How music prompts work
A music prompt is a description of objective musical characteristics. The more precisely those characteristics are stated, the more predictable the result.
- Music prompt
- A written description of the musical characteristics of a piece - tempo, instrumentation, harmony, texture, dynamics, arrangement and production space - used to guide AI-assisted music creation. A prompt describes sound; it does not point at an existing recording.
Description beats reference
The intuitive way to ask for music is to point: name a track, a band, a playlist. That approach fails for two reasons. Legally, it asks for something built from another person’s protected work. Practically, it is vague - a single name can cover thirty years of very different records, so the request carries almost no usable information.
Description works better on both counts. “Approximately 70 BPM, warm analog-style pads, no percussion, very wide stereo image, single sustained chord” is unambiguous, repeatable and entirely your own. It also teaches you something: once you can describe a sound, you can change one variable at a time and hear what that variable does.
The seven dimensions a prompt controls
- Tempo and time feel. A BPM number sets speed; words such as straight, swung, rubato, motorik or non-metric set how that speed is felt.
- Instrumentation and timbre. Name instrument families and playing techniques - felt piano, muted staccato strings, brushed hats - rather than product or artist names.
- Harmony. Say how much movement you want: one sustained chord, a two-chord alternation, a four-chord loop, a modal centre, or a minor-to-major shift.
- Texture and density. Sparse or layered, smooth or grainy, how many simultaneous voices, and whether noise is a feature or a fault.
- Dynamics. The loudness shape over time: flat, stepped, continuously rising, or quiet-loud-quiet.
- Arrangement and structure. The order of events: how many sections, when layers enter and leave, whether the piece resolves.
- Spatial production. Width, depth, reverberation length, panning and mono compatibility.
Negative constraints do real work
Saying what you do not want is as important as saying what you do. “No percussion”, “no loud impacts”, “stop short of full intensity” and “instrumental only” each remove a large family of likely outputs. Every preset in this library ends with a constraint sentence ruling out imitation of identifiable artists, compositions, recordings, melodies and performances. Keep that sentence when you adapt a preset.
Before and after
Unusable and non-compliant:
Make something that sounds like that famous chill playlist.
Precise and copyright-conscious:
Create an original downtempo instrumental at approximately 90 BPM with a soft kick, brushed hats, warm sub bass and muted electric-piano-style keys over a two-chord loop. Keep dynamics flat and the rhythm section centred. Do not imitate an identifiable artist, composition, recording, melody or performance.
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Continue
- Prompt anatomy - the eight-part template used by every preset here.
- Responsible prompting - the boundaries and how to stay inside them.
Editorial owner: iDigits LLC. Last reviewed August 5, 2026. Policy information was reviewed against publicly available ElevenLabs materials on August 5, 2026. ElevenLabs may update its policies, so users should consult the current official terms before using its services.