Lovely Composer Review

I just realized it’s been over 4 months since my last (and only) post. I do have quite a lot of big projects going on right now, but honestly, none of them are in a state where I can proudly show them off. So, to make my site less empty, I decided to do a short review of a program I discovered back in the summer.

As you may know (or probably not), I make games. Mostly pixel art style games using Pico-8. I try to make everything myself. From coding to sprites to music. Luckily, Pico-8 is a feature complete fantasy console, with built-in editors for all of these.

That being said, Pico-8 has a lot of arbitrary limitations. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love working within constraints. It really forces creativity and pushes you to think outside the box. But sometimes, when the scope of a project gets bigger, I start to miss the flexibility and polish of a full fledged DAW.

My usual go-to DAW is FL Studio. Most of my compositions fall into the “cinematic classical” category, and FL handles that with ease. But when it comes to chiptune or 8-bit–style music, surprisingly, all the modern tools makes it hard to sound truly authentic. And by authentic, I don’t mean “good sounding.” There are tons of fantastic chiptune VSTs out there. What I mean is recreating the limitations of old hardware with just basic waveforms, instead of all the modern synths, layering, or effects that make it sound too “clean”.

Pico-8 achieves that aesthetic by using almost entirely of primitive waveforms (okay, you can still add a few effects, but it is mostly faithful).

If only there were a way to recreate the authentic chiptune sound with fewer arbitrary limitations, and with an interface that is actually easy to use, since let’s be honest, tools like FamiTracker are not intended for human to use.

Well, allow me to introduce you to Lovely Composer, an easy-to-use music editor designed for 8-bit music and sound effects. It clearly draws inspiration from Pico-8, but improves upon it (the fact that the creator has even made games with Pico-8).

Like Pico-8, Lovely Composer supports up to 4 tracks (+1 dedicated chord/rhythm track, which I will get into later). But it expands the maximum sequence length to 32 notes x 256 pages. It also supports 16 volume levels, stereo panning, and a much broader palette of “instruments” (you can even design your own tone).

Project Structure

Before diving deeper, let’s talk about how Lovely Composer organizes its projects, because it’s not immediately obvious.

On Linux (and probably similar on Windows/Mac), your projects live under ~/Documents/LovelyComposer. Inside that folder is a directory called music, and within it, you will find subfolders that act as “albums.” Each album contains the individual songs you create.

By default, one of the folder is called LC_USER (which is basically a copy of LC_SAMPLE_2.0, at least in my version). So what I would do is to open Lovely Composer, nuke every default track in LC_USER (there is a conveniently placed bomb button in the top right corner which I definitely wouldn’t press by accident), then go back to the music directory, rename LC_USER to something like Empty_Album, and use that as a clean template for future albums.

If you want to create more tracks in an album, just copy any of the xx.jsonl files and rename xx to the next number.

Once that’s set up, you are ready to compose!

Interface & Workflow

If you have ever used Pico-8’s tracker, Lovely Composer will feel very familiar.

At the bottom left are your 4 regular tracks plus the dedicated chord track. On regular tracks, you place notes (tones) directly on the piano roll in the center of the screen.

Chord track is a unique feature Pico-8 doesn’t have. Instead of entering single notes, you place chord symbols (major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended), then toggle extensions like 7th, 9th, power, or major. When triggered, the chord automatically plays using whatever rhythm pattern you select on the right side of the UI. Rhythm options are surprisingly robust: style, subdivision, rate, arpeggio pattern, octave shifts, muting, and more. This means you don’t have to waste precious channels cramming full chords into the four main tracks. The chord track handles it cleanly, and can even stack multiple notes simultaneously (although you have much less controls over the notes).

There are two visual modes for the piano roll: standard and staff. I personally prefer the standard grid, since it’s cleaner. Grey horizontal lines mark C, blue horizontal lines mark F and A.

At the bottom center, you will find the transport controls (play, stop, etc.), and below that, the timeline (song pages). Bottom right is a divisor ranging from 1 to 93 that control the tempo. By doing some quick math, playback speed can be roughly expressed as Notes per second = 120 / T

So, if you want about 4 seconds per page (with 32 notes per page), you just need to set T = 15.

On the top toolbar are 5 editing tools:

• Pen – draw notes
• Multi-pen – add notes on empty cells, erase otherwise
• Eraser – remove notes
• Paint – replace tones with the currently selected one (either individual tones or across the entire page)
• Selection – select and manipulate groups of notes

You will probably always want to use the keyboard shortcuts: Q for pen, W for eraser, E for paint, R for selection, and 1–5 for tracks 1 to C.

These tools are enough to start writing music.

It’s Music Time!

Well, I think I have yapped enough, let’s actually make some noise.

I highly recommend taking a good look at the demo music included with Lovely Composer. There are tons of great examples, and they are all very well made.

First Attempt

They weren’t kidding when they said the tool is easy to use. After a bit of playing, here’s what I ended up with:

I spent quite a bit of time listening to the demo songs. I quite like the demo 5 track in LC_SAMPLE_1.2.0. So I tried to capture a similar energy and structure. For someone without a lot of experience in 8-bit music, of course I couldn’t reach the same level of polish (those demo composers really know what they are doing), but for my first attempt, I am pretty happy with it.

It took me roughly a day in total, including all the time spent fumbling through menus and figuring things out. I think that alone speaks volumes about how easy-to-use Lovely Composer is.

Second Attempt

By the time I started my second track, I had a much better grasp of the workflow and tools. This time, I began by playing with the built-in chord pattern system. It let me quickly sketch out the harmonic foundation. Once I had the basic progression, I layered melodies and a bassline over it. I copied the main rhythm track onto another channel and offset it slightly to create an echo effect, giving the song more depth.

I had a few ideas in my head that I couldn’t quite realize yet, mostly because I wasn’t sure how to shape certain tones or effects. So the track turned out a bit plain, but I did learn more new things nonetheless.

Third Attempt

For my third attempt, I wanted to try to recreate the Undertale’s vibe.

I started with a melody that popped into my head and placed the skeleton melody in Lovely Composer. Once that was done, I used the rhythm pattern tool to create the harmony underneath. With just a few clicks, I had a dense, energetic chord progression.

Then, again, copy the rhythm to another track, offset it slightly, and lower the volume a bit, now you have a very nice echo effect. And just like that, another track is done!

It doesn’t really sound anything like Undertale. I mean, I could never reach Toby Fox’s level. Still, I am quite happy with the result though.

Things I Wish They Would Add or Fix

While I absolutely love Lovely Composer, it does have a few bugs and quirks.

The first one I already mentioned, the weird file management system. Or rather, the lack of one. You can’t even create a new track without copying an existing one. Quite frankly, it’s not that bad once you get used to it, but I really wish there were a proper file management system. Especially since the app has autosave and a conveniently placed bomb button. If you accidentally press that and close the app, your music is gone unless you have a backup. It would be great if Lovely Composer could automatically back up the most recent save files, like FL Studio does. That would be very nice.

Second, I wish there were a way to add custom rhythm patterns. Currently, there are 8 styles × 4 patterns (and several of them are just slight variations of one another). Don’t get me wrong, the existing ones are fantastic, but it would be cool if users could add their own patterns too.

The third issue is the bugs. There are a few quite annoying ones. The selection tool, for example, sometimes refuses to select anything when dragging, and occasionally it doesn’t even show the selection rectangle. Even when it does work, copying and pasting notes sometimes just doesn’t do anything. There is also a menu bug, some menus, like the chord pattern tool, don’t properly isolate the mouse scroll events. That means when you scroll up and down, the scroll input “leaks” into the main window and messes up all the volume sliders. I totally get it though, UI is such a bitch to get right. Still, if only the tool were open source, I would love to try fixing some of these issues myself.

My final small wish would be for a built-in metronome. Right now, I have to place the beats manually, so it would be great if a metronome were included.

Final Thought

Again, I really like Lovely Composer. It’s fun, surprisingly powerful, and it actually makes me want to sit down and compose, which is saying a lot. You know, sometimes just opening a DAW feels like a chore.

While there are quirks and bugs, they are mostly minors. If you are someone who loves chiptune, 8-bit, or just making music in general, Lovely Composer is absolutely worth a try. I mean it’s only 10 bucks anyway.