Project Genesis
How to use it — the simple version.
Read the numbered sections in order and you will make a song. Every section starts with the short answer. If you want more, click the grey bars that say “Tell me more” — but you don't have to. You can ignore all of them and the app will still work.
Install it. Add an instrument. Draw some notes. Everything else on this page is optional extra.
What is this?
A program for making music on your computer.
You write notes on a grid, the computer plays them, and you can save the result as an audio file. An AI assistant can write music for you, change how instruments sound, and answer questions — but you can also do everything yourself by hand. Both work at the same time on the same song.
Project Genesis does not make any sound on its own. It is like a record player with no record. You must give it an instrument first. That's what step 1 and 2 are about. If you hear nothing, this is almost always why.
1Set it up
You do this once, ever.
-
Double-click
MainInstall.bat
A black window opens and text scrolls past. This is normal. It is downloading the parts the app needs. It takes a few minutes. -
At the end it asks about an “offline AI model”
Type n and press Enter for now. You can always add it later. (What it is, if you're curious.) -
Double-click
Start.bat
The app opens. Leave the little black window alone — closing it closes the app.
Go to python.org/downloads, install
it, and tick the box that says “Add python.exe to PATH” during setup.
That tick box is easy to miss and nothing works without it. Then run
MainInstall.bat again.
2Make a sound
Pick one of these two. The second one needs no download.
Option A — a synth (recommended)
Get Vital. It's free. Install it, then restart Project Genesis.
In the Tracks panel click + Add Track (VST3) and pick it from the list.
You now have a keyboard instrument that can play any note.
Option B — your own audio files
Got any .wav or .mp3 files? A drum hit, a voice
note, anything.
Click + Add Sampler Track, then menu Track → Load sample into selected track.
The file now plays when you press keys. Nothing to download.
Look at the Tracks panel. If the track name is in red and says “no plugin loaded”, it did not work. If it shows an instrument name in grey, you're good.
Tell me more — what is a “VST3”?
A VST3 is an instrument or effect made by someone else that plugs into music software. Think of it like an app for your DAW. A synth VST makes synthesiser sounds, a piano VST makes piano sounds.
Project Genesis can use any VST3 you have installed. It looks in the normal Windows folders automatically, so if you install one it just appears in the list.
3The screen
Here's what each panel is for.
The big grid. This is where your notes live. Higher up = higher pitch. Further right = later in time. You will spend most of your time here.
One slider per instrument, plus a master slider for everything at once. Also M to silence a track and S to hear only that track.
A list of your instruments. Add new ones here. Rename with ✎, delete with ✕.
Type what you want in plain English. It can write music, design sounds, mix, or teach you.
Underneath the Piano Roll is the Playlist - the map of your whole song. Ignore it until you've written something you like, then read section 7. It is the thing that turns a loop into a track.
There's one more panel, Drum Machine, which stays hidden until you add a drum kit. See section 6.
Press Ctrl+0. Everything snaps back to where it started. You cannot permanently break the layout.
Tell me more — moving the panels around
To move one: drag it by its title bar. A blue shape shows where it will land before you let go.
To make it fill half the screen: drag it to the left or right edge. Drag to a corner for a quarter.
To make it big: double-click its title bar. Double-click again to put it back.
To put it on a second monitor: click the ⏏ button on its title bar. It becomes its own window you can drag anywhere. Click ▼ to bring it back.
To resize: drag the bottom-right corner.
4Write some notes
Click on the grid. That's it.
| To do this | Do that |
|---|---|
| Add a note | Click an empty square in the grid |
| Move a note | Drag it |
| Make a note longer | Drag its right edge |
| Delete a note | Right-click it |
| Hear a single note | Click a piano key on the left edge |
| Undo a mistake | Ctrl+Z |
At the top of the Piano Roll there's a box marked Target. That decides which instrument your new notes play through. If your notes are coming out of the wrong instrument, this is why.
Playing with your computer keyboard
Click the ⚙ button at the top of the Piano Roll and turn on PC keyboard as MIDI. Now your keyboard is a piano:
| Keys | What they do |
|---|---|
| A W S E D F T G Y H U J K | The white and black keys of a piano, one octave |
| Z | Go one octave lower |
| X | Go one octave higher |
While it is on, those keys play notes even when another program is in front. That is on purpose, so you can play while a synth window is open. But it means typing elsewhere will make noise. Turn it off in the same ⚙ menu when you're done.
5Play it and record it
Space starts and stops. That's the main one.
| Button | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| ▶ Play / ❚❚ Pause | Space | Start or stop playing |
| ■ Stop | — | Stop and jump back to the beginning |
| ● Record | Ctrl+R | Record what you play. Press again to stop |
| ♩ Click | Ctrl+M | A ticking sound to play in time with |
| ↻ Loop | — | Repeat a section over and over |
Recording what you play
- Choose the instrument in the Target box.
- Turn on the click with Ctrl+M so you can play in time.
- Press Ctrl+R and play. Use your computer keyboard, a MIDI keyboard, or click the on-screen piano keys — it records all of them.
- Press Ctrl+R again to stop. Your notes appear in the grid, where you can fix any mistakes by dragging them.
Before recording, go to Input → Recording quantise and pick 1/8 note. That snaps everything you play onto the beat automatically. Set it back to Off if you prefer your own natural timing.
Tell me more — using a real MIDI keyboard
Plug it in, then go to Input → MIDI device and click its name.
If you plugged it in after starting the app, click Refresh device list first.
It plays whichever instrument is chosen in the Target box, and it records exactly like the computer keyboard does.
Tell me more — recording a microphone
Choose your mic under Input → Audio input device, then press Ctrl+Shift+R to start and again to stop.
The bar at the bottom shows how long you've been recording and how loud it is.
When you stop, it trims the silence off both ends and asks where to save the file. If you have a Sampler track selected it offers to load the recording straight onto it, so you can play your own voice from the keyboard.
If it says the recording is nearly silent, you almost certainly picked the wrong input device rather than having a broken microphone.
6Drums and samples
A grid where you click squares to build a beat.
- Click + Add Drum Kit in the Tracks panel. The Drum Machine panel appears.
- Right-click a pad name (like “Kick”) and choose a sound file. Repeat for the sounds you want.
- Click squares to build a pattern. The numbers 1 2 3 4 above the grid are the beats of the bar.
- Press Space to hear it.
On the Kick row, click the squares under 1, 2, 3 and 4. On the Snare row, click the squares under 2 and 4. That's the beat in thousands of songs.
Left-click a pad name to hear it. Right-click it to change it. Easy way to remember: left = listen, right = replace.
Tell me more — the drum grid and the piano roll are the same thing
When you click squares in the drum grid, those become ordinary notes on the piano roll. They are not two separate systems — it's one set of notes with two different ways to look at it.
So you can build a beat in the grid and then go to the piano roll to nudge one hit slightly late, or make one quieter. Whichever is easier for the job.
7Make a whole song
This is how four bars becomes three minutes.
So far you've written a loop. A loop is not a song. A song is a loop, then a different loop, then the first one again, and so on. The Playlist panel is where you decide that order.
The Piano Roll edits one small piece of music at a time. That piece is called a pattern. The Playlist decides where each pattern goes in the song.
Think of patterns as LEGO bricks and the Playlist as the instructions.
Try it right now - four steps
| Step | What to do | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Write anything in the Piano Roll | That's Pattern 1 |
| 2 | Click an empty row in the Playlist | A coloured block appears - your pattern, placed in the song |
| 3 | Click further to the right to place it again | Now it plays twice |
| 4 | Press the Song button, then Space | You hear the timeline instead of just the loop |
Adding a second part
Press the + button at the top of the Playlist. The Piano Roll goes blank.
The blank grid means you're now looking at Pattern 2, a different piece of music. Pattern 1 is safe. Use the Pattern dropdown at the top of the Playlist to go back to it any time. The Piano Roll always shows whichever pattern is picked there.
Write your chorus in Pattern 2, then click in the Playlist after the verse blocks to place it. Verse, verse, chorus - that's a song.
Everything you can do to a block
| To do this | Do that |
|---|---|
| Place the current pattern | Click an empty spot |
| Move a block | Drag it (it snaps to the bar, so it stays in time) |
| Repeat a block | Drag its right edge to the right |
| Edit what's inside it | Double-click it |
| Mute, duplicate or delete it | Right-click it |
| Move the playhead | Click the numbered strip along the top |
| Zoom in and out | Hold Ctrl and scroll |
| New / duplicate / rename / delete a pattern | The + and ... buttons |
Off (the default): you hear only the pattern you're editing, looping. This is what you want while writing.
On: you hear the whole arrangement from the Playlist.
If you turn it on and hear nothing, you probably haven't placed any blocks yet. Genesis will say so in the message area.
Change a pattern once and it changes everywhere. Place your drum pattern eight times, then add a hi-hat to it - all eight get the hi-hat. You never have to fix the same thing twice.
And a block is "this pattern, N times" rather than a fixed length, so if you add a bar to a pattern, every block of it grows to fit instead of chopping your new bar off.
Nothing, as far as the sound goes. Rows are just for keeping the song tidy by eye - drums on one row, bass on another. The notes inside a block still play through whichever instrument you wrote them for.
8Mixing (making it sound good together)
Sliders for volume. M and S buttons for listening.
The sliders
Drag up for louder, down for quieter. The number underneath shows the level. Master on the right controls everything at once.
M — Mute
Silences that one instrument. Useful for checking whether something is actually helping the song.
S — Solo
Hear only that instrument, everything else goes quiet. Useful for checking one part on its own.
Pull the Master slider down. When too many sounds play at once they add up past what the speakers can handle, and it sounds bad. Turning the master down fixes it.
Switch the AI Copilot to Mix / master mode and type something like “make the drums punchier and turn the bass down a bit”. It will adjust things for you. See section 8.
9The AI helper
Four different jobs. Pick one from the dropdown, then type.
In the AI Copilot panel there's a box labelled What should it do. Choose the job first, then type your request and press Enter.
| Mode | What it does | Example of what to type |
|---|---|---|
| Compose music | Writes notes into the grid | a slow sad piano part in A minor |
| Design a sound | Changes the knobs on your synth | a wide, bright saw sound for synthwave |
| Mix / master | Adjusts volume and tone | make the bass warmer and less boomy |
| Teach me | Answers questions about your song | why does this chord progression work? |
You need a key first
The AI runs on someone else's computer, so you need a free account key from one of them. Pick a provider in the panel, paste the key into the box, and press Enter.
It's a long password that proves the AI service should listen to you. You get one by making an account on their website. Genesis remembers it, so you only paste it once.
Teaching it what you like
After the AI writes something, two buttons appear: ♥ Keep and ✕ Not this. Clicking them teaches it your taste, and future requests come out closer to what you want.
Nothing about your music is sent anywhere extra, and no AI is being retrained. It simply remembers your choices and shows them as examples next time you ask. You can wipe it any time with AI → Forget my taste.
Anything the AI makes is just ordinary notes. Drag them, delete them, add your own in between. Write a melody yourself and ask the AI for a bassline underneath it. Mixing the two is the intended way to work.
10The free offline AI
No key, no cost, no internet. But it works backwards from the others.
Run install-local-ai.bat to add it, then pick
Local (offline) in the provider list.
It was taught using music, not language. It has never seen a sentence. So typing “dark synthwave” means nothing to it — the typing box even greys out.
Instead of describing music to it, you show it music. It listens to what's in your piano roll and carries on from there.
Continuing a few simple notes can take about 5 seconds. Inventing a busy piece from an empty grid took nine minutes on a normal computer.
So give it something to continue rather than starting from nothing. That is both faster and what it's actually built for.
11Saving and undoing
Save early, save often. Ctrl+S.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+S | Save your song |
| Ctrl+O | Open a song you saved before |
| Ctrl+N | Start a new empty song |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo — takes back your last change |
| Ctrl+Y | Redo — puts it back again |
Look at the very top of the window. If the name starts with a star (*My Song) there are changes you haven't saved. No star means everything is saved.
Genesis also asks before letting you close with unsaved work, so you can't lose a song by accident.
Notes, deleted instruments, AI generations, drum patterns, mixing changes, recordings. Sixty steps back. If you break something, press Ctrl+Z — you very likely have not ruined anything.
Tell me more — where songs are saved, and a trap to avoid
Songs are .genesis files and go in
Documents → Project Genesis unless you choose somewhere else. Your
last eight are under File → Recent projects.
The trap: the song file does not contain your sound files — it just remembers where they are. If you later move or rename a sample, the link breaks.
It's not a disaster: Genesis tells you exactly which file is missing and opens the song anyway, with all your notes and settings intact. You point it at the file again and save. But it's easier to just keep your samples in one folder and leave them there.
12Turning it into an audio file
To put your song on your phone, on YouTube, or send it to someone.
- Menu File → Export Audio to WAV, or press Ctrl+E.
- Choose where to save it and give it a name.
- Wait a moment. You can carry on using the app while it works.
You get a .wav file — a standard audio file that plays anywhere.
If a track is muted with M, it will not be in the exported file either. The export matches exactly what you were hearing.
If you're stuck
Find your problem on the left.
| What's happening | What to do |
|---|---|
| I hear nothing at all | Almost always: no instrument. Look at the Tracks panel - a track in red saying “no plugin loaded” is the cause. Go back to section 2. |
| It says “No VST3 instruments were found” | Exactly what it says — you have no synths installed. Install Vital (free), or use Option B in section 2 instead. |
| The sound crackles or stutters | Close other programs, especially browsers. If it continues, go to File → Settings → Audio and set Buffer size to 2048. |
| My notes play the wrong instrument | The Target box at the top of the Piano Roll is set to a different track. Change it and draw again. |
| My keyboard types letters instead of playing | PC keyboard mode is off. Piano Roll → ⚙ → PC keyboard as MIDI. |
| My keyboard plays notes when I'm typing elsewhere | The opposite problem — turn that same setting off. |
| The AI says my key was rejected | Each provider needs its own key — a Gemini key won't work for ChatGPT. The Copilot panel prints the real reason underneath. |
| The offline AI isn't in the list | Run install-local-ai.bat, then restart the app. It
only checks at startup. |
| My microphone recording is silent | Wrong input chosen. Input → Audio input device — pick the one with your microphone's actual name. |
| I broke something | Ctrl+Z. Repeatedly if needed. For the layout, Ctrl+0. |
All the shortcuts
Doing things
| Space | Play / pause |
| Ctrl+R | Record notes |
| Ctrl+Shift+R | Record audio |
| Ctrl+M | Click on / off |
Your song
| Ctrl+S | Save |
| Ctrl+O | Open |
| Ctrl+N | New |
| Ctrl+E | Export audio |
Fixing mistakes
| Ctrl+Z | Undo |
| Ctrl+Y | Redo |
| Ctrl+0 | Reset the layout |
Getting around
| Ctrl+1…5 | Jump to a panel |
| Ctrl+, | Settings |
| F1 | Help inside the app |
Word list
Music software jargon, in normal words.
| Word | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| DAW | “Digital Audio Workstation”. A music-making program. This is one. |
| VST3 / plugin | An instrument or effect made by someone else that plugs in. Like an app for your music program. |
| MIDI | Notes as instructions, not sound. “Play a C for half a second.” The instrument turns that into actual noise. |
| Piano roll | The grid where notes live. Named after old player pianos with punched paper. |
| Track | One instrument and its notes. Like one musician in a band. |
| Pattern | One small piece of music — a riff, a beat, a chord part. You edit one at a time in the Piano Roll. |
| Clip / block | One placement of a pattern in the song. The same pattern can appear as many blocks. |
| Playlist | The map of your whole song — which patterns play, and when. |
| Arrangement | The order your patterns play in. The finished shape of the song. |
| Sampler | An instrument that plays audio files you give it, instead of making sounds from scratch. |
| Sample | A short recorded sound — a drum hit, a voice, anything. |
| BPM / tempo | How fast the song goes. Beats per minute. 120 is common. |
| Bar | A group of beats, usually four. Songs are counted in bars. |
| Quantise | Snapping notes onto the beat so sloppy playing becomes tidy. |
| Master | Everything mixed together — the final sound that leaves your speakers. |
| EQ | Turning up or down specific pitch ranges. Like bass and treble knobs, but more precise. |
| Compressor | Makes loud parts quieter and quiet parts louder, so everything sits more evenly. |
| Export / render | Turning your song into a normal audio file you can play anywhere. |
| Xrun | The computer couldn't keep up for a moment, so the audio glitched. Raise the buffer size. |
Project Genesis — built by Sena Setoria (@Sena-Setoria) and BluntMan420 (@BluntMan-420). This guide works offline; you can copy it anywhere. Press F1 in the app for the reference version.