Melrōse - programming of music melodies

Introduction

melrōse is a tool to create and play music by programming melodies. It uses a custom language to compose notes and create loops and tracks to play. This is an example of a simple major scale C.

sequence('c d e f g a b c5')

Note sequences in your program can be changed while playing giving you direct audible feedback. For the best experience, use the melrōse tool together with the Visual Studio Code Plugin for Melrōse.

See also Blog post

Install

See Build instructions.

Usage

melrōse is a tool to create music by programming melodies and uses a custom language to compose notes that are played with MIDI. Note sequences in your program can be changed while playing which makes it possible to even use it for live performance. For the best experience, use the melrōse together with the Visual Studio Code Plugin for Melrōse.

Read the documentation on how to use melrōse.

Status

The language has reached version 1.0 since tool version v1.0.0 and therefore future changes will only extend it (1.x) and not introduce breaking changes.

Programming music

System setup

Melrōse MCP Server

melrose-mcp is a (server) tool that uses the MCP protocol to receive expressions to play. See melrose-mcp for details how to install and use it.

Contributions

Fixes, suggestions, documentation improvements are all welcome. Fork this project and submit small Pull requests. Discuss larger ones in the Issues list. You can also sponsor Melrōse via Github Sponsors.

Software is licensed under MIT. © 2026 ernestmicklei.com