# Hookpad Aria: A Copilot for Songwriters

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08122 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08122/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [WaveNet: A Generative Model for Raw Audio](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03499/) (2016)
- [Chatbot Arena: An Open Platform for Evaluating LLMs by Human Preference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04132/) (2024)
- [Jukebox: A Generative Model for Music](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00341/) (2020)
- [Simple and Controllable Music Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05284/) (2023)
- [MusicLM: Generating Music From Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11325/) (2023)
- [CoAuthor: Designing a Human-AI Collaborative Writing Dataset for Exploring Language Model Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06796/) (2022)
- [Music Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04281/) (2018)
- [Music ControlNet: Multiple Time-varying Controls for Music Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07069/) (2023)
- [The challenge of realistic music generation: modelling raw audio at scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10474/) (2018)
- [SingSong: Generating musical accompaniments from singing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12662/) (2023)
- [LakhNES: Improving multi-instrumental music generation with cross-domain pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04868/) (2019)
- [LAVE: LLM-Powered Agent Assistance and Language Augmentation for Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10294/) (2024)
- [3DALL-E: Integrating Text-to-Image AI in 3D Design Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11603/) (2022)
- [On the Design of AI-powered Code Assistants for Notebooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11178/) (2023)
- [The Piano Inpainting Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05944/) (2021)
- [Automatic Melody Harmonization with Triad Chords: A Comparative Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02360/) (2020)
- [Compose & Embellish: Well-Structured Piano Performance Generation via A Two-Stage Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08212/) (2022)
- [Foregrounding Artist Opinions: A Survey Study on Transparency, Ownership, and Fairness in AI Generative Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15497/) (2024)
- [Composer's Assistant: An Interactive Transformer for Multi-Track MIDI Infilling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12525/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [No Encore: Unlearning as Opt-Out in Music Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.06277/) (2025)
- [MIDI-LLM: Improving Text-to-MIDI Music Generation via Adapting Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03942/) (2025)
- [Stemphonic: All-at-once Flexible Multi-stem Music Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09891/) (2026)
- [What's a Credit Worth? A Market Framework for Attribution-Aware Compensation in Generative Music](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00641/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Hookpad Aria, a generative AI system designed to assist musicians in writing Western pop songs. Our system is seamlessly integrated into Hookpad, a web-based editor designed for the composition of lead sheets: symbolic music scores that describe melody and harmony. Hookpad Aria has numerous generation capabilities designed to assist users in non-sequential composition workflows, including: (1) generating left-to-right continuations of existing material, (2) filling in missing spans in the middle of existing material, and (3) generating harmony from melody and vice versa. Hookpad Aria is also a scalable data flywheel for music co-creation -- since its release in March 2024, Aria has generated 318k suggestions for 3k users who have accepted 74k into their songs. More information about Hookpad Aria is available at https://www.hooktheory.com/hookpad/aria