Roland has entered the generative AI music space with Melody Flip, a plugin for digital audio workstations (DAWs) that offers around 250 themed musical Palettes sorted by genre. Users can generate melody, chord progression, bassline, or drums from scratch, or feed it a reference track to build on existing melodic ideas.
Unlike Suno or Udio, Melody Flip doesn't produce fully polished songs with vocals and full arrangements. Instead, it offers simple musical loops meant to serve as a creative spark. Control over outputs is fairly limited — users choose genre, note density, BPM, and musical key, then take what they get. Genre options range from standard fare like 80s disco and 90s R&B to esoteric categories like Kawaii Future Bass and Anime World.
The sound selection reinforces that Melody Flip outputs aren't meant for direct use. Presets are mostly general MIDI tones reminiscent of 90s video games. The intended workflow appears to be exporting MIDI data from Melody Flip into a DAW to manipulate and pair with more powerful synth plugins.
After years of seemingly losing direction and alienating customers with its messy Roland Cloud subscription service, the company has been back on track recently with hardware like the P-6 Creative Sampler and TR-1000. But given the music community's general response to generative AI, Melody Flip is unlikely to earn much goodwill.
