Educational / Personal

I want to talk about something I get questions about pretty regularly, which is how I use AI in my music. Specifically Suno AI, which is the tool I use to help produce my songs.

First, the honest version: I was skeptical at first. Not because I am opposed to new tools, but because music has always been something sacred to me. I started as a first soprano in classical and choral settings, I have led worship, I have written songs for as long as I can remember. The idea of bringing a technology component into that felt like it might dilute something I cared about protecting.

What I found instead genuinely surprised me.

Suno AI is a generative music tool that can take prompts and produce full musical tracks in a variety of styles, genres, and moods. But here is the thing: the creative voice still has to come from somewhere. The lyrics are still written by hand. The emotional intention, the themes, the decisions about tone and texture and what a song is actually trying to say, none of that is automated. What Suno does is bring a song to sonic life in a way that, as an independent artist working without a full production team, I could not do alone.

It is a collaboration in the truest sense of the word. I bring the story. I bring the words. I bring the emotional truth of what I am trying to communicate. And then together we figure out what it sounds like.

Learning to prompt well is genuinely an art form. I have spent a lot of time figuring out how to describe what I want without defaulting to artist name-drops or generic descriptions. I think in terms of mood, texture, instrumentation, era, emotional weight. Is this song heavy or airy? Does it feel like late autumn or early spring? Is the vocal placement warm and close or distant and reverb-heavy? All of those choices matter and they all have to come from me before the tool can do anything useful with them.

What has changed in my creative process is the volume of what I can produce and explore. I can follow an idea all the way through without it getting stuck in the gap between concept and finished sound. I have made lo-fi albums, baroque-influenced pieces, singer-songwriter records, Broadway-style songs, and dark European folklore-inspired music, all from my home, all starting with words on a page.

Is it the same as recording in a studio with a full band? No. Is it real music that comes from a real creative place? Absolutely yes.

I am grateful for tools that make the art more accessible without removing the artist from the process. That is the balance I am always trying to hold.

Until next time,

Melanie

• SPOTIFY • APPLE MUSIC • AMAZON MUSIC • DEEZER • PANDORA • YOUTUBE