Staccato

Staccato's pitch is narrow and honest: it writes MIDI, not records. That distinction matters more than it sounds. Most AI music tools hand you a rendered audio file you can't take apart; Staccato hands you notes, velocities, and tracks that load into whatever instrument you already trust. If you're a producer whose sound lives in your own synth patches and sample libraries, that's the whole ballgame — you keep authorship of the tone. The workflow is chat-shaped: type what you want, get up to 16 tracks and 32 bars, then refine individual notes and velocities. Four named modes — Create, Accompany, Rewrite, Extend — map onto the ways sessions actually stall: you have nothing, you have a vocal and need a bed, you have a part in the wrong genre, or you have four bars and need the rest. Uploading your own MIDI or audio to have Staccato continue or complement it is the strongest feature, because it turns a blank-page problem into a variation problem. The company is explicit that it trained on music theory and the emotional arc between sections rather than on popular songs. Treat that as a positioning claim rather than a guarantee of originality — but the resulting parts tend to be arrangements you can build on rather than pastiche. Style learning compounds: the tool adapts toward your habits over repeated use. Weaknesses are real. The 16-track / 32-bar cap per generation means long-form structure is still your job. Output is MIDI only — no audio samples — so anyone without virtual instruments gets nothing usable. No offline mode is documented. Basic at $11.99/month forbids commercial use and blocks record/upload, which makes the $14.99/month Pro tier the practical entry point for working producers, not the cheap tier. The $149 Buy option includes updates only through June 2029 and lists planned items (direct DAW integration, faster generation, AI voice-to-MIDI) as forthcoming rather than shipped. And the AI lyrics generator is a Pro bonus, not a standalone product.