AI music app Suno has just announced a new feature that is something of a game changer when it comes to creating AI tracks from a text prompt.
Pro and Premium tier users can now pop into a song they’ve made, and alter the lyrics or add solo instrument breaks as easily as changing words in your word processor. This may sound obvious, but anyone who’s used one of these AI tools will know that their lyric generators are an absolute blight on the planet.
Auto-generated AI lyrics tend to be repetitive, and sometimes downright weird. For example, AI seems to adore the words ‘neon’ and ‘city lights’ in its lyrics. If I had a dollar for every ‘echoes’ in my AI song titles I’d be richer than Jay-Z. Udio is also tackling AI lyrics with its lyric builder tool.
Until now, the only choice was to write your lyrics using the Custom feature or put up with a neon-lit universe. This new 'replace section' feature completely changes the AI song-making process.
How Suno 'replace section' works
It’s now possible to click on the new Replace Section in the app’s song editor, and once there select a part of the track which has the offending lyric by striping it with the mouse. Once done, the lyrics are highlighted, and you can simply delete and re-write the lyrics with your choice of words. Begone neon!
It’s nice to see the AI music market continuing to innovate. It’s a user win-win
The clever part is the words are highlighted while striping, which means it’s trivially easy to see what you’re editing and repeat the process if you’re not happy.
Edit sections must be a minimum of 10 seconds though, so no single word editing is available. You can also make your selection and click the AI lyric generator button, but chances are you’ll get more ‘neon’ again, so it's probably only worth the trouble if you want to change a large chunk of the song.
The new feature is the latest in a string of updates done by Suno in the past few months, as the battle between the two sultans of song, Suno and Udio, continues.
Other notable improvements include an innovative ‘cover’ feature which lets you re-jig a song with the same melody but a different style. This feature is in beta, and I found it to be a little hit or miss when I tried it out. Most of the generations sounded exactly the same unless you radically changed the style (e.g. from pop to rap).
However, it’s nice to see the AI music market continuing to innovate. It’s a user win-win.
