the effects are applied. As you drag it left and right, all three of your selected parameters are adjusted accordingly.
Hit the "filter" icon in the upper right corner to view the assigned audio effects. You can update any of them or turn them off as needed. The audio effect list includes filter, distortion, chorus, flanger, delay, and reverb. Some of those fx come with sub-attributes like mix, frequency and drive that you can zero in on.
Use the arrow keys annotated above to toggle through different virtual instruments. Hit the "power" icon next to bass, chords, or melody to mute them as needed. If mousing through the instruments feels a bit random, navigate to the bottom-center of the interface and click the four-square icon, as shown below.
Here on the preset screen, the left column contains your melody, chord and bass layers. Select the instrument layer you're trying to update. Then navigate through categories and preset names until you find the sound that suits your project. If you press play on the plugin, it will loop continuously while you explore patches.
MIDI piano roll editing screen
All of SPAWN's AI generated MIDI patterns can be edited directly in the plugin. Access the built in piano roll by clicking the triple-bar icon in the bottom-center of the interface as shown in the screenshot above.
On this screen, you'll be able to change the pitch value, length, and location of any note. Double click on a note to remove it or double click an empty region to add a new note.
Lemonaide's model will automatically generate four and eight bar loops for all of the clips. Toggle between the two using the toggle buttons highlighted above in green. The piano roll will automatically grow or shrink to accommodate the clip.
Note on MIDI playhead positioning: The built in piano roll does not support clicking to reposition the playhead for MIDI playback at a specific section. Instead, you'll control the playhead location from your DAW audio timeline.
Dragging your AI MIDI track over to the DAW
Find the four-arrow cross in the bottom left corner of SPAWN to drag the MIDI file into your DAW. You'll have the option to bundle or split the instruments, annotated above in red.
When you split the MIDI composition and drag to MIDI, three new software instrument tracks will be automatically generated in your DAW. Those tracks will use whatever default instrument you've got assigned in your workstation.
Click the bundle button instead, to keep the virtual instruments provided by SPAWN. When you drag the MIDI file into your DAW, make sure to drop it on the same track where SPAWN has been assigned.
When you place MIDI on the SPAWN instrument track, you'll notice that the plugin enters a special instrument mode, as shown above. This ensures that your DAW's MIDI track is not fighting with other MIDI patterns and instruments loaded in the plugin. You can turn SPAWN mode back on at any time.
Organizing your SPAWN loops with AudioCipher
As you come up with ideas in SPAWN and refine them in the DAW, there's still a lingering question about how to organize the loops. You might come up with a dozen samples during one session, and prefer to come back later to start cooking up actual beats with them.
We recommend using the AudioCipher MIDI Vault to stay organized. Our plugin bundles and stores audio and MIDI files together in cards, with all of the metadata you need to filter through them in the future.
In the example above, we used SPAWN to create a 120 BPM loop in D major. After bouncing and dragging them into AudioCipher, we added that same metadata to the card. Even the instrument type, mood and genre have been added, with a detailed note near the bottom indicating the plugin and settings used.
Watch a full length producer demo of SPAWN
Want an even deeper look at SPAWN? Check out the thirty minute deep dive video above from YouTuber Arsiney Music to see how he uses the plugin to make music.
Visit the SPAWN webpage to learn more and purchase the plugin. Pick up a copy of the AudioCipher MIDI Vault if you're looking to keep your audio and MIDI loops organized in one place. This article does not contain affiliate links and is intended for informational purposes only.