📚 Help & How-To
Everything you need to go from a blank screen to a published track — step-by-step.
Your first track in 7 steps
Follow these in order. The whole pipeline takes ~15 minutes for a first-draft song.
Pick your topic & vibe
Open the Lyrics Studio. Type a single concrete topic (e.g. "long-distance love" — not "love"). Pick 1–2 moods and a style. Specificity = better songs.
Open Lyrics Studio →Generate strong lyrics
Toggle "Pro Songwriter" ON for chart-grade rhyme & prosody. Add a reference artist (e.g. "Tyler Childers") and the engine auto-fills BPM, style and rhyme scheme. Generate, then refine — verses tell, choruses repeat the hook.
Send to Music Studio
Hit "Send to Music Studio →" at the bottom of the lyrics editor. Your lyrics, genre, and topic auto-fill the Advanced Generate tab.
Open Music Studio →Generate music with the right provider
Use Sonic v4-5 for vocal tracks, Tempolor for genre fidelity & long-form, Producer for instrumentals. Add a Sound Prompt that describes instruments + atmosphere (e.g. "acoustic guitar, brushed snare, warm Wurlitzer, late-night intimate").
Master & polish
Send the result into Mastering Studio. Pick "Streaming" for Spotify/Apple Music (-14 LUFS), "Club" for DJ sets (-7 LUFS), or "Vinyl" for analog warmth (-16 LUFS).
Open Mastering Studio →Cover art + visualizer
Generate matching cover art (Cheap mode for quick options, Modest for custom prompts). Then drop the track into Visualizer Studio for an animated music video.
Open Cover Art Studio →Publish, register & manage rights
Submit the finished track to charts/playlists, register on-chain for permanent provenance, then manage DDEX exports and verification status from the Rights Portal.
Submit Track →Pro tips — what makes the best songs
Real practices from hit-making producers, applied to the BaseStation toolchain.
Prompt craft
- •Describe instruments + atmosphere, not just genre — "808 sub, hi-hat triplets, distant choir, foggy 3 AM" beats "trap beat" every time.
- •Stack 2–3 moods (e.g. "Melancholic + Triumphant") for emotional contrast that hooks listeners.
- •Cap your prompt around 200–400 chars. Longer prompts confuse the model.
Lyrics that win
- •One concrete image per verse beats five vague lines. Specifics = memorable.
- •Chorus = the hook. Repeat it 2–4 times verbatim. Don't paraphrase.
- •Use the "Pro Songwriter" toggle for prosody-locked rhyme & syllable matching.
- •Reference an artist you love — the writer-style lookup auto-tunes everything.
Genre × BPM sweet spots
- •Hip-Hop: 70–90 BPM (laid-back) or 140–160 (drill/trap, half-time feel).
- •Pop: 100–128 BPM is the radio zone.
- •EDM/House: 120–128 BPM. Drum & bass: 170–175.
- •Country/Red Dirt: 80–110 BPM, 4/4, 16-bar verses.
- •Lo-fi: 70–85 BPM, swung hats, vinyl crackle in the prompt.
Mastering targets
- •Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube: -14 LUFS (Streaming preset).
- •Club / DJ sets: -7 to -8 LUFS (Loud or Club preset).
- •Vinyl / mastering for cuts: -16 LUFS, preserve dynamic range.
- •If the master feels "flat", try the Warm preset before re-rendering — same loudness, more body.
Cover art that sells
- •Use "Modest" mode with a custom prompt naming a real visual reference (e.g. "in the style of a 1970s Blue Note album cover").
- •Generate 3 variations, then pick the one with the strongest focal point.
- •High contrast + one bold color = thumbnail readability.
Video & visualizers
- •For audio-reactive visualizers, upload tracks directly from your PC — CloudFront-hosted library files may fall back to synthetic mode.
- •Match aspect ratio to the platform: 9:16 for TikTok/Reels, 16:9 for YouTube, 1:1 for IG feed.
- •Keep video prompts short and motion-focused: "slow zoom", "drifting clouds", "pulsing light".
Workflow shortcuts
- •⌘+Enter generates from any studio. ⌘+S saves to library. ⌘+K shows shortcuts.
- •Use Templates (Standard Pop, Hip-Hop, etc.) in Lyrics Studio to skip blank-page paralysis.
- •Build a Voice Persona once, reuse it across every track for a consistent artist voice.
Full reference
BASE Station is built by the team that helped independent creators through the last big technology shift. In the early 2000s, our founder Bryan Payne (former CEO of Spacial Audio) along with then partner and CTO Louis Louw launched SAM Broadcaster — software that democratized internet radio and gave thousands of webcasters the automated logging and reporting tools they needed to broadcast legally.
Today, generative AI presents the same crossroads: enormous creative potential, met with blunt algorithmic bans from legacy platforms. Our answer is the same as it was then — don't ban the technology, bring transparency and provenance to it. That's why every track here carries a Creative Ownership Score and a GenAI disclosure label.