Encourage new ideas with some controlled MIDI randomisation.
Your mileage may vary but, personally, when it comes to the generation of new musical ideas, I’m more than happy to take help wherever it might come from. For MIDI‑heads, Futurephonic’s Rhythmizer - just updated from v2.1 to the Ultra version with a redesign of the UI and some new features - might be a suitable source of musical inspiration. This ‘MIDI note manipulation’ plug‑in may already be familiar to Live users but it’s now also available in a VST/AU format and, for this review, I took the VST version for a spin within Cubase Pro 12.

Inserted as an instrument on a suitable MIDI track, it will take extended MIDI notes as input (these serve as the base pitch for any subsequent randomisation) and then allows you to generate note sequences from this source by randomising note lengths, rhythms, pitch, velocity and pitch‑bend, all with user control over the degree and style of the randomisation. This new MIDI data can then be routed to the MIDI input of a further MIDI/virtual instrument track for triggering playback or to be recorded. This latter option allows you to cherry‑pick the best bits of Rhythmizer’s output for further work.