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Five Experiments in Song Making
On learning to share my poetry & lyrics in new ways
What follows are five poems and lyrics of mine that I have recently put to music, using Suno, an AI tool.
Please know that these are just drafts. The final versions will be done with real, live, breathing, sweating, burping, cursing, laughing human being musicians.
I see this as an experiment, albeit one that pushes a lot of people’s buttons, given the limitation of AI’s music-making capabilities, it’s genericized, derivative nature, and the threat it poses to working musicians everywhere who are already under-appreciated and struggling to make a living with their music.
I get it. I do. And if, in a moment of self-intoxication with my own creative process, I forget this, my take-no-prisoners musician friends remind me in a heartbeat — and I am glad for that.
As a long-time poet, I have recently become fascinated with exploring the process of what it takes to translate/transmute my poetry into songs and thereby reach a much wider audience.
While poetry and lyrics are kissing cousins, each genre requires its own set of skills and sensibilities. I am in the process of learning how to write songs and how to give my poetry enough room to breathe when transformed into song form so it…
