AI Songmaking

Experimenting with AI Music co-creativity

Previously, I co-created a poem with Claude: after writing the first three stanzas on my own, I worked with Claude to add and refine additional poetic language. I find the results to be astonishing relative to where large language models (LLMs) were only a few months ago.

I thought it would be fun to turn the lyrics into music. The result, as well as the process I used, is here:

There are a large number of AI song and music creators, but most of them aren’t very impressive—at least until I discovered Suno.ai. The great thing about Suno is that I can supply my own lyrics. Then, given some stylistic guidance (in this case, “drum and bass, female vocals, psychedelic”) it will generate a couple versions of the song until you’re happy with the result.

If your lyrics are a little too long to fit into a two minute song, it is also capable of continuing it until subsequent sections. You can then use “combine song” to merge it back together. The resulting song can be shared online, or you can download it into an mp3 or mp4 file.

It is the dark matter, the unseen shores
Where waves of probability break and roar
Shaping the contours of reality

(This is where I broke between the two parts of the song, before merging them back together.)

It is the truth that lies too deep for speech
The wordless knowledge, the bone-felt certainty
The whisper of the universe in our cells

After downloading the mp3 file, I used Videobolt to turn it into a nice-looking video. That’s not AI, but it makes a version that’s better for sharing on social media.

Now, is this going to reach the top of the music charts? I’m confident it won’t—and there are some fundamental problems with it (the outro isn’t good, the levels on the vocals are sometimes poor, and the music isn’t terribly inspired although it’s fairly typical). That said, it’s pretty damn impressive compared to where things were even a few months ago.

I’m going to attempt a copyright of my song because I believe I can document enough of a creative process to make it eligible. I’ll provide an update on that when I have them. That said, I’m releasing this copyrighted work under Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution, so you’re welcome to use it and remix it to your heart’s content, assuming you provide attribution to me.