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Re:Suno v4.5 by kelseyfrog on Friday May 02, 2025 @04:33PM (#43874312)
The real potential of tools like Suno isn’t in cranking out radio-ready hits. It’s in creating music that doesn't have commercial incentives to exist. Case in point: Functional Music.

I started using it to generate songs that reinforce emotional regulation strategies -things like grounding, breathwork, staying present. Not instructional tracks, which would be unbearable, but actual songs with lyrics that reflect actual practice and skills.

It started as a way to help me decompress after therapy. I'd listen to a mini-album I made during the drive home. Eventually, I’d catch myself recalling a lyric in stressful moments elsewhere. That was the moment things clicked. The songs weren’t just a way for me to calm down on the way home, they were teaching me real emotional skills I could use in all parts of my life. I wasn’t consciously practicing mindfulness anymore; it was showing up on its own. Since then I’ve been iterating, writing lyrics that reflect emotional-cognitive skills, generating songs with them, and listening while I'm in the car. It's honestly changed my life in a subtle but deep way.

We already have work songs, lullabies, marching music, and religious chants - all music that serves a purpose besides existing to be listened to. Music that exists to teach us ways of interacting is a largely untapped idea.

This is the kind of functional application is what generative music is perfect for. Song can be so much more than listening to terminally romantic lyricists trying to speak to the lowest common denominator. They can teach us to be better versions of ourselves.

Re:Suno v4.5 by zvitiate on Friday May 02, 2025 @05:04PM (#43874568)
Yup. My favorite genre by FAR is baroque. High quality recordings are not as wide as you’d expect, and no one’s really pumping out new baroque. V4.5 is noticeably better, even if the model shows the real “plagiaristic” aspect.

Still, I’m excited about the product. The composer could probably use some chain of thought if it doesn’t already, and plan larger sequences and how they relate to each other. Suno is also probably the most ripe for a functional neurosymbolic model. CPE wrote an algorithm on counterpoint hundreds of years ago!

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/4qul1b/crea... (Note the original site has been taken over, but you can access the original via way back. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a save where the generation demo works…but I swear it did! I used it at the time!)

Re:Suno v4.5 by vunderba on Friday May 02, 2025 @08:10PM (#43875748)
I've mentioned it before on HN, but Sid Meier worked on an application called (appropriately enough) CPU Bach for the 3DO that would algorithmically generate endless contrapuntal music all the way back in 1994.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.P.U._Bach

Re:Suno v4.5 by zvitiate on Friday May 02, 2025 @11:05PM (#43876572)
Ohhh this looks very cool. Thank you for sharing! Will dive into this over the weekend.
Re:Suno v4.5 by dagelf on Friday May 09, 2025 @06:34AM (#43935320)
It's almost week-end! But I'm pretty sure these were shared merely as historical anecdotes, and that Suno 4.5 is the bleeding edge here...
Re:Suno v4.5 by ranma42 on Saturday May 03, 2025 @02:49AM (#43877314)
In a similar vein, there is https://aminet.net/package/mus/misc/AlgoMusic2_4u.lha, from ~96 or so.
Re:Suno v4.5 by fennecbutt on Friday May 02, 2025 @08:03PM (#43875708)
Yup, give us a tool and we'll use it. I've mostly used it for meme songs.

But I really think they've made a mistake with direction, realistically it should've been trained on tracker files, and build somgs via the method (but generate the vocals,individual instrument sounds for midi, obvs).

I think the quality would be higher since the track can be "rendered" out essentially, but also only then would it be a useful tool for actual musicians, to be able to get a skeleton file (mod, etc) for a song built up that they can then tweak and add a human touch to.

Re:Suno v4.5 by hndamien on Friday May 02, 2025 @05:18PM (#43874696)
Re:Suno v4.5 by linotype on Friday May 02, 2025 @05:17PM (#43874684)
Would you mind making these available to others?
Re:Suno v4.5 by kelseyfrog on Friday May 02, 2025 @05:29PM (#43874783)
Sure! I "re-mastered" my mini-album with v4.5 since that's more in the spirit of the discussion.

https://suno.com/playlist/e6c3f3d1-a746-4106-bea1-e36073d227...

Side note: It feels a little vulnerable to be sharing these. They genuinely helped me through difficult times and I wasn't really expecting anyone else to ever listen to them.

Re:Suno v4.5 by k1musab1 on Friday May 02, 2025 @07:16PM (#43875451)
Thank you for sharing these, I will try listening on my drive to work.
Re:Suno v4.5 by currydove on Friday May 02, 2025 @07:12PM (#43875433)
These are beautiful. Thank you so much
Re:Suno v4.5 by oidar on Friday May 02, 2025 @06:29PM (#43875143)
That's incredibly generous of you. Thanks for sharing.
Re:Suno v4.5 by linotype on Saturday May 03, 2025 @01:54PM (#43880817)
Thank you!
Re:Suno v4.5 by corlinp on Friday May 02, 2025 @09:26PM (#43876169)
I used Suno to generate rap versions of Feynman's first lecture. It turned out really well!

https://suno.com/playlist/d2886382-bcb9-4d6d-8d7a-78625adcbe...

Re:Suno v4.5 by kermatt on Friday May 02, 2025 @10:47PM (#43876494)
This is a brilliant idea. It been a very long time since I wanted to listen to a lecture.
Re:Suno v4.5 by yuuu on Friday May 02, 2025 @10:44PM (#43876475)
> we will see something similar to what is shown in Fig. 1–1
Re:Suno v4.5 by sans_souse on Saturday May 03, 2025 @02:57AM (#43877333)
This is great
Re:Suno v4.5 by Etheryte on Saturday May 03, 2025 @05:42AM (#43877919)
This is absolutely brilliant. Is there a way for you to put this on Spotify or make the files downloadable? Not familiar with the pricing, capabilities and licensing of Suno, so sorry if this is not possible.
Re:Suno v4.5 by thijsvandien on Saturday May 03, 2025 @10:48AM (#43879388)
Amazing idea. I can hardly stand audio books, and some musical updressing might completely change that. Having a beat to it just makes it so much more fun/engaging/digestible/memorable. Kids are already taught their ABCs using songs for that reason. Why stop there, if all sorts of material could easily be put in that form? Honestly it could revolutionize teaching.
Re:Suno v4.5 by nico on Saturday May 03, 2025 @10:48AM (#43879393)
Wow, love it, so good!
Re:Suno v4.5 by hbogert on Sunday May 04, 2025 @04:10AM (#43885322)
I thought i would hate it, but it's actually really engaging!
Re:Suno v4.5 by cryptonector on Saturday May 03, 2025 @12:34AM (#43876881)
Oh. Music I know can play repetitively in my mind, which is annoying at sleep time, so I tend to listen to slow music I am not familiar with at bed time. Suno did generate good such music just now for me, even though it failed miserably to generate music for genres I like during daytime. Fascinating.
Re:Suno v4.5 by janwillemb on Saturday May 03, 2025 @02:53AM (#43877325)
I have the same thing, really annoying. I can wake up at night at the same song too. I stopped listening music hours before bedtime, but that doesn't always help and I also tend to forget. I'll try out suno for this purpose. What do you use for prompting, if you want to share?
Re:Suno v4.5 by cryptonector on Saturday May 03, 2025 @07:14PM (#43883117)
sleep low-beat-rate

sleep slow

Re:Suno v4.5 by aspaviento on Saturday May 03, 2025 @03:23AM (#43877415)
If it's not too personal, could you share one of those lyrics?
Re:Suno v4.5 by bsenftner on Saturday May 03, 2025 @05:59AM (#43877974)
Have you heard of "Conscious Rap"? It's the practice of creating rap music around the topics one wants to be educated, and then listening to it ambiently. That subgenre has many tendrils, as people with unrealized lyric talent make raps about politics, finance, how to maintain, and developing critical thinking skills and then in the Conscious Rap social media sharing sites their personal music takes off.
Re:Suno v4.5 by kelseyfrog on Saturday May 03, 2025 @12:52PM (#43880352)
That's new to me! Do you have any recommendations or starting points you could suggest? It's a fascinating use of music
Re:Suno v4.5 by bsenftner on Sunday May 04, 2025 @06:17AM (#43885811)
I like going to BandCamp.com and they have a Conscious Rap section, in that section you find all kinds of interesting music. Each band/mc has their own band page, and on those pages they list other sites they can be found and those listings are gold. Tiny little online labels, or just lone artists, and some are not really music artists at all, more like collage audio philosophers.
Re:Suno v4.5 by qmmmur on Saturday May 03, 2025 @09:26AM (#43878897)
This and other subsequent tales have to be some of the most soulless and depressing misuses of other people’s collective IP. Utterly disparaging to see it applauded.
Re:Suno v4.5 by kelseyfrog on Saturday May 03, 2025 @10:45AM (#43879360)
IP is a legal fiction created by capitalists to territorialize creativity.
Re:Suno v4.5 by jFriedensreich on Saturday May 03, 2025 @10:26AM (#43879245)
This is exactly on point. My budget gym plays constant low quality eastern european remakes of US hits that are completely unbearable. I count the days until they switch to AI music that is assumably even cheaper but much more acceptable.
Re:Suno v4.5 by nico on Saturday May 03, 2025 @10:46AM (#43879376)
Huge yes to this

A friend recently made a simple app/site where he can pick the bpm of the music (he likes running listening to 180bpm), then see a bunch of songs and create a quick playlist he can load on Spotify with 1 click and go running

That got me thinking it would be cool to use suno/ai to create activity-specific songs, like songs about/for running or biking, or studying, or working, or painting. Instead of trying to curate popular hit songs to fit the task

Re:Suno v4.5 by judge_dreddlift on Sunday May 04, 2025 @07:06AM (#43886027)
This comment is absolutely on point. It is simply fun to listen to songs that are specific to your micro-situation, enjoy them a few times, and then life has moved on. I get it to make little ditties for our customers about how great our products are; about specific moments or events in time, or as little theme songs for projects or releases. It is delightful.