In the beginning of my career as songwriter, I had four tools: a pencil, notebook, cassette deck and of course, guitar.  That was it.  I’d go to the library for inspiration.  Moon Martin taught me his trick of writing down lines that you hear, read, or come to mind… so I started doing this.  Larry McMurtry to Stephen King to John Fante, William Shakespeare to Anne Sexton and Langston Hughes.  It didn’t matter who, my mind would read with a little headlamp on in search of lines that stood out to work in song.

Making records was another school inadvertently taught.  In 1983 I joined a very brief band of LA session musicians… let’s see it was Mike Baird-drums, Alan Pasqua-keyboards, Dennis Belfield-bass, Kevin Dukes-lead guitar and myself as lead vocalist and guitarist.  Alan and I were the main songwriters, but the band all had much more experience than I at making the actual records.  It became apparent to me very quickly that, in deciding studio parts, arguing for them or against them,  you didn’t get away with saying things like ‘i don’t know… i just don’t like it’.  There had to be a comprehensive explanation for why it didn’t work.  I have to say that taught me a lot about the democratic process and about record-making in general.

A couple of weeks ago, after forgetting I had subscribed to Suno a month or two previous, I turned it on and began diving in.  Having worked for years in Logic Pro, Pro Tools, and Digital Performer, Suno made little sense to me.  It was cryptic… a video game for a beginner, not an avid pro!  But I watched a couple of videos and learned at the very least what to do with finished, undemo’d songs.

I have to say, after my fourth completed song, it is the single most important tool I’ve used since the pencil and paper.

Songs I’ve had for many years, and would have never seen the light of day now have a life.  To go the old route, i’d have had to book a studio in Nashville, hire 5 musicians, at least 2 singers, one for lead and another for background vocals, a recording engineer who would likely mix as well.  I’d have needed a hotel room for 3-5 days, a plane roundtrip from Los Angeles.  Approximate total cost?  about 10-15k for 3 songs.

This is why the songs were doomed an abandoned life in a box until someone sent them to the eternal dumpster.  Why?  Because I wasn’t confident they were good enough!

The one I will share with you I spent a few days on.  It was intended to be a pop/neo soul track.  I have dozens of Suno versions of it this way that I may put up for fun…  But… frustrated in not getting the exact right performance desired, I took it in another direction.

It’s amazing to me how parallel country music and soul/r&b are.  They have identical structures, breakdowns, lyric sensibilities.  So this one transformed into country much nicer than I would have believed.  For my ears, it’s a hit song, … and believe me I can be my own worst critic, but this sounds like a follow-up single to Ella Langley’s ‘Choosin’ Texas’.

And regardless of whether I’m right about that part, the fact is that it lives now.  It’s not an aborted piece of cassette tape living in a trash heap somewhere with all the unrealized potential.  Suno made this possible.  The drum sound alone… I would have had to hire an expert drummer to get this performance and sound, as well as pay a mixer to bring it home.

Now, I do understand there’s a level of this app that non-musicians and half-writers can use to get AI as kind of a co-writer.  I’m not interested in any of that.  That’s for pussies.  I’m just so excited to get my demos finished I can die a happy man.  So I’m trying to decide how to display them.  To add to soundcloud, like I have this one, showing the multiple genres made, the original demo given to Suno etc.?  I’m not sure yet.  But I am sure of one thing-

It’s fun AF.  I can take the stems now into logic, and with the multiple performances chosen, make a pretty solid demonstration of what was in my head to begin with.  Only now has something like this ever been possible.  So use it as a glorified interactive radio if you like, but to the serious songwriter it’s another tool, but one that’s blasted past the rest in light speed.

Jude