What a Beatmaker Should be Asking AI Music Generators to Do?
While only a few years ago AI music pretty much rivalled that of an 80s Bontempi organ being pushed down a flight of stairs, it’s now clearly much improved and blowing people’s respective minds. But other than AI Music being an entertaining and novel source of music fun (think musical birthday greetings for Aunty Jean in a Death Metal style) what can it do to enhance and inspire your music production? With remixing, audio extending and stem-separating functions now live there’s plenty of scope for it to become the musical partner you always wished for.
In this post we highlight 5 great AI hacks to help aid your compositional and production game.
AI Hack 1: Writers Block Solution
In songwriting it is often the case that a great hook or first verse will just seem to drop from the sky, fully formed. The problem often comes when trying to build upon these original strong foundations. Writers block can quickly set in.
With the extension feature of AI software such as Udio and Suno it is now possible to drop in a sample of your tracks audio and the AI will take the track in endless new directions. It will even go back and write you an intro if that’s what you’re struggling with. This amazing function can help with finding new melodic ideas or lyrical and harmonic ideas. It even takes your voice and replicates it when coming up with new lyrical ideas.
note* However tempting it might be to use the AI audio it is always better to replay or re-vocal the AI-inspired creations. The key to using this feature effectively is to harness the power of AI purely as a guide and as inspiration.
AI Hack 2: Epic Intros
One thing many of us neglect (myself included) when making beats is the power of the intro. Some of the greatest ever tracks grab your attention straight from the get-go with an epic intro. Think House of Pains – Jump Around, 50 Cents – Candy Shop or Dr Dre’s Next Episode.
Coming up with big epic intros can be tricky so if you’re stuck for inspiration why not call on your trusty sidekick Quickstrike Suno or Kid Boy Udio? With a good prompt, they should help save the day. And as with all AI prompted results, if at first you don’t succeed; regenerate, regenerate, regenerate!
AI Hack 3: Killer Hooks
If you are a beatmaker working in Hip-Hop or a producer of the EDM persuasion, having a killer vocal hook on your track can be the difference between hitsville and another similar sounding ville starting with ‘Sh’. In the past you would have had to hunt for the perfect sample or maybe enrol a session vocalist. Now with AI to hand you have the potential to generate and audition endless vocals, all artificially engineered to work over your beat. The key to successfully generating killer vocal hooks lies in the recent introduction of 2 new features. Stem separation and the ability to feed the audio of your track to the AI software for remixing or track extension.
Upload the instrumental of your track to the AI and then prompt it to extend or remix the track whilst adding lyrics. These can either be lyrics you have written or AI-generated ones based on a given prompt. You also have the ability to further engineer the prompt suggesting styles, genres, gender etc. As mentioned previously AI can be very hit and miss. You are going to have to be the gate keeper, the arbitor of good taste and only allow through the best vocal generations.
And once AI comes through with the goods it’s time to download the audio as an isolated vocal stem. Then stick the vocal in your DAW and do your worst.
AI Hack 4: Spoken Word
Leaving musical AI generation for a minute, one thing that can be a great addition to certain types of music is spoken word samples. Lofi, Trip Hop and Ambient music are all big exponents. But finding the perfect piece of spoken word to fit the theme or feel of your track can be tricky and often legally complicated if you don’t have the rights.
AI now puts the power of the spoken voice in all its various shades and timbres in your hands. You can either write your own text for it to follow or ask it to produce some AI magic guided by your prompts. Many text-to-speech AI solutions will allow you to feed some guide speech audio as well. Just make sure you are not infringing someone’s rights when doing so.
AI Hack 5: AI Session Musicians
Finally, you may be cooking up a beat that sounds like it has potential but needs some more melodic interest. You may be finding a loop a little repetitive. Or perhaps you might have a basic chord progression written or a fantastic rhythm section in place that needs embellishing with additional instrumentation. Well AI is always at hand to conjure up some session musicians whenever you need them.
Just feed the AI software (Udio or Suno) a short section of your track, set to extend and allow the Artificial musicians to do their thing. Just be prepared for, much like in the real world some to shine and some to suck. Also be prepared for the generations to feature random instruments. AI currently doesn’t seem to do well when prompted to play specific instruments. Much like sampling off a record or sample pack you just have to accept and take what you are given. That said if you keep generating responses at some point it will churn out some usable gold! And then, if you’re a producer who likes to work with samples, just download the separated stem(s) you need, and edit them accordingly, plucking out all the winning bits.
Remember – RouteNote Create subscriptions start from as little as $2.99. You also get 10 FREE credits to spend on samples along with access to our FREE sample pack bundle when you sign-up!