In this episode of the Everyday AI channel, host Jay (JAY) introduces Suno, an online platform that generates music using AI. He begins by sharing his extensive musical background—classical cello training, self‑taught guitar and piano, professional sound engineering, club and studio management—to establish credibility. Jay demonstrates Sunso’s text‑to‑music capability by entering whimsical prompts (e.g., a lo‑fi post‑punk song about getting ghosted, an ambient techno track about robotic battles) and plays the resulting tracks. He then showcases a higher‑quality piece, “Same Hands, New Plans,” created by uploading his own acoustic‑guitar recording and prompting Suno to expand it, emphasizing that providing an audio seed yields more inspiring results than pure text prompts. Jay compares the two approaches, noting the superior instrumentation and production value when an audio reference is used. He walks through Suno’s “Studio” interface—a DAW‑like environment where users can open generated songs, view individual stems, split them, and edit with plugins, highlighting that this feature is available on the paid £8/month Premier plan. Throughout, he offers practical prompting tips, such as describing desired EQ or reverb effects in natural language, and mentions his 7‑day “Perfecting Prompts” ebook for improving AI prompting skills. Finally, Jay reflects on his personal mission, stating that while his past goal was to provide spiritual fulfillment through music, he now aims to enlighten humanity about technology as a form of creativity. The video concludes with a call‑to‑action to try Suno and explore the ebook.
Chapters
Suno is a website that allows you to generate music. If this is your first time here, my name is Jay and this is the Everyday AI channel where we teach you how you can use AI in your daily lives. So I'm going to dive right into this here, and today this is quite an interesting one. Some of you may know, before I transitioned into tech, I had a modestly successful career as a musician, a music artist, um, amongst many other things. And music was a massive passion of mine, and really I sort of discovered how to use large language models specifically I was sitting in my, you know, music studio many years ago and I was just using it to help me with sort of client work, helping using it to— I mean, at first I wasn't generating music with it, but it was just helping me to translate what people meant in terms of the kind of songs and instrumentals they wanted me to produce. And, uh, yeah, it's quite a, it's quite a, uh, controversial thing in the music industry, of course. In any case, I'm very glad I made the, uh, the shift from being a modestly successful music artist to what I'm doing now. And, uh, yes, you know, it's, uh, something that's been on my radar for a while. I'm surprised I haven't actually gone into it before, but we're going to be diving into it today. And, uh, yeah, also glad to make it the 600th episode on this channel. So first thing I'm going to do is show you guys— well, let's roll the dice and see what kind of songs we can make. Let's go something else, something a bit more— a lo-fi post-punk song about getting ghosted. Okay, so we need an ambient techno song about— let's say, how about robotic, uh, battles? And humanity's struggle for survival in the age of AI. Okay, cool. So let's go with that. And yeah, let's just create that. In the meantime, I'm also going to show you guys some other things I've been making. So there's this song, um, which I think is pretty cool. I generated called Same Hands. Okay, cool. Yeah, so let's check out the song. Uh, I've also decided this is actually going to be the 601st episode, not the 600th. I quickly recorded another video. There was interesting thing that happened. In any case, you guys will see both the videos. I'm gonna play this song now, and, uh, yeah, we're gonna hear exactly what it was like. So yeah, this is a song called Same Hands, New Plans. And just to be clear, um, I guess I should actually give a bit of background on my musical, uh, history so, you know, you sort of understand where I'm coming from. So I started playing the cello when I was 8 years old. I was classically trained for 8 years, taught myself how to play the guitar when I was 13, taught myself how to play piano when I was 15. Started producing when I was 17. I became a professional sound engineer when I was about 19. Started managing clubs when I was 21, and then I started managing music studios when I was 23. So I have a very extensive knowledge of music. You know, I'm not just prompting things into like without any sort of knowledge. I consider myself a bona fide musician, as in like professionally, that that was like my main profession and certainly my first profession. So I really understand what's going on, and I really have a keen ear because I understand things from instrumentation, from producing angle and also from an engineering sort of angle. And, uh, yeah, music generation hasn't always been that good, but I think it's been, uh, improving quite a bit. In any case, without further ado, I'm gonna play this tune.
At the bus stop office, rain needled the glass. Mom split one receipt while the week went past. I watched the landlord's pen turn a home into a number, then counted every neighbor who was carrying the hunger. So I learned what a promise cost. When the ink goes dry, who gets heard in the meeting? Who gets waved aside? Put a map on the table, drew a route through the block. Made a key from the question and a door from the lock. I don't talk big, I make small rooms stretch. Bring the quiet ones in and redistribute the breath. If the rules wrote us out, we rewrite the measure. Turn a borrowed minute into something we can treasure. Still here.
Still here.
With the same 4 walls breathing. Same hands, new plans, no pleading. If the door stays shut, I'm a key in the meaning. Turn a hard day around till the dark stops leaving. I keep my cards close, but the book—
Yeah, nice. So I mean, you know, pretty fairly standard stuff. I have to say I particularly like that chorus. Um, I— it really caught my ear when I first sort of heard it. And I'll be honest, how I actually made this is I was playing some acoustic guitar It's just soloing, or spacing out as I like to call it. It's playing that, you know, I played some interesting chords and some little riffs and solos into, uh, into Suno. I saved that as an audio, so you can literally just upload audio by clicking on that. And then I said, and then I prompted it. And this is one thing I always have to stress when it comes to even using AI in any sort of modality. Obviously I have, you know, experience as a, as a musician, but inspiration to the output is what you always want. In this case, I always say, you know, you don't want to do text to music because if you just type in a prompt and then you generate a song. In my experience, not just with Suno but with other musical or music generators, it's not that great. When you can actually provide it with an audio file, whether it's something of you singing, some, you know, something of you rapping, something of you doing anything, playing an instrument, you know, or just a unique kind of sound or something you just want to capture and use as part of instrumentation, that's when it actually shines a whole lot more, especially if you can articulate how you want that to be used. in the production at large. Okay, cool. So we've got, uh, we've got a couple things that have been generated here from our initial prompt. Let's see what they sound like. Okay, interesting stuff. Very, uh, yeah, very ambient, you know, quite technical, quite minimalist, I have to say. Definitely got that, you know, nice deep house groove. But yeah, interesting stuff. I would say in terms of production, uh, quality and all-around instrumentation, I prefer Same Hands because of course I did actually play a musical instrument into it. So that was inspiring. That was what I call inspiration to music, whereas the— this song was just generated, uh, using text music. In any case, let's hear the other one. Suno generates 2 songs for every prompt, so yeah, let's check this out. Cool. Yeah, interesting stuff. Similar kind of vibe, you know, as expected. But, and I think, uh, you know, what I said still stands, you know, inspiration to the app is always what you want, even whenever it's text. Like, you never want to just ask AI, or rarely I would say, when you just ask AI to do the work for you. You want to bring to the model what you've already done, right? And, uh, yeah, ultimately go from there. In any case, definitely check out Suno if you think it would be good for you. They also now have this studio, uh, yeah, this studio, uh, interface, which is basically like a DAW. For those of you who don't know, DAW is a digital audio workstation similar to platforms like Logic and Ableton. Ultimately, you can line up the tracks. So let's say, let's say I want to open up one of those songs. For example, let me go to my library. If I want to open up one of these songs in a DAW, let's see here, how can I do that? Okay, open in studio. There we go. And I'll be able to see the tracks and then edit things. I think it's quite interesting because I'm used to, you know, adding in plugins, you know, using all these kind of Uh, you know, different kind of plugins, third-party VSTs, all this kind of stuff. I'm actually pleased to announce I've launched one of my first digital products, which is a 7-day prompting ebook. I've called it Perfecting Prompts, and it's essentially a 7-day crash course on how you can improve your prompting so that you can supercharge your productivity. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave the link to Perfecting Prompts below. I put in a lot of work into it, and in there I actually include some frameworks that I teach to Global corporations. Definitely check it out. But now it's simply just, you know, you can just describe what you want, um, and it will just, just do it for you. Uh, I think what I would probably do here in this case is I would firstly like split the stems. I am on a paid Suno plan at the moment. I'm on there, I think, £8 a month one. You can go on to, uh, Premier, um, and I think Premier is what gives you access to Suno Studio. Okay, interesting stuff. But yeah, in any case, definitely check out Suno if you think it would be useful for you. In this case, what you could do if you had access to, uh, Sono Studios, split the stems and then just describe using words how you want things to, to be done. I think this has a lot of use cases, not just in producing music, but also potentially engineering. For example, one engineering concept that's somewhat technical is being able to like EQ your reverb so only specific frequencies actually go through the chain of reverberation. Um, yeah, if you can articulate that. Now normally I'm used to using a couple, you know, digital dials to actually make sure I, you know, take out the right sort of frequencies in the reverb and, you know, accentuate other ones. But if you can just describe how you want it, then yeah, that's a whole lot better. Or if you can, better still, reverse engineer what you need to articulate. So you like a certain vocal effect or certain instrumentational effect in a song, you can just go into your large language model of choice, ask it to reverse engineer that so that you can articulate it, copy and paste it, or tweak however you see fit. And, uh, yeah, you basically got the same effect in your song. In any case, you know, I, I can't, I can't, uh, ever hide my passion for music and sound. Um, you know, I used to think my purpose on this planet was to provide spiritual fulfillment and enlightenment to humanity through music and sound. This was when I had my music career, and now I think it is to enlighten humanity to the fact that technology is creativity in disguise. In any case, definitely check out Suno if you think it would be useful for you.
