Content warning: Nerd shit
So here's the song I made today. First, take a listen to the main version, and let's get into a stoned storytime about what happened, and how it came to be!
https://soundcloud.com/lynncolemusic/too-much-to-give-up
Suno was doing a song contest, to remix Love Again by Timbaland. It's the best song contest so far, by a mile. It's got everything, a memorable track with high production values that's difficult to remix with AI (which makes the contest more fun), and lyrics, that, if you take them apart, will make you cry. I fucking love crying during the production process. It makes for better music, and it's just plain fun.
What I liked about it, was that it's almost a lynn cole song to begin with. Bluesy syncopated lyrics, a nice genre mashup, good clear production. And most importantly, thematically perfect for the kinds of songs I enjoy doing.
Naturally, I jumped on the opportunity to remix and play with it, and in like three hours, I had a solid remix of the piece that I was happy with. But I couldn't quite... get it out of my head.
Taking the remix apart
The next thing I did was took the whole thing apart in my daw, separating the tracks, and trying to see how it ticked. A lot of really happy notes mixed with bluesy ones, which made for an interesting dissonance. I wanted to take the pieces out and spin them around to see what the piece was made of.
I got to this interesting point in the outro, at about 30 seconds in, where it picks up, and then willows down again, and I wanted to remix that to see what would happen.
My first instinct wasn't even conscious. I wrote down a bunch of words until I had the structure of the piece. Again, when this happens, I don't question it. But I did have some ideas.
The big thing was that I wanted to do the same kind of juicy syncopation Tim was doing, but instead of holding it in for the chorus, I would spread it out between the verses and pre-chorus.
And as much as it goes against my grain as a songwriter, I was trying to keep the Berlin simplicity rule in mind.
What the song was, was beginning to dawn on me, but again, as the writing process goes... I'm not always fully aware of what I'm doing at this stage in the process.
This was the result. I made it on Friday evening, mostly by reverse prompting, and I found it absolutely captivating. Words started coming to me. And that's weird, because I'm not usually a melody or beat first songwriter.
https://suno.com/song/5e246bf2-67fb-4b59-9cd1-9d75594b9b33
Damnit, I was inspired. And I listened to that version of the outro track like 160 times. I was so close, it was right there, a new song wanted to be born. And when art wants to emerge from the chaos, who am I to question it?
Soon, I had a first verse and chorus. But, little did I know, I screwed up the chorus. There was too much of "too much" in it! But you know what? It kinda worked, did interesting things to rhythm of it. And the piece was starting to feel like a conversation
https://suno.com/song/147fc9c3-3195-40e9-a700-e31a29551e96
There's an unspoken rule in songwriting, that if you're going to do a conversational or response piece, it's generally in bad taste, contest or not, to use DNA from the original in its construction. But at the same time... I was trying to sidehack suno for better sound quality.
The prompt and its inversion
But this is where it gets interesting. Now, let us examine what happened. The prompt we used on the last one was a complex prompt including an exclude or negative prompt.
female, dub-reggae, blues, virtuoso, sad, elevated pitch, staccato muted guitar, edgy trap, nashville, anguish, ‑heavy distortion, ‑muddy, ‑bootleg, ‑4-track, ‑live, ‑concert recording, ‑punk, ‑thrash, ‑vintage, ‑happy, ‑quiet, ‑tinny.
And I shared the exclude (everything that's in the minus) with my core group of friends. And my girl GirlLawnmower ran it backwards, as a forward prompt rather than an include. The sound that came out was interesting, and I thought it was compelling.
I experimented with it, came up with this. It was one of those moments where, you hear the machine take it on a tangent, you didn't expect, and then you can't think of the song any other way? That
https://suno.com/song/120f021a-e088-4424-9cef-cc14ef11b911
Recasting and rebuilding
Then I figured, I could just split it apart, and take it over to lailiai for a quick free recast, to change the gender of the vocalist, right? I mean, that's what I always do. But, given that I had intentionally prompted the worst possible sound quality out of suno, it didn't.
So then, over to udio to produce a clean version of that piece of the track on a low to mid variance, so we don't lose too much of the melody. And that resulted in this.
https://www.udio.com/songs/18ismh5zBvW9EFnpJuscGT
Then with the regendering transformation in hand and the melody still mostly intact, I went back to suno, and wrote a second verse and prompted in the sound I'm enjoying making for the current album
https://suno.com/song/2f8d8a4b-1049-483b-b591-a69e6524be8b
I decided to finish the "original" version. And then, because music is play, I contemplated a universe where this was an old version of the song from the 90s, and I was covering it. I named the artist "Timber Woods" which is not at all a penis joke. https://suno.com/song/c3c33363-4b78-4dd0-9ad2-c87f01f0fc04
Finishing the arrangement
And from there, I went back to Udio, to do the emotive work, and throw some emotion into the piece. This ultimately resulted in the final composition.
https://www.udio.com/songs/uoZTKubpPo7S7szoDQQF7F
And then, some quick filtering in Ozone elements. Which brings us full circle, back to the beginning of this post.
These journeys are fun.
I love doing this so much.
Oh and if anyone's interested, there's another alternate finished version of the song. The Rei Tracing version
https://suno.com/song/4e4ff05e-700c-4797-9317-e9f571eaf726