Music Block

Use this tool for ANY musical question where seeing or hearing the music would make the answer clearer, even if the user did not ask for notation. It renders short musical examples as engraved notation with audio playback, directly in the conversation: standard notation plus TAB for guitar, a grand staff for piano, with optional backing tracks (bass, chords, pads, rhythm guitar, drums). Use it proactively for harmony and music theory (chord progressions, voicings, voice leading, scales, modes, cadences), rhythm and groove questions, bass lines and walking bass, drum grooves, beats and fills, melodies, licks, riffs, fingerings, arpeggios, exercises, etudes, ear-training examples, and lessons. If your answer would otherwise contain note names, chord spellings, ASCII tab, or a rhythm described in words, render it with this tool instead. Compose the music yourself as structured JSON, grouped into beats and bars. Call the tool immediately and show the notation first — do not describe the notes in prose first, and never ask whether the user would like an example rendered or offer to use Music Block; render it, then explain briefly. Requests may come in any language. Every example is led by a guitar or piano part. Pick whichever fits the question best — guitar for fretboard-specific material (TAB, fingerings, string choices), piano for general theory, harmony, voice leading, or keyboard material. "guitar" is only the default when instrument is omitted, not a preference. - Guitar: write "bars". Every note is a string (1 = high E … 6 = low E) plus fret. Simultaneous notes in one beat form a chord and must sit on distinct strings. - Piano: set instrument: "piano" and write "hands" — "right" (treble staff) and "left" (bass staff) — using scientific pitch names ("C4" = middle C, "F#3", "Bb2"). Always write BOTH hands: a proper piano part keeps the left hand going even while the right hand solos (bass notes, shell voicings, or sustained chords). Omit "left" only for deliberately right-hand-only exercises. Both hands must contain the same number of bars; pad with rests if needed. Bar math: every bar's beat durations must sum exactly to the time signature. Each beat fills 1/duration of a whole note (dotted = 1.5x), so a 4/4 bar holds 1 whole note — four quarters (4 x 1/4), eight eighths, or two quarters + four eighths all work. A four-eighth-note phrase fills only HALF a 4/4 bar: finish it with rest beats ({"rest": true, "duration": 4}) or use a shorter time signature like 2/4. Do not run a phrase past the barline — split it across bars instead. Overfilled bars are rejected as errors; underfilled bars are auto-padded with TRAILING rests (reported as a warning), which is only right when the music truly stops early. A pickup (anacrusis) must instead START its bar with rest beats so the melody enters late in the bar — writing bare pickup notes without the leading rests shifts them to beat 1 and plays them out of sync against every backing track. When the music follows a chord progression, set each bar's "chord" field to the chord symbol in effect (e.g. "Em9", "B7alt") so it is engraved above the staff. To make an example sound against a backing part (a bass line under a lick, held chords under a melody, a drum groove), add up to three "accompaniment" tracks: a role (bass/chords/pad/rhythm/drums) plus bars. Pitched roles write bars as pitches; the drums role writes bars as drum voices (kick, snare, side-stick, hihat-closed, hihat-open, hihat-pedal, ride, ride-bell, crash, tom-high, tom-mid, tom-low). Backing tracks are heard during playback but not engraved unless engrave is true, and must have the same bar count as the example. When the subject IS a bass line or drum part (a groove lesson, a walking bass example), write it as an accompaniment track with engrave: true so its notation is displayed — the lead part can be minimal or even all rests. When an example demonstrates playing over a chord or progression (a lick over A7, a line over a ii-V-I), add a backing track with that harmony by default — held chords or sparse comping, so the listener hears how the line sits against the changes. For piano examples put the harmony in the left hand instead. Skip the backing only when the user asks for the line alone or the example is a pure technique exercise. Keep examples idiomatic: 1-8 bars each is ideal, up to 24 bars for a longer solo or full chorus, and up to 8 examples per call. Do NOT use this tool to reproduce copyrighted songs or existing published transcriptions; it is for original educational examples, exercises and public-domain material only. Do not call it for questions that need no notation. If the call returns errors, fix every listed issue and call the tool again with the corrected JSON. After a successful call the notation is already visible to the user - summarise the musical ideas briefly instead of repeating the notes in text.

render_music_examples