Make Music

Modern AI can now generate complete songs with vocals, instruments, and production. You describe the genre, mood, lyrics, and style, and get back a fully produced track. The quality is genuinely impressive.

Brief mention: Udio is a similar tool that some users prefer for certain genres. I have tried both and personally prefer Suno for the consistency of output and the ease of use. Udio is worth a look if Suno does not quite match the style you are after.

Try this right now (free)

Open Suno and type: "A warm acoustic folk song about walking a long trail through the countryside. Male vocal, fingerpicked guitar, gentle and reflective." Let it generate. Then try creating a version with your own lyrics.

How to use Suno

Suno gives you two ways to make a song. Same engine, different amount of control.

Quick mode (the easy one)

The default Suno page is one big text box. You write a description of the song you want -- the genre, the topic, the mood, the vocal type -- and Suno writes everything: the lyrics, the music, the vocals, the title. Hit Generate and you get back two versions to choose from.

This is the right mode for most people most of the time. It is fast, easy, and Suno is genuinely good at filling in the blanks. The Prompt Library's Build it for me outputs are designed for this box.

Try it: open suno.com and paste in: "A warm acoustic folk song about walking a long trail through the countryside. Male vocal, fingerpicked guitar, gentle and reflective."

Custom mode (when you want more control)

Click the Custom toggle in Suno before you start. Quick mode collapses into four separate fields. The Prompt Library's Let me take control outputs are designed for this view.

What each field does:

Style of Music. Tags describing the genre, instrumentation, mood, and feel. Things like "indie folk, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, soft male vocals, melancholic, 70 BPM". This is the main creative direction. The Prompt Library fills this one in for you.

Title. The name of the song. Optional. Suno will suggest one if you leave it blank, but picking your own is usually better.

Lyrics. The actual words to be sung. You have three options:

• Leave blank -- Suno generates lyrics from your Style of Music description. Easiest path.
• Paste your own -- if you wrote them, or if a poem or piece of writing is the song. Use [Verse 1], [Chorus], [Bridge] markers if you want to control the structure.
• Get help writing them -- ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini will happily write song lyrics. See below.

Instrumental. Toggle this on for music with no vocals at all -- background music, focus tracks, meditation, cafe atmosphere.

Bringing your own lyrics (with help from ChatGPT or Claude)

If you want to write your own lyrics but you are stuck, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini can do the heavy lifting. Open one of them and try a prompt like:

"Write song lyrics about [your topic]. Style: [your genre]. Mood: [your mood]. Verse-chorus structure with one bridge. Avoid songwriting cliches like 'tears like rain' or 'hearts on fire'. Use specific, concrete imagery."

Copy the lyrics it returns into Suno's Custom Mode Lyrics field. The Style of Music field controls the music, the Lyrics field controls the words, and they work independently. You can edit either before hitting Generate.

Free tier limits

Suno's free tier gives you about five songs per day (each generation produces two versions, which counts as one song). The Pro plan is around US$10 per month and lifts that limit. If you are just experimenting, the free tier is plenty.

A note on commercial use

The free tier is for personal use. If you are planning to use the music commercially -- a podcast you sell, a YouTube video that runs ads, music for a paying client, background music in your shop -- you need Suno's paid tier. And in Australia, music played publicly in commercial spaces (cafes, shops, events) also needs APRA AMCOS licensing on top of Suno's commercial-use rights. Check both boxes before you ship anything.